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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Talbot Mundy's 'The Iblis at Ludd' is a captivating adventure novel set in the mystical world of the Middle East. The book follows the protagonist as he embarks on a journey filled with political intrigue, ancient secrets, and supernatural encounters. Mundy's descriptive prose and attention to detail immerse the reader in a rich tapestry of cultures and landscapes, making the literary context of the novel both enlightening and entertaining. The cleverly woven plot keeps the reader on the edge of their seat, eager to uncover the mysteries lurking in the shadows of Ludd. Talbot Mundy, a British author with a deep fascination for Eastern philosophy and mysticism, draws inspiration from his own travels and experiences to create a compelling narrative that delves into the complexities of human nature and belief systems. His expertise in weaving together historical facts with fictional elements elevates 'The Iblis at Ludd' to a masterful work of literature. I highly recommend 'The Iblis at Ludd' to readers who enjoy a blend of adventure, spirituality, and cultural exploration. Mundy's skillful storytelling and profound insights make this novel a must-read for anyone seeking a thought-provoking and exhilarating literary experience.
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The Iblis at Ludd
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
“Lead on, Jimgrim sahib. I have seen the day when stronger boars than that one bit the dust!”
AS a general rule when Major Jim Grim strode into the administrator’s office in the former German hospice, now British headquarters in Jerusalem, it was to be greeted with that kind of confident familiarity that, from his official superior, warms the fiber of a man’s being. Jim’s standing in the administrator’s favor was the cause of a good deal of jealousy; more than one British officer resented the frequent private consultations between Sir Henry Kettle and the American, although they could not prevent them.
They might have felt less jealous if they had known of the wholesale disregard of personal feelings (Jim’s especially) whenever the administrator considered him at fault.
Jim walked into the administrator’s private office three mornings after having run to ground the Dome of the Rock conspirators, rather expecting the usual smile and exchange of unusual jokes before broaching the day’s business. But Sir Henry Kettle opened on him without formality, with blazing eyes and a voice like flint.
“Look here, Grim, what the—do you mean by this? I’ve received complaint of insolence and insubordination, made against you by Brigadier-General Jenkins. It came in the morning mail from Ludd. Were you insolent to him?”
“Maybe.”
“Insubordinate?”
“That’ud be a matter of opinion, sir.”
“Do you realize that if he presses these charges there’ll be a court martial, and you’ll be broke?”
“I didn’t tell him what I thought of him because he was acting like a gentleman,” Jim answered.
“That isn’t the point. Jenkins may be a lot of things without that excusing you in the least. What I demand to know is, how dare you risk my having to court martial you and lose your services?”
There was not any answer Jim could make to that, so he said nothing.
“Are you under the impression that because an exception was made in your case, and you were recognized as an American citizen when given a commission in the British Army, that therefore you’re at liberty to ignore all precedent and be insolent to whom you please? If so, I’ll disillusion you!”
Jim knew his man. He wanted none of that kind of disillusionment. He continued to hold his tongue, standing bolt upright in front of the administrator’s desk.
“Apply your own standards if you like. How long would insolence from major to brigadier be tolerated in the United States Army?”
That was another of those questions that are best left alone, like dud shells and sleeping TNT.
“Jenkins writes that you gave him the lie direct. Is that true?”
“No. I asked him a question he couldn’t answer without telling a lie, or else retracting what he’d said.”
“He says he offered to fight him.”
“Not quite. He was afraid to go to you with a lame story, and wanted me to help soak Catesby with all the blame for losing that TNT. I know Catesby—know him well. I told Jenkins that if it’ud make him like himself any better he might put the gloves on with me any time he sees fit. It was unofficial—not in front of witnesses—and it stands. He took me up; said he’d give me the thrashing of my life. He also promised not to make a goat of Catesby.”
“Well, he has charged Captain Catesby with neglect of duty in permitting those two tons of TNT to be stolen from a truck on a railway siding. Catesby is under arrest.”
“May I say what I think about that, just between you and me?”
“Certainly not! But for your insolence to Jenkins I could have brought him to book over this business.
