“That’s my bunk,” snarled the cellmate.
Jan obediently moved to the other berth to discover that it was partly unhinged so that a man had to sleep with his head below his feet. Further, the cellmate had robbed it of blankets to benefit his own couch and so had exposed a questionable mattress.
Jan’s deep sigh sucked the smell of disinfectant so deeply into his lungs that he went into a spasm of coughing.
“Lunger?” said the cellmate indifferently.
“Beg pardon?”
“I said have y’got it inna pipes?”
“What?”
“Skiput.”
“Really,” said Jan, “I don’t understand you.”
“Oh, a swell, huh? What’d they baste you wit’?”
“Er . . .”
“How’s it read? What’s the yarn? What’d they book you for?” said the fellow with great impatience. “Murder? Arson? Bigamy? . . .”
“Oh,” said Jan with relief. “Oh, yes, certainly.” And then the enormity of the error came back to him, and he grew agitated. “I’m supposed to have murdered a man but I didn’t do it!”
“Sure not. Hammer, lead or steel?” Hastily, to clarify himself: “How’d you do it?”
“But I didn’t!” said Jan. “It’s all a horrible mistake.”
“Sure. Was it a big shot?”
“There wasn’t any shooting. It was an executioner’s sword.”
“Exe—Say! You do things with a flair doncha?”
“But I didn’t do it!”
“Well, hell, who said you did? What was the stiff’s name?”
“Stiff? Oh . . . Professor Frobish of the university.”
“Brain wizard, huh? Never liked ’em myself. How come the slash party in the first place? I mean, how’d it happen?”
“That’s what’s so terrible about it,” said Jan, so deep in misery that he did not fully comprehend what he was saying. “I had a copper jar in my room and Frobish insisted upon opening it and when I refused him he returned in the night and pried the stopper out of it because he knew it might contain an ifrit.” Mistaking the popeyes for sympathy, Jan went on: “And it did contain an ifrit that Sulayman had bottled up and when the thing came out it took down a sword and killed Frobish and when the police got there they didn’t give me a chance to explain. They thought I did it and so, here I am!”
“What,” said the cellmate, “is an ifrit? Do you eat it or spend it?”
“An ifrit? Oh, why, an ifrit is a demon of the tribes of the jinn. Some people call them jinni or genii. They seem to have vanished from the earth although there is evidence that they were once very numerous.”
“What . . . what do they look like?”
“Why, they’re about fifteen feet tall and they’ve got horns and a spiked tail . . .”
“A sniffer.”
“What?”
“I said I didn’t think you looked like a sniffer when I first seen you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Sure. Well, go on, don’t let me stop you,” he said indulgently. “Fifteen feet tall with horns and a spiked tail . . .”
Jan frowned. “You don’t believe me.”
“Sure I believe you. Hell, who wouldn’t believe you? Why, I seen worse than that before I finally yanked myself up on the wagon. Once I lamped a whole string of such things. They was hangin’ to each other’s tails with one hand and carrying purple sedans in the other. And—”
“You doubt my word?”
“Hell, no, buddy. Just sit down and be calm. No use frettin’ about a little thing like that, see? Sure. I know all about these here . . . what did you say you called ’em?”
“ifrits!”
“Sure, that’s right. You’ve been done dirt, that’s sure. But all you gotta do is tell the truth to the judge and he’ll do the rest.”
“You think I’ve got a chance?”
“Listen, pal, I’m in here for shaking down a gent for eight hundred bucks. That’s what they say I did. I didn’t, of course. But if I think I’ve got a story lined up . . . geez, you must be a genius.”
The other’s volunteered information brought Jan slightly out of himself, enough to realize that his cellmate was also answering to the law. With this in common, Jan took interest in him.
“They arrested you, too?”
“Hell, no, buddy, I use this for a hotel. Look, I don’t know where they dug you up or who you are . . .”
“My name is Jan Palmer.”
