We accepted the hint, and as they rounded an alley-corner into a dingy lane that was over-topped midway by a wall of massive Roman construction we were close at their heels. Now the comedy began. Hugh played up in great shape. He drew a paper from his pocket, and affected to stare along the wall. He counted his steps. He looked around him fearfully. He conferred with Watkins, who manifested even more uneasiness. It was Watty who looked behind them, and spied us, peering around a flair of stonework. It was Watty, too, I am bound to say, who undertook to measure the height of the wall by contrast with his own stature—at least, he appeared to be doing so. Afterwards he denied that he had had any thought of this. He was only trying to get as far away as possible from us—we "fair gave 'im the creeps."
We slunk into the alley in as hangdog a manner as we could manage. Watty called Hugh's attention to us, as we thought, with genuine dramatic art. We heard later that he remarked: "It ain't right, your ludship, these carryings-on! I don't 'old for me own skin, but there's Mister Jack and Mister Nikka little knowing what they'll be getting theirselfs into." To which Hugh says he replied: "Steady on, old Boot-trees! England expects every man to take his beating."
Anyhow, as Nikka whipped out his knife and ran for them, Watty squeaked, and lit off with a considerable lead on Hugh. But Hugh wasted no breath. He sprinted and lunged into Watkins, knocking him against a house-wall, so that we had time to catch up. And as Hugh reached the curve of the crescent-shaped street, Nikka overhauled Watkins and toppled him over with every appearance of ruthless brutality. In the next moment I added my knife to the picture, and while I menaced the poor old chap's throat, Nikka scientifically emptied his pockets and ripped a money-belt from under his clothes.
"Oh, Mister Nikka, sir," moaned Watkins. "Not that, sir. There wasn't anything said about me belt, sir. Do be careful with that knife, Mister Jack. It's me throat, sir, if I may say so. Not the belt, Mister Nikka! Oh, dear, sir, whatever will I do about me trousers? Torn me apart, you 'ave. Ow!"
This last as Nikka gave every indication of intending to cut his heart out. There came a yell from Hugh around the corner, and Nikka bounded to his feet. Between us we hoisted Watkins to his, and propelled him from us with a couple of really brutal kicks. Collar torn, jacket scruffed and trousers unbraced, Watkins scudded for that corner like a swallow on the wing. But we did not wait to watch his exit. We took to our own heels, and headed in the opposite direction, hesitated at the far corner, and doubled back to the closed door that was buried in the high wall of Tokalji's house.
Nikka banged the thick wood with his knife-hilt.
"Who knocks?" rumbled a voice.
"Two who fear the police."
A small wicket opened.
"We want none such here." And to one within: "Be still."
"There is something to be divided," answered Nikka.
"Where do you come from?"
"Salonika—and elsewhere."
"Tziganes both?" And again to one unseen: "I said be still, little devil."
"My comrade is a Frank—but he is one of us."
A hinge creaked.
"Enter," growled the voice. "Quickly."
The crack was wide enough for one at a time, and we slid through like shadows, the open leaf slamming behind us. We stood in a large courtyard. To right and left were solid, timeworn buildings, two stories high. In front was a broken wall, partially built over by a structure of moldy brick, but there was a gap sufficiently large to reveal the Bosphorus. The court was cluttered with bales of goods and boxes and a number of men and women in Gypsy dress who were occupied in staring at us.
But we did not spare any protracted attention for them. There were two far more interesting characters close at hand. One was a stalwart, black-bearded man, with a seamed, wicked face that wore an habitual scowl. The other was a girl of perhaps eighteen, whose lissome figure set off her ragged dress like a Paquin toilette. She was very brown. Her hair was a tumbled heap of midnight, and her eyes were great glowing depths of passion. Her shapely legs were bare almost to the knee, and her flimsy bodice scarcely covered her. But she carried herself with the unconsciously regal air that I had noticed in Wasso Mikali.
She regarded me almost with contempt, but her eyes fairly devoured Nikka.
"This is the one," she cried, "he ran like that stallion we had from the Arab of Nejd, and you should have seen him strip the old Frank. He would have had the other one too if his friend had been as swift. Heh, foster-father, he has the makings of a great thief!"[1]
[1] Nikka afterwards translated these conversations for me.
But the man only glowered at us, his hand on the hilt of one of the long knives in his waist-sash.
"Be still, girl! You jabber like a crow."
"And you snarl like a wolf, Old One," she retorted. "I say I saw them."
"Somewhat of it I saw myself," he admitted, "but is that a reason for taking strangers in from the street? Who knows them?"
"Nobody," answered Nikka promptly. "Only our knives can speak for us."
"Heh, many a man has a knife that talks!" The fellow's grin was fiendish. "A talking knife! It says three words." He flashed his own in the air. "Haugh!" It whistled down in a deadly thrust. "Sss-sssrr-kk! And it goes home. Drip-drip! And the tale is told. That is all a knife can say."
