If: A Play in Four Acts, Lord Dunsany [any book recommendations TXT] 📗

This god is holy, this is unholy.

[Enter ARCHIE BEAL, wearing a "Bowler" hat.]

Why, ARCHIE, this is splendid of you! You've come! Why, that's splendid! All that way!

ARCHIE BEAL

Yes, I've come. Whatever are you doing?

JOHN BEAL

ARCHIE, it's grand of you to come! I never ought to have asked it of you, only...

ARCHIE BEAL

O, that's all right. But what in the world are you doing?

JOHN BEAL

ARCHIE, it's splendid of you.

ARCHIE BEAL

O, cut it. That's all right. But what's all this?

JOHN BEAL

O, this. Well, well they're the very oddest people here. It's a long story. But I wanted to tell you first how enormously grateful I am to you for coming.

ARCHIE BEAL

O, that's all right. But I want to know what you're doing with all these genuine antiques.

JOHN BEAL

Well, ARCHIE, the fact of it is they're a real odd lot of people here. I've learnt their language, more or less, but I don't think I quite understand them yet. A lot of them are Mahommedans; they worship Mahommed, you know. He's dead. But a lot of them worship these things, and...

ARCHIE BEAL

Well, what have you got 'em all in here for?

JOHN BEAL

Yes, that's just it. I hate interfering with them, but, well, I simply had to. You see there's two sorts of idols here; they offer fruit and rats to some of them; they lay them on their hands or their laps.

ARCHIE BEAL

Why do they offer them rats?

JOHN BEAL

O, I don't know. They don't know either. It's the right thing to do out here, it's been the right thing for hundreds of years; nobody exactly knows why. It's like the bows we have on evening shoes, or anything else. But it's all right.

ARCHIE BEAL

Well, what are you putting them in heaps for?

JOHN BEAL

Because there's the other kind, the ones with wide mouths and rust round them.

ARCHIE BEAL

Rust? Yes, so there is. What do they do?

JOHN BEAL

They offer blood to them, ARCHIE. They pour it down their throats. Sometimes they kill people, sometimes they only bleed them. It depends how much blood the idol wants.

ARCHIE BEAL

How much blood it wants? Good Lord! How do they know?

JOHN BEAL

The priests tell them. Sometimes they fill them up to their necks—they're all hollow, you know. In spring it's awful.

ARCHIE BEAL

Why are they worse in spring?

JOHN BEAL

I don't know. The priests ask for more blood then. Much more. They say it always was so.

ARCHIE BEAL

And you're stopping it?

JOHN BEAL

Yes, I'm stopping these. One must. I'm letting them worship those. Of course, it's idolatry and all that kind of thing, but I don't like interfering short of actual murder.

ARCHIE BEAL

And they're obeying you?

JOHN BEAL

'M, y-yes. I think so.

ARCHIE BEAL

You must have got a great hold over them.

JOHN BEAL

Well, I don't know about that. It's the pass that counts.

ARCHIE BEAL

The pass?

JOHN BEAL

Yes, that place you came over. It's the only way anyone can get here.

ARCHIE BEAL

Yes, I suppose it is. But how does the pass affect these idols?

JOHN BEAL

It affects everything here. If that pass were closed no living man would ever enter or leave, or even hear of, this country. It's absolutely cut off except for that one pass. Why, ARCHIE, it isn't even on the map.

ARCHIE BEAL

Yes, I know.

JOHN BEAL

Well, whoever owns that pass is everybody. No one else counts.

ARCHIE BEAL

And who does own it?

JOHN BEAL

Well, it's actually owned by a fellow called Hussein, but Miss Clement's uncle, a man called Hinnard, a kind of lonely explorer, seems to have come this way; and I think he understood what this pass is worth. Anyhow, he lent Hussein a big sum of money and got an acknowledgment from Hussein. Old Hinnard must have been a wonderfully shrewd man. For that acknowledgment is no more legal than an I.O.U., and Hussein is simply a brigand.

ARCHIE BEAL

Not very good security.

JOHN BEAL

Well, you're wrong there. Hussein himself respects that piece of parchment he signed. There's the name of some god or other written on it Hussein is frightened of. Now you see how things are. That pass is as holy as all the gods that there are in Al Shaldomir. Hussein possesses it. But he owes an enormous sum to Miss Miralda Clement, and I am here as her agent; and you've come to help me like a great sportsman.