When It Was Dark: The Story of a Great Conspiracy

He wanted to be alone, in some quiet place, to pay his departed friend the last rites of quiet thought and memory. He would say a prayer for him in the cool darkness of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

How did it go?

"So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality; Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

Always all his life long he had thought that these were perhaps the most beautiful of written words.

He turned to the right, passed the Turkish guard at the entrance, and went down the narrow steps to the "Calvary" chapel.

The gloom and glory of the great church, its rich and sombre light, the cool yet heavy air, saddened his soul. He knelt in humble prayer.

When he came out once more into the brilliant sunlight and the noises of the city he felt braver and more confident.

He began to turn his thoughts earnestly and resolutely to his mission.

Swiftly, with a quick shock of memory, he remembered his talk with the old fortune-teller. It was with an unpleasant sense of chill and shock that he remembered her predictions.

Some strange sense of divination had told her of this sad news that waited for him. He could not explain or understand it. But there was more than this. It might be wild and foolish, but he could not thrust the woman's words from his brain.

She knew he was in quest of some one. She said he would be told…

He entered the yellow stone portico of the hotel with a sigh of relief. The hall was large, flagged, and cool. A pool of clear water was in the centre, glimmering green over its tiles. The eye rested on it with pleasure. Spence sank into a deck-chair and clapped his hands. He was exhausted, tired, and thirsty.

An Arab boy came in answer to his hand-clapping. He brought an envelope on a tray.

It was a cable from England.

Spence went up-stairs to his bedroom. From his kit-bag he drew a small volume, bound in thick leather, with a locked clasp.

It was Sir Michael Manichoe's private cable code – a precious volume which great commercial houses all over the world would have paid great sums to see, which the great man in his anxiety and trust had confided to his emissary.

Slowly and laboriously he de-coded the message, a collection of letters and figures to be momentous in the history of Christendom.

These were the words:

"The woman has discovered everything from Llwellyn. All suspicions confirmed. Conspiracy between Llwellyn and Schuabe. You will find full confirmation from the Greek foreman of Society explorations, Ionides. Get statement of truth by any means, coercion or money to any amount. All is legitimate. Having obtained, hasten home, special steamer if quicker. Can do nothing certain without your evidence. We trust in you. Hasten.

    "Manichoe."

He trembled with excitement as he relocked the code.

It was a light in a dark place. Ionides! the trusted for many years! The eager helper! The traitor bought by Llwellyn!

It was afternoon now. He must go out again. A caravan, camels, guides, must be found for a start to-morrow.

It would not be a very difficult journey, but it must be made with speed, and it was four days, five days away.

He passed out of the hotel and by the Tower of Hippicus.

A new drinking fountain had been erected there, a domed building, with pillars of red stone and a glittering roof, surmounted by a golden crescent.

Some camel drivers were drinking there. He was passing by when a tall, white-robed figure bowed low before him. A voice, speaking French, bade him good-day.

The face of the man seemed familiar. He asked him his name and business.

It was Ibrahim, the Egyptian servant he had seen at the museum in the morning.

The rooms had been sealed up, and the man had been to the Consul's private house with the keys.

This man had temporarily succeeded the Greek Ionides.

Spence turned back to the hotel and bade Ibrahim follow him.

CHAPTER VI

UNDER THE EASTERN STARS: TOWARDS GERIZIM

The night was cold and still, the starlight brilliant in the huge hollow sapphire of the sky.

Wrapped in a heavy cloak, Spence sat at the door of one of the two little tents which composed his caravan.

Ibrahim the Egyptian, a Roman Catholic, as it seemed, had volunteered to act as dragoman. In a few hours this man had got together the necessary animals and equipment for the expedition to Nabulûs.

Spence rode a little grey horse of the wiry Moabite breed, Ibrahim a Damascus bay. The other men, a cook and two muleteers, all Syrians of the Greek Church, rode mules.

The day's march had been long and tiring. Night, with its ineffable peace and rest, was very welcome.

On the evening of the morrow they would be on the slopes of Ebal and Gerizim, near to the homestead of the man they sought.

All the long day Spence had asked himself what would be the outcome of this wild journey. He was full of a grim determination to wring the truth from the renegade. In his hip pocket his revolver pressed against his thigh. He was strung up for action. Whatever course presented itself, that he would take, regardless of any law that there might be even in these far-away districts.

His passport was specially endorsed by the Foreign Office; he bore a letter, obtained by the Consul, from the Governor of Jerusalem to the Turkish officer in command of Nabulûs.

He had little doubt of the ultimate result. Money or force should obtain a full confession, and then, a swift rush for London with the charter of salvation – for it would be little less than that – and the engine of destruction for the two terrible criminals at home.

As they marched over the plains the red anemone and blue iris had peeped from the herbage. The ibex, the roebuck, the wild boar, had fled from the advancing caravan.

Eagles and vultures had moved heavily through the sky at vast heights. Quails, partridges, and plovers started from beneath the horses' feet.

As the sun plunged away, the owls had begun to mourn in the olive groves, the restless chirping of the grasshoppers began to die away, and as the stars grew bright, the nightingale – the lonely song-bird of these solitudes – poured out his melody to the night.

The camp had been formed under the shade of a clump of terebinth and acacias close to a spring of clear water which made the grass around it a vivid green, in pleasant contrast to the dry, withered herbage in the open.

The men had dug out tree roots for fuel, and a red fire glowed a few yards away from Spence's tent.

A group of silent figures sat round the fire. Now and then a low murmur of talk sounded for a minute and then died away again. A slight breeze, cool and keen, rustled in the trees overhead. Save for that, and the occasional movement of one of the hobbled horses, no sound broke the stillness of the glorious night.

It was here, so Spence thought, that the Lord must have walked with His disciples on the journey between Jerusalem and Nazareth.