And he sheathed his own, still grinning.
"That is why a sure knife is valuable," returned Nikka. "A pistol, now. That shouts aloud. But a knife only whispers, and if a knife knows but three words, how many of its masters can have that said of them?"
"You talk more than most, it seems," leered the bearded man. He was quick of wit.
"I have said what I have said," stated Nikka, folding his arms. "My comrade and I are new to Stamboul. We have heard of Beran Tokalji in many camps. In the winter we were in Paris, the great city of the Franks, and there, too, men spoke of Tokalji. A great thief, they said, and one who treated his people well."
"How do you know that I am Tokalji?" demanded the bearded man, plainly flattered by Nikka's speech.
Of course, Nikka did not know him, but he was quick to seize the opportunity and make the most of it.
"I have often heard you described around the fires. It was enough to see the way you handle a knife. 'As sure as the knife of Tokalji' is the saying all along the road from Salonika to Buda and beyond into the Frank countries."
"If you knew me and sought my help, was it wise to rob in front of my door?" countered Tokalji, but the scowl on his face was supplanted by a smirk.
Nikka affected embarrassment.
"Why, as to that, voivode, there is something to be said," he agreed. "But we saw the Franks, and their looks spelt gold, and—what would you? 'Twas a chance. Also, we thought the police would not dare to touch us here."
"That may be true," Tokalji agreed in his turn. "But there are Frank soldiers in Pera, and how if they came here to seize you?"
"But the Franks did not see us enter," said Nikka.
The girl thrust herself scornfully to the fore.
"Gabble, gabble, gabble," she mocked. "Are we old wives that we mouth over everything? These men robbed, they fled unseen, they have their loot. Foster-father, you are not so keen as you once were. Something was said of a division."
A greedy light dawned in Tokalji's eyes.
"Yes, yes," he insisted, "that is right. So you said, my lad, and if you would have shelter you must pay for it."
"So will I."
Nikka flung the money-belt, some loose change and a watch down on the ground, and squatted beside them. The rest of us did the same. The girl seized the belt, and emptied the compartments, one by one.
"English gold," she exclaimed. "This was worth taking. You are a man of judgment, friend— What is your name?"
"I am called Giorgi Bordu. My friend is named Jakka in the Tzigane camps. The name he bore in his own country is buried under a killing."
She looked at me more respectfully.
"Oh-ho, so he has killed, has he?"
"Yes, maiden. He is not a Gypsy, so with the knife—" Nikka shrugged his shoulders in deprecation—"but with his hands, and the pistol, now! You should see him when there is quick work to be done."
She began shifting the money into three equal piles.
"Did he have any papers, that Frank?" asked Tokalji abruptly.
"All that he had is there," replied Nikka.
"Humph!" The Gypsy thought for a moment. "It was strange that you attacked those two, Giorgi Bordu. I do not want them sneaking around here. They are after something that I want myself."
Nikka, sitting back on his heels, produced his tobacco-box and rolled a cigarette.
"Perhaps a strange thief and his friend might be of aid to you," he suggested.
"Perhaps they might. I don't know— You are smart fellows, I can see that. And I need men like you. But I am not alone in this. There are others, do you see? I must consult them. Still, you should be better than the two I am using just now."
"Are they Tziganes?" inquired Nikka politely.
"Of a sort. But they have lived too long with the Franks. They are not so ready as they once were, and I find they do not bring me the information I require. I make no promises, but suppose I—"
The girl screamed, and I twisted on my haunches to see that Nikka had seized her wrist.
"Let me go, pig," she hissed, and reached for her knife with her free hand; but Nikka caught that, too.
Tokalji stared at them both unpleasantly.
"What is this?" he barked. "Do you assail my people already before you are accepted a member of my tribe?"
"I am protecting your purse and mine from this little thief," answered Nikka calmly. "While we talked, she stole."
"He lies," spat the girl. "There is the money."
She stretched a slim brown foot toward the three little piles on the sunken flagstones. Tokalji drew his knife.
"If you take liberties with me I will carve out your bowels," he warned savagely.
Nikka's reply was to rake open the girl's bodice with his hooked fingers. A stream of coins tinkled on the pavement. He released her, and she leaped back out of his reach, staring down at him with a puzzled look in her eyes, entirely regardless of her nakedness.
Tokalji burst out laughing, and resheathed his knife.
"She is a rare one. You are the first to catch her so."
"And he will be the last!" she said in a low, tense voice.
A wave of color suffused her from breast to forehead. But it was from rage, not modesty. She ripped a dagger from her waist.
"Now, we shall see if you can fight or only boast," she rasped, crouching forward.
Nikka shook his head.
"I don't fight with women," he said.