“Okay, your name is Jan Palmer. Fine. But would you please tell me how a gent can live all his life in these United States without finding out a thing or two. Palmer, I hate to say it, but unless you smarten up you ain’t got an onion’s chance in Spain. Me, I know the ropes. There ain’t nobody in the racket that knows more about what’s what than Diver Mullins. Now listen to me. You give this cockeyed yarn of yours the bounce and think of somethin’ logical. Otherwise, my innercent pal, they’ll swing you by the neck until you’re most awful dead.”
Jan was jolted. He peered nearsightedly at his cellmate, seeing him truly for the first time. There was no mistaking the evil in that face. It was narrow as a ferret’s and of an unhealthy pallor. The eyes flicked up and down and around and about in incessant sentinel duty. Shabby and wasted though he was, there was still a certain vitality in the fellow.
“But . . . but,” said Jan, “I told you the truth. An ifrit came out of the jar . . .”
“Look, pal,” said Diver Mullins, “I ain’t doubtin’ your word. I believe every syllable. But I ain’t the judge and when you spin that cockeyed story before a jury they’ll laugh at you. Now, take me. I ain’t in here for the first time. No, sir! I know my business. I was located in possession of eight hundred smackers that a sap lost. That’s an insult. If I’d have taken it off’n him in a crowd, do you suppose he ever would have knowed about it?”
“You mean you had another fellow’s money,” decoded Jan.
“Go to the head of the class. Now another gent would say he found it on the sidewalk or someplace and get himself laughed at. But not me. Another fellow would say he didn’t know how it got in his pocket. But not me! Them dodges has mildew on ’em. Now I figger . . .”
But Jan had relapsed into his own woes and scarcely heard Diver Mullins’ plot to put the entire blame upon another pickpocket and place himself in a savior light. Jan, accountably weary, lay back on the tipsy bunk and gave himself over to dreary speculation.
He retraced the activities of the night and found them to be anything but reassuring. And, to dodge away from their damning possibilities, he dwelt upon the inconsequentialities. He was, for instance, almost certain that Zongri had spoken in Arabic. He, Jan, spoke no Arabic so far as he knew. Of course Frobish would understand the language, but how could it be that Jan had come into the sudden possession of such knowledge? Perhaps it wasn’t really Arabic. Jan knew not enough to be certain on that score, just as he was too hazy to analyze the ifrit’s “Eternal Wakefulness.”
The puzzle was far too much for him and his tired, event-shocked brain gave it up. In a few moments he was falling steeply into exhausted slumber.
The thing which happened immediately thereafter was the turning point in the life of Jan Palmer, for one—even beyond the effect of the murder.
He went to sleep but he didn’t go to sleep. He had a sensation of dropping straight down. Heretofore he had been aware, in common with all men, of a delicious period of semiwakefulness preceding and succeeding slumber. But from that period he had always gone into a deep sleep (so far as he knew) or had come fully awake. Now he felt as though the world had been obscured by a veil which no more than dropped than it was ripped startlingly aside.
A hail rang hysterically in his ears, “Breakers two points off the sta’b’d b-o-o-o-o-w! B-r-r-reakers two points off the sta’b’d bow! Captain, for the love of God, we’re on the rocks!”
Jan had scarcely lifted his head and felt the spokes of a helm under his fingers when
he was jarred fully awake and almost into sleep again by the most tremendous blow which rocketed him all the way across the quarterdeck, from binnacle to scupper. He brought up against the rail and lifted himself cautiously.
The quiet vessel was suddenly bedlam. The captain’s roars seconding the still-braying lookout, the crew spilled helter-skelter from the fo’c’s’le, rubbing their eyes, scarcely knowing what they were doing but automatically taking their stations.
The masts swooped back and forth across the stars as the captain’s savage hands spun the helm. The thunder of breakers could be plainly heard now and, lifting himself a little more, Jan beheld their phosphorescent line which swiftly swung parallel with them.
“Let go the port sheets!” bellowed the captain. “Take in on the sta’b’d main sheet!”