“Do you see the predicament you’ve put me in? This isn’t the first time Jenkins has covered his own shortcomings by putting blame on a subordinate. I’ve been watching my chance to turn you loose on him. He gives it to me by accusing Catesby, and you spoil it! You’re the one man Jenkins is afraid of; but how can I send you to investigate him now without upholding a breach of discipline?”
“I’ll do anything to make amends that you would do, sir, if you stood in my shoes,” said Jim.
“I can’t imagine myself in your shoes,” Kettle retorted. “I was never guilty of insubordination in my life.”
“Maybe you never had reason,” Jim answered. “What I said to him was in private. There were no witnesses, but he promised not to make a goat of Catesby. It’s his word against mine, and if he dares press that charge against me I shall call him a liar in open court, and take the consequences.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind. You’ll go to Ludd at once, clear Captain Catesby if you can, find the real culprit, and do your utmost to whitewash Jenkins in the process.
“I’m leaving for Ludd by motor in twenty minutes myself. I shall see Jenkins and arrange that he’ll accept an apology, which you will make to him the moment you arrive. Do you understand me?”
“I understand I’m to apologize. Yes, I’ll do that, since you wish it.”
“Stay at Ludd until you’ve cleaned up,” the administration added deliberately. “There has been a lot of thieving down there that looks like organized conspiracy. Dig to the bottom of it. That’s all.”
* * * * *
Outside the room Jim lit a cigarette and chuckled to himself. If there was one man on earth whom he despised and hated it was Brigadier-General Jenkins.
Nor was he alone in that particular. He more than suspected that the administrator shared his feelings; and he knew for a fact that half the British Army in Palestine loathed the man for his blatant self-advertising.
So to be told to go to work to whitewash Jenkins appealed to his sense of humor, the more so as he divined that underneath the administrator’s actual words there lay another meaning. Jim and Sir Henry Kettle understood each other pretty accurately as a rule. Discipline was to be upheld at all costs. Well and good; he would apologize. But since half-measures formed no part of Jim’s philosophy, he decided to carry out the administrator’s instructions to the letter and to find some way of giving Jenkins such an elegant coat of white as should embarrass even that praise-hungry brigadier.
Fair play and Sir Henry Kettle were synonymous terms. Therefore there was more in this than met the eye. Therefore—“Forward, march!”
He walked down the echoing corridor chuckling to himself, and almost ran into Colonel Goodenough, a commander of Sikhs who cherished a good soldier as he did a horse.
“Morning, Grim. Got a K.C. B. or something? What’s the good news? Share it!”
“I’m off to Ludd.”
“Good Ludd deliver us! Fleas—sand—centipedes—raw recruits—sick horses—thieves—and the man’s happy! Are there any more at home like you?”
“I need one of your men to go with me, sir.”
“So that’s the joke, is it? Well, it’s on you. You can’t have him. I’m short of men. There seem to be only two classes of people in universal demand in Jerusalem—Sikhs and jailbirds; jailbirds for the dirty work, and Sikhs to push perambulators. Every man in my regiment has two men’s work to do. I won’t spare one of them.”
“Lend me Narayan Singh, sir.”
“Why—it, he’s my best man!”
“Sure. That’s why I want him.”
“He’s priceless. If you want my private opinion he could run the regiment better than I can. Why, I use that man to teach my officers their business.”
“Reward him then,” Jim answered. “Give him a job after his own heart. Send him with me.”
“For how long?”
“Indefinite. I’m to smell out the thieves at Ludd.”
“Well—it’s true—that would be a picnic for Narayan Singh. He deserves a treat. But if you get him killed or seriously injured I’ll murder you. Why, I spent all one night in No Man’s Land at Gaza hunting for that man rather than lose him; I wouldn’t have done as much for my grandmother.”
“That how you got the V.C.?”
“—it, yes. And Narayan Singh got nothing, although I recommended him until I was sick of writing letters. He’d done ten time what I did. If you borrow him I want him back all in one piece marker ‘perishable.’
“Watch that he doesn’t get malaria down at Ludd. Don’t overwork him. See that he gets regular meals. I tell you, that man’s precious!”
“How soon can I have him?”
“I’m on my way to the lines now. Come in my car and get him.”