"You'd better fight with her," said Tokalji philosophically, "or she will kill you. She has a swifter blade than any man of my tribe."
Nikka sank back on his haunches.
"I will not draw my knife," he said.
"Then you will die," she hissed, and charged.
I rose, and made to intervene, but Tokalji drew his knife again and came between us.
"Let her have her chance, man," he ordered in his snarling voice, and before I could pass him she struck.
But her knife was stayed in mid air. Nikka's arm darted out, his fingers clutched her wrist, there was a wrench—and the knife clattered beside the stolen coins. He forced her down by his side, picked up the knife and handed it to her. Then turned his back, and resumed his conversation with Tokalji.
"You were speaking of information you required," he said.
Tokalji eyed him in amazement.
"Do you wear the death-shirt that you care so little for death?" he asked.
"Death comes when it is ready," returned Nikka impassively. "Is a man to fear a maiden?"
"Many men fear that maiden," retorted Tokalji grimly. "Heh, you are a fighter. We will accept your comrade for whatever he is. You I know I can use. Kara!"
The girl looked at him sullenly.
"Take the strangers to Mother Kathene. Tell her to bed them with the young men."
She stood up, her half-clad Dryad's body shining a golden bronze hue.
"I am not afraid of you, Giorgi Bordu," she said, humbly fearless. "You turned aside my knife with your bare hand, and my life is yours. Will you take it?"
As she spoke, she pulled aside what scanty rags remained of her bodice, and exposed her breast for his knife. Nikka regarded her curiously, and a light I had never seen there before gleamed momentarily in his eyes.
"Your life is your own, maiden," he answered. "But remember I steal from others. Others do not steal from me."
"That is as it should be," she said. "You are a voivode, a chief. I knew you were no ordinary man when I saw you hunt down the old Frank in the street. I said to myself: 'That man is a great thief. He must be the king of a tribe.' To-night," she added royally, "I will pay ransom for my life. I will dance for you."
Tokalji emitted a peculiar gurgling sound which was intended for laughter.
"Heh, Giorgi Bordu, have you by chance been a bear-tamer?" he asked as he swept up his pile of gold and turned away.
Nikka and I pouched our shares of the loot we had brought in, Nikka appropriating to himself Watkins's Birmingham silver watch. The Gypsy girl never took her eyes off him as she absently refastened her tattered bodice.
"We are ready," said Nikka.
Her face flowered in an instantaneous smile.
"It is well, Giorgi Bordu. Come with me."
She led us across the courtyard to the building which fronted it on the left and was extended by the brick addition I have spoken of to shut in partially the rear of the court which abutted on the Bosphorus. A man was leaning over in the doorway, strapping up a bundle, and Kara planted her bare foot in the middle of his back, sending him sprawling. He was up in a flash, with his knife out and his face distorted with anger; but when he saw who had kicked him, the anger turned to smiles. He swung the bundle on his shoulder and swaggered off. And Kara looked at Nikka, with the expectant manner of a child who has performed a trick and expects to be applauded for it.
I grinned. I couldn't help it. But Nikka only motioned impatiently to the doorway. She caught her lip in a pout, dug her toes in the dust and affected not to understand him; but Nikka took one stride, with arm extended, and she danced away, all smiles again. Apparently, she didn't mind as long as she made him look at her.
Inside the door was a big, stone-paved hall. There were traces of carvings on the capitals of the pillars and a spaciousness that spoke of ancient glories. The stairs that led to the upper story were railed with marble and grooved deep by the tread of countless feet. But the place reeked with the squalor of a tenement. Three old women were huddled in front of a fire that blazed on an enormous hearth, and strings of onions and garlic hung from hooks in the ceiling. All around were scattered dirty piles of blankets and personal belongings.
Kara skipped across to the fireplace, and tapped the oldest of the three women on the shoulder.
"Hi, Mother Kathene," she called loudly. "Here are two strangers Beran has taken into the tribe."
The three hags tottered to their feet, and peered at us with bleared eyes.
"Strangers?" whined Mother Kathene. "Why strangers in the tribe? Haven't we enough fine young men to stab and steal for the chief? Heh-heh! I don't like strangers."
"Strangers are bad luck," pronounced a second beldame, whose name was Zitzi.
"Bad luck," echoed the third, who was called Lilli. "And I suppose we'll have to cook and scrub for the rascals, too."
Kara pinched her with a viciousness that made the poor old thing squeal.
"Don't talk of scrubbing to me!" she sneered. "You wouldn't touch water to a foul pot, let alone a man's clothes. You'd drown if you were rained on. Bah, Mother Lilli, you are lucky to have a chief like Beran, who gives the old ones work to do and shelter and food for the end of their days, instead of driving them out to seek the bounty of the Roumis and Franks. And you are luckier still to have a great thief like Giorgi Bordu to cook for. He is the greatest thief in the world. Why, he even caught me when I would have stolen from him!"