Canvas cannonaded in the fresh wind and then the deck leaped under them as the billowing white cliff tautened in the gloom. On a close port tack the big vessel picked up a bone and scudded back into the safety of the sea.
“Make fast!” roared the captain.
“Lively now,” cried a mate somewhere in the waist.
The ship surged ahead anew as the sails were more precisely trimmed and then, one by one, the crew made their ways back to the fo’c’s’le and more sleep.
When all was in order, the captain turned the wheel over to another man and gave him a course and then, with both hands on his hips, he planted his feet solidly on the deck and glared about him.
“Now! Where’s that helmsman?”
Jan shivered and he had every right. The captain loomed into the stars and the gleam of the binnacle which fell upon his face displayed two glittering fangs. From the flame of his eye and the posture Jan knew that once again, in less than four hours, he had run afoul of an ifrit.
He had no slightest inkling of what he was doing there or why and he had no time to consider it.
Shaking he came upright, holding hard to the rail.
“So you’re still here,” said the captain, advancing. Suddenly his hand shot out and he gripped Jan by the shirt front and shook him clear of the deck, slamming him back to the planking.
“Asleep! Asleep at the wheel! Why, you ugly pup, I ought to knock every tooth out of your ugly face! I ought to smash your skull like an egg! Do you realize what you did? Has it leaked through your thick skull that you put us miles and miles off our course and almost killed us to a man on the Fraybran Shoals? Sleep, will you? . . .” And again he lifted Jan up and threw him down. With the biggest boot Jan had ever seen, the captain kicked him down the ladder and into the waist.
“Go get the cat, d’ya hear me? Get it and bring it to me!”
Jan got up and stumbled along the rail. He was stunned by the treatment no less than his strange position. He knew rightly enough what a cat was, but where he could find one aboard this packet he certainly could not tell. He looked fearfully back at the captain who stood like a tree on the quarterdeck, watching him with piercing eyes.
The mate, likewise an ifrit, started to pass him on his way aft and then recognized him. He flung him back against the rail.
“So!” roared the mate. “It’s Tiger, is it?” And he spun Jan about with a blow. “By the Seven Sisters of Circe, if I don’t drown you, the crew will! First it’s fight, fight, fight. It’s rum and women and battle and now, by God, it’s shipwreck you’re asking for! Run us on a reef, will you?”
Jan spun around the other way and went down with the salty taste of his own blood in his mouth.
“Sleep at the helm, will you?”
And again Jan went down.
“I sent him for the cat!” roared the captain.
“Get it, then,” snarled the mate, his upper and lower fangs coming together with a vicious click. “Get it and be damned to you!”
Jan despairingly watched him go. A sailor was nearby and Jan started to appeal to him but the fellow stalked away. Staggering forward, his head roaring and spinning, Jan almost collided with a bosun.
“Wh . . . where’s the cat?” said Jan through cracked lips.
“Get it yourself, you jinx,” said the bosun.
“Please, I don’t know where it’s kept.”
Something in Jan’s tone made the bosun look more closely. He could not see very well through the darkness and he swung a lanthorn out of its niche and held it to peer into Jan’s face. He was evidently perplexed.
“What’s the matter with you? You sick or something?”
“I . . . I got to find the cat.”
“Never seen a man so anxious to get a flogging. It’s in the gun room where it’s supposed to be.” He frowned. “Maybe you oughtn’t to get it, Tiger. You look awful.”
Jan stumbled up the deck toward an indicated passageway. He fumbled through the darkness and found a door which he opened. A guttering lamp showed him bracketed muskets, hung in orderly racks, and glittering cutlasses held fanwise in cleats. The cat had a dozen tails and it was so heavy with the brass on its ends that Jan could scarcely lift it.
Bearing his cross, he made his blind way back to the quarterdeck. The captain was still waiting, a tower of smoldering rage. Jan gave up the whip.
“Peel off your shirt.”
Jan fumbled with the unaccustomed buttons and finally removed the garment.
“Lay yourself over the house.”
