O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [140]
We did need an authority figure, however, to keep us from being arrested for loitering or house invasion by an over-zealous soldier. All three of us looked at Holmes.
“Do you still have that uniform, Holmes?” I asked.
He sighed. “I regret to say I do.”
“Then you can be responsible for keeping the police off our backs.”
“While you… ?”
It was my turn to sigh. “While I get into the grotto and knock on that door. Loudly.”
“Very, very loudly,” said Mahmoud. He and Ali (particularly Ali) looked pleased at this division of labour, and I reflected that I, too, would much prefer to be assigned the task of standing on a street corner or roof top, waiting to catch the fleeing rats that my subterranean pounding would, with any luck, dislodge.
“Why do men always get the fun jobs?” I complained, and took out my pocket-watch. “What time should I begin?” I looked at the timepiece, then held it unbelieving up to my ear. It had not stopped; it was barely 2:30. Allenby would still be at the Haram, talking.
“Forty minutes if I run,” Holmes answered.
Even considering the diminutive nature of the Old City, I thought that forty minutes would have him shedding kuffiyahs and doing up uniform buttons as he trotted down the steps of the David Street bazaar.
“Shall we say fifty?”
“Forty-five, Russell.”
“Very well.” As we all stood to go, I added pointedly, “I trust that one of you will let me know when I can stop pounding.”
“Insh’allah,” said Holmes demurely. If God wills it.
Damnation,” I said aloud, startling two black-shrouded women balancing jugs on their heads. The gate to the grotto that Holmes and I had locked behind us now stood wide open, and I could see movement within the entrance. I touched the handle of the gun Holmes had given to me, and went forward.
It was not exactly relief I felt when I saw the archaeological Jacob occupying the cave mouth, but at least I would not have to shoot anyone to be allowed inside. Although I soon began to wonder if it would not have been simpler for all concerned if I had just drawn my weapon and ordered them out of my way. It might well have been kinder.
“Hello, Jacob,” I said, when I had reached the entrance. “Terribly sorry, but I was never introduced to you properly, and I don’t know your surname.”
That good gentleman just gaped at me, blinking furiously with the effort of reconciling an educated English voice with the visage before him, and wondering where on earth he had seen it before.
“Mary Russell,” I suggested. “We met the other evening over the dinner table. Dressed rather differently.” I tugged off my turban to allow him the clue of my blonde hair, and he stepped back violently. I could only pray that he did not suffer from a heart condition, and I laughed as if it was all a great joke. “I know, I know—it’s going to take some explaining, but there is an explanation, I promise you. Only not just now. It’s urgent that I go into the grotto and make some noise, to show some friends above the location of the access door. Do you know the door I mean? No? Then perhaps you’d like to see? And—might I borrow that ladder?”
The accent, the femininity, and the appeal to his curiosity disarmed him, to the extent that he trailed along after me, mouthing frail objections. He even offered to carry the stout cudgel I had brought along for the purpose of noisy pounding. His men, three highly entertained Christian Arabs, followed in a procession, carrying the ladder across the uneven floor of the grotto.
I looked at my pocket-watch, and up at the concealed door with the ladder propped beside it, and wished, not for the first time, that I smoked. Cigarettes do give one something to do while one waits, instead of reviewing grammar or making conversation. I decided that Jacob deserved some slightly more detailed explanation of events, if for nothing else than to reward him for not flinging me to the police, so in the seven minutes left before I could begin my rat-flushing racket, I told him a much-abridged and quite misleading tale with the essential goal intact: