A River in the Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

deception. The furrowing of his noble brow, the slight compression of his well-cut lips, and, most particularly, the movement of his hand to his chin, which he is wont to stroke when in thought, indicated that he was in deadly earnest.
    “You have my word, Emerson,” I replied, as earnestly. “And may I add that the confidence you have displayed in me…I will say no more.”
    “Indeed?” The sobriety of Emerson’s countenance relaxed into a smile. “Well, my dear, I take you at your word. To answer your question: Morley is an additional complication to a witches’ brew of a situation. If he starts digging around the Temple Mount he is likely to stir up trouble with the Jews and the Moslems, both of whom consider that a holy site. Someone needs to keep an eye on him and try to prevent him from doing something stupid.”
    “And that someone is you?”
    “I have a legitimate excuse for protesting his activities, Peabody, on purely professional grounds. He’s bound to make a mess of the excavation, but until he does so there is no legal way of preventing him from going out there. What concerns the government is another matter entirely. The fact is, I spent only a few minutes with His Majesty. After the usual exchange of courtesies he left me to the Director of Military Intelligence and another individual, whose name was never mentioned.”
    “How extraordinary.”
    “It was a most extraordinary conversation, Peabody. These intelligence people—well, you know how they are, seeing plots and conspiracies all over the place. It seems there have been rumors of an uprising—not a violent affair like the Mahdist Revolt in the Sudan,but a carefully planned long-range project that may be years in the making. The object is the expulsion of foreigners from the Middle East and the creation of an Islamic state in Syria-Palestine.”
    “Expulsion?” I repeated. “That is a rather tame word. Are you talking about a jihad?”
    “It may come to that eventually, Peabody. At the present time, military intelligence is chiefly concerned with the part Germany is playing in the region. It has been ten years since the All-Highest, as his fawning subjects call the Kaiser, visited Damascus and Jerusalem and declared himself the defender of Islam. The Turks aren’t naive enough to believe his high-flown rhetoric, but they will use him to serve their own purposes. German agents are swarming all over the region, thinly disguised as explorers, engineers—”
    “And archaeologists?”
    Emerson nodded, and I exclaimed, “We are doing the same, of course. Archaeologists make excellent spies. Please don’t tell me that George Reisner is secretly working for British intelligence.”
    “Then I won’t. Come now, Peabody. In the first place, Reisner is American, with no loyalties to Britain. In the second place, he is the least likely individual of my acquaintance to let politics distract him from his work. Speaking of distraction, Peabody, you’ve done it again. Do you want to know why the War Office is interested in Major Morley?”
    “I suppose they suspect him of being a German spy,” I said with a sniff.
    Emerson’s superior smile vanished. “Curse it, Peabody, how did you know that?”
    “Logical deduction, Emerson. The War Office instigated Morley’s visit to us; the War Office doesn’t give a curse about inept excavations; the War Office is obsessed with spies; ergo, the War Office suspects Morley of being one. A spy, that is to say. Utter nonsense, of course. I trust you informed them to that effect?”
    “I haven’t had a chance to do so as yet. I had planned to go up to London tomorrow.”
    “I will go with you.”
    “You have not been invited, Peabody.”
    “Nevertheless, I will go.”
    “Logical deduction informed me that you would say so,” said Emerson.
     
    W E CAUGHT AN EARLY TRAIN next morning. Finding ourselves alone in a first-class carriage, Emerson took advantage of the opportunity to explain to me the