Jan sprawled against the handrail of the sterncastle house.
There was no further ceremony to it. The whip sang with all its twelve hungry tails and then bit so savagely that Jan screamed with agony. He whirled around and dropped to his knees.
“Please, God! I don’t know why I’m here or even where I am! I didn’t go to sleep at the helm. I only woke up there with no knowledge of how I came to be aboard here.”
“What?” The captain was plainly perplexed. He, too, lifted a lanthorn from its niche and looked closely at Jan’s features.
“If I didn’t hear it, I wouldn’t believe it,” said the captain. “Tiger, of all men, beggin’ for mercy and lying in the bargain.”
“I don’t know that name!” wailed Jan. “I don’t know anything about it!”
The captain picked off his cap and scratched his pointed head thoughtfully. Then he turned and called, “Mr. Malek!”
The mate came out of a companionway. “Yessir.”
“Did you or did you not put Tiger on the helm?”
“Why . . . ah . . .”
“Answer me!”
“Yes. I did. But he’s never done anything like that before, sir. I didn’t have any idea—”
“I’m not blaming you, I’m asking you. Mr. Malek, there’s something very wrong here. Either that or Tiger is making a fool of us. He says he doesn’t know anything about it. Was he fully awake when he went on watch?”
“Yessir. That is, he seemed so.”
The captain again raised the lanthorn and saw that Jan’s head was bleeding. “Maybe it’s that crack against the rail that did it. Listen here, Tiger, if this is one of your tricks, I’ll make a flogging feel like a picnic in comparison.”
“I’m not lying!” wailed Jan. “I don’t know anything about any of this, honest to God. I’ve never seen any of you before in my life.”
“Must have been the crack on the head,” said the captain. “Go below and I’ll look you over.”
Jan hastily scooped up his shirt and ducked down the companionway. A room obviously the captain’s stood open on his right and he stumbled into it. The height of the ceiling was not as extreme as it really should have been, he thought, and the bed wasn’t so much larger than ordinary beds, looking to be only about eight feet long.
The captain was checking up on the ship before he came below and Jan had a moment or two to catch his breath. For the first time he realized the strangeness of his situation. Certainly it was impossible to board a ship in the open sea and he could not otherwise have arrived there. That he had no recollection whatever of arriving had him half convinced that he wasn’t there at all.
; He saw a mirror across the room from him and, with sudden suspicion, approached it. He was jolted so that he took two steps backwards. He recovered himself and peered more closely at his image.
Yes, now that he made a closer examination, it was himself. But what a difference there was! He, Jan Palmer, was a thin-faced, anemic fellow, but this brute who was staring back at him was bold of visage, brawny of arm, tall and . . . yes, he had to admit it, not bad at all to look upon. But the knife scar which ran from the lobe of his ear diagonally to his jawbone . . . where had that come from? He felt of it and peered more closely at it. He didn’t really object to it at all because it didn’t mar his looks but, in truth, rather gave him an air.
Puzzled, he looked down at himself. His blue pants encased very muscular and shapely legs. His bare chest was matted with blond hair. He looked back at his image as though it might solve the riddle for him.
“Tiger!” cried a voice in the passageway.
Jan started and saw that the captain was just then entering. The captain looked shocked.
“In here? Well, of all the gall . . . By God, I do believe there’s something gone wrong with you. Don’t you know enough to wait outside? Come here!”
Jan obeyed. Roughly the captain forced him down to the bed and inspected his skull with great perplexity. It gave Jan a chance to realize that this ifrit was, seemingly, a lot smaller than Zongri. Either that or . . . or he himself was now bigger than he had been.
“Hell,” said the captain, “there isn’t even a dent there. Tiger, if you’re pulling another one of your tricks . . .”
Jan was frightened at the proximity of that awful fanged face and he drew back.
The captain once again removed his cap and scratched one of his pointed ears. “And scared, too. I never thought I’d live to see that. Tiger, scared. By God, if this is a game you won’t enjoy it.”