The High Place Read Online Free PDF

else dared to carry out
the arrest, and given him eighteen strokes of the best with a steel-centred quirt.
    His opinions of the colony were non-committal as those of the villagers, but his exaggerations were more amusing. He declared that Kasr-el-Sittat was a lunatic asylum for Europeans which the
Turks had paid the Syrians to accept in their terri­tory; alternatively—and with a wealth of detail—that it was an experimental station for discovering new ways to perpetuate the
race.
    This gave me an opening. So far as my Arabic allowed, I took upon myself the character and flowers of speech of an old Aleppo roué, and lectured on the beauties within the walls of
Kasr-el-Sittat—thus accounting for the enthusiasm with which, unwisely, I had spoken of the colony. Ashkar swallowed the bait, and I could see that his old brown eyes were no longer fixed on
me so warily. The memory of Elisa Cantemir lent a note of sincerity to my voice: so much so that I felt disgusted with myself, as if I had been describing beloved rather than imagined women.
    The captain fetched another jug of wine, which he swore had been made by a Maronite priest and tasted of incense. It did—and we passed to a fanciful project of obtaining three barrels from
a Yezidi, a Druse and an Alaouite (all more or less pagan religions flourishing within a hundred miles of the Mediterranean) and analysing the difference. I knew that confidence had been restored,
and that Ashkar no longer thought there was any likelihood of my being involved in the private affairs of Kasr-el-Sittat.
    He even opened up a little, and told me how the colonists had drifted down from Turkey, singly and in groups, to their curious home. They had attracted more than a routine attention from Syrian
and foreign police; but even the British and French legations, to whom a list of the colonists’ names had been discreetly submitted, could report nothing definite against them. Since their
arrival they had proved themselves, from a policeman’s point of view, desirable citizens. They were generous employers, entertained exceedingly well, neither ran around naked nor refused
their taxes. They were, he insisted, welcome guests—but his old gendarme’s mind was still worry­ing at an invisible bone. Before I left he said mysteriously that he was about to
investigate a little further, that he might need my advice—since I was his father and friend and knew the colony—and that he would come and see me at Tripoli in a week or two when God
willed.
    About a fortnight later I stood on my terrace in the freshness of the morning, lighting my after-breakfast pipe, when I observed a poor and ragged Christian Arab sitting discreetly in the dust
at such a distance that I could just see him over the garden wall. Why an Arab should choose to squat in one small unyielding patch of the Levant rather than another, neither he nor his fellow can
know; but the spot this squatter had selected was so unattractive that I guessed he wished to speak to me, and that he was aware—as who was not in that little town?—of my morning
routine.
    I opened the garden door, and exchanged with him a formal blessing. He came down into the lane, adding a further and more flowery salutation, and presented me with a letter from Ashkar. I read
that he intended to call on me the following night, and that he would take it kindly—assuming it was not an intolerable inconvenience to dismiss my devoted clients and retainers—if I
could arrange for us to have a private chat.
    The devoted retainers to whom Ashkar had politely referred consisted of Boulos, my Lebanese cook, and an unemployable young cousin of his, to whom, for the sake of conscience and family honour,
he gave board and lodging in exchange for such work as was too undignified for his own attention. I was per­mitted to give the cousin an occasional tip, but to preserve the polite fiction that
he did not live at my expense.
    Nothing was easier than