* * * * *
They went down the Mount of Olives at Goodenough’s usual speed, which was not based on such considerations as the view, or the nerves either, of Jerusalem, and brought up presently in a cloud of dust in front of a marquee behind a barbed-wire fence on the outskirts of the city. Two minutes later Narayan Singh, lean, enormous, bearded, looked straight into his colonel’s eyes across the table.
“You’re to go with this officer, Narayan Singh.”
“Atcha, sahib.”
“You’re to bring him back from Ludd alive.”
“Atcha, sahib.”
“Otherwise do whatever he tells you to.”
“Atcha, colonel sahib.”
“March with your kit to the station and meet Major Grim there in time for the morning train. Dismiss.”
The Sikh saluted and fell away, but his brown eyes met Jim’s with a flare of gratitude. It was almost ferocious, like the expression of a hound unchained for sport. Jim nodded to him, but neither said a word.
Jim borrowed the colonel’s car and drove to the junior staff officer’s mess, where he went upstairs in a hurry. Finding nobody in his own room, he went on up to the attic and stooped over an enormous packing-case. Groping in it, he pulled out a black foot, followed by a small boy, whose wooly hair suggested the Sudan and a mother sold into Arab slavery. His features were certainly Arabic.
“You lucky, lucky little devil! Twelve hours’ sleep out of twenty- four—just think of it! Wake up now and pack you kit; roll it into your blanket and come with me to the station.”
“What is it, Jimgrim? Are we transferred?”
“You’ve got to learn to ask no questions when you get your marching- orders.”
“All right, Jimgrim.”
“Narayan Singh will inspect that kit when you get to the station. Better be careful.”
He left the boy sleepily arranging on a blanket all the odds and ends that had appealed to his eight-year-old imagination since Jim discovered him starving one winter night in the drafty archway of the Jaffa Gate. They were pretty much the same things that a small boy born in America would choose—a tin can, a broken knife, a mouth-organ, a picture out of a magazine, an incomplete pack of playing cards, some half-smoked cigarettes and a broken mousetrap—all frightfully important.
Jim packed into his own kit three complete changes of native costume, and was ready first.
Narayan Singh was the only one of Jim’s friends who did not object to Suliman; the only one who took it for granted that the profit of fostering a small boy might outweigh the trouble, and who was thoroughly willing to share the trouble and forego all profit.
The Sikh took charge of Suliman at the station, made him unroll his kit on the platform, rebuked him because the broken knife-blade was not clean, solemnly suggested proper ways of polishing the outside of a tine box, and invent on the spot the only moral and properly complicated way of packing such possessions in a blanket.
In the flat-wheeled train that bumped and pounded through the gorge leading down from Jerusalem Narayan Singh came forward from the third-class end of the train to find Jim.
“The butcha will make a man, sahib,” he announced.
“Why, what’s his latest?”
“I asked him what he supposes our sahib intends to do with him at Ludd.
“‘Though I could hide in your beard, Narayan Singh,’ he said, ‘and you have killed your man a dozen times, yet I shall be a soldier before you are. For though you do not know enough not know enough not to ask questions when you have had marching orders, nevertheless I know enough not to answer you.’ How is that, sahib, from a butcha hardly higher than my knee?”
“He learns. But see he doesn’t smoke too much, and when he swears beat him.”
Brigadier-General Jenkins was on the station-platform at Ludd, cutting quite a figure, what with his upstanding bulk and the number of obedient subalterns grouped all about him. The set stage was obvious at once. The administrator’s motor had evidently come faster than the train. Jenkins had been ordered to accept an apology, and for lack of any better means of showing spite had arranged to make it as public as possible.
Jim, with Narayan Singh at his heels carrying all the baggage, walked straight up to him and saluted.
“Well, Major Grim?”
“I apologize.”
Jenkins turned a little to one side in order better to include the crowd.
“What for?”
“For presuming to speak to you as a man and my equal the other day instead of as a person of higher rank. I withdraw all I said, including the imputation. Do you accept?”
Jenkins nodded. Having his orders from higher up, it was all he could do. The subalterns smirked as he turned on his heel, and two or three of them winked at Jim. Narayan Singh was the only one who spoke, growling into Jim’s ear as he once more gathered up the baggage:
“Lead on, Jimgrim, sahib. I have seen the day when stronger boars than that one bit the dust!”
CHAPTER II
“That was only an American devil. This is a Palestine one. They are much worse.”
THERE is one good thing, at any rate, about being commissioned under army regulations. It is true that you have to concede gentility to seniors sometimes ignorant of the crudest meaning of the word; but on the other hand you yourself remain a presumptive gentleman until the contrary is proven. You are liable to arrest at the whim of arrogance; but you don’t have to find bail, or sit in a cell until your case comes up for hearing.
So Jim found Catesby taking it easy in a deckchair in his tent—a pretty good tent, nicely hung with souvenirs of the East from Cairo to Bokhara, with soda-water siphons in a basket full of wet grass slung from the ridge-pole in the sun to keep them cool, and plenty to read.
“Hullo, Uncle Sam. What are you doing here? Come in. Make yourself at home. I heard you were under arrest in Jeroosh.”
“No. I apologized.”
“Lucky devil. Wish an apology might fumigate my official rep. Afraid I’m damned. How on earth did you manage it? Jinks had been bragging all over the shop that he’d as good as broke you. Mother of me! D’you mean to say you’re at liberty and camping on Jinks’ trail? Oh—what was that word of Roosevelt’s—oh, bully! Jimgrim, if you get Jenkins’ number I’ll pledge myself to black your boots from now to doomsday.”
“My orders are to whitewash him.”
“Oh, damn! That means good-by me. Home for me on a troopship to what used to be Merrie England—broke.”
“Incidentally I’ve orders to clear you.”
“Can’t be done, old man; not if the impeccable Jinks is to save his face. They tell me sub rosa that he’s cooking up half a dozen extra charges to make sure of breaking me.”
“Business is business,” Jim chuckled. “All this firm asks is orders. Goods delivered while you wait.”
“But listen; we haven’t an earthly. Two tons of TNT came in a truck consigned by mistake to this brigade. The R.T.O. (railway man) shot it into a sliding and notified Jinks, who probably lost the advice or lit his pipe with it.
“Three days later the Air Force, who were expecting the stuff, began to make inquires—twisted the tail of the R.T.O. to help his memory—went to the siding—found the truck—seals broken—no TNT. Went to Jinks promptly. Jinks blustered as usual—denied all knowledge of the consignment—was shown a copy of the R.T.O’s memorandum—remembered a few stale grudges against me, and swore he had give me orders to go and take charge of the stuff the moment it came. I was sent for, and it was the first I’d heard of it.
“In less than two minutes he had me under arrest to await court martial for culpable negligence and disobedience to orders. I shall plead not guilty, of course. He’ll swear he gave me orders. I’ll deny it. His word against mine. Maalesh—feenish!—as the Arabs say.”
“What other charges can he bring against you?”
“Anything he pleases. What’s the odds? There’s so much thieving going on in this camp—no thieves caught or stuff recovered—that any sort of charge against anyone gets believed. How can you possibly checkmate a brigadier like Jenkins in the circumstances?”
“Did you ever kill a dog?” asked Jim.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Bullet. Poison. Why?”
“They say there are more ways of killing them than by choking them to death with butter; but suppose we try butter just this once.”
“Jinks’ll eat all the butter there is and yell for more.”
“Let’s try him. Tell me what you know, or guess, or think, about that TNT. You know I’ve discovered the stuff in Jerusalem? There was a Moslem plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock and blame it on the Zionists. Who’s the worst fanatic in these parts?”
“All the Hebron men are fanatics; you know that. They’re the principal thieves. They hide all over the place, and grease themselves at night, and slip past the sentries. Once in a while one gets skewered with a bayonet or shot, but the look outweighs the risk, and for one that gets napooed twenty get away with it.”
“Kettle told me it looked like organized conspiracy.”
“I don’t believe it. It’s just half-brother Ishmael with his hand against every man and every man’s hand against him.”
“You haven’t heard of any sheik or priest or trader hereabouts who’s getting rich and uppish?”
“No. It’s simply a case of flies around a jam-pot.”
“See you later,” said Jim, grinning to hide from Catesby his own appreciation of the fact that the brigadier held all the trump cards.
He continued to wear the grin by way of self-encouragement.