"If he steals well, he won't be a fighter," mumbled Mother Kathene. "What about the other one?"
"He took my knife from me without drawing his own," flared Kara. "No other man in the tribe could do that. The other? Oh, he is a Frank."
"More bad luck," wailed old Zitzi. "Tzigane folk who live with Franks are always spoiled. They worship the Christian goddess or they grow clumsy or they lose their courage or they take the spotted sickness."
Kara clouted her on the head.
"Have done with it," she commanded imperiously. "Where are Giorgi and Jakka to lie?"
"Where they choose," returned Zitzi sourly.
Kara waved her hand about the chamber.
"Here or above, whichever you say," she announced to us. "These are the quarters of the young men."
"May we look above?" asked Nikka, anxious to seize this opportunity to explore.
Her answer was to dance up the stairs—she seldom walked or did anything slowly.
We followed her. There was a central corridor, and from it opened various rooms, some of them crammed with all manner of goods, valuable rugs, bric-a-brac, cloths, and frequently, the veriest junk.
"Beran stores plunder here, as you can see," she said. "The other rooms are empty. The young men prefer to sleep all together where they can watch one another."
Nikka realized that if we set up a different standard of conduct from that observed by our brother bachelors we would prejudice our position in this strange community.
"What is good enough for them is good enough for us," he decided. "But is there no more to see? I thought the building ran around by the water."
"There is no connection," she replied. "The building over the water is just a storehouse. We are a great tribe, and Beran has agents everywhere. Never a day goes by that plunder does not come in, and we store it until there is opportunity to dispose of it."
"He is a master thief," agreed Nikka. "So we had heard. But where do you live, maiden?"
Her face glowed rosily with satisfaction at this first evidence of his interest in herself.
"Across the court," she answered. "Come and you shall see."
We descended the stairs into the big hall on the ground-floor, where the three hags had crouched again before the fire, and crossed the courtyard to the building opposite on the right of the entrance. It was long and graceful in appearance, beautifully built of a hard white marble, which had been coated with dirt for centuries. The cornices were elaborately sculptured in a conventional design; the window openings were carved and set with a light mastery that disguised their bulk.
The door was supported by simple pillars of wonderful green stone that contrived to show its color through the accumulation of filth which tried to mask it. How such pillars could have escaped the antiquary I do not know. They were as handsome as anything in St. Sophia. But then, as we were to discover, the whole abode of Beran Tokalji constituted an amazing shrine of Byzantine art, perhaps the most remarkable non-ecclesiastical remnant in the city.
But of all this I thought little at the time. What interested me more than anything was that immediately above the door on a panel let into the wall was carved a representation of a bull, head lowered and in act to charge. I looked at Nikka, and his eyes met mine with a warning glance to say nothing. It was a good thing that my knowledge of Gypsy dialect was sketchy, for had I been able to, I believe I should have exclaimed over this first clue and attempted to probe our guide's knowledge of it.
Kara never gave the sculpture a glance; it meant nothing to her. She beckoned us inside the door. Here again was a spacious, pillared hall, triple-aisled like a small church, its battered pavement showing traces here and there of the gorgeous mosaics which once had floored it. Whatever decorations adorned its walls were obscured by the incrustations of centuries of misuse. The pillars were of different stones, many of them semi-precious, and occasionally glinting pink or red or green or yellow through their drab coats of dirt and soot. At one end was an apse-like space large enough to hold a dinner table or a throne, and on the curving wall I fancied I could discern faint traces of one of those mosaic portraits with which the Byzantine artists loved to adorn their buildings.
But this superb chamber was littered with the odds and ends of a people accustomed to dwell in tents. I suppose Tokalji's tribe, by all accounts we had, had been living here for some hundreds of years, yet they never adapted themselves to urban conditions. Generation after generation looked upon this wonderful fragment of one of the world's stateliest palaces as no more than the four walls and a roof required to keep out rain and cold. The windows were covered by wooden shutters. Cleaning was resorted to only when the atmosphere became unsupportable for the salted nostrils of the tribe.
"These are the quarters of the married people," explained Kara. "Beran sleeps here." She pointed to a pallet in the recess that I likened to an apse. "The others upstairs."
"And you?" asked Nikka.
"Oh, I live where I choose, but most of all I like my garden."
"Your garden? Where is there a garden?"
"I will show you, Giorgi Bordu."
At the end of the hall opposite the apse there was a worn stone stair. The shallow steps descended straight to an opening, barred by a rude pine door. As we passed it, I noted idly holes in the stone lintels where formerly had been cemented the bolts of heavy metal hinges. A gate, perhaps. Beyond the door was a pleasant room in which several women sewed, and children scrabbled in the dirt on the floor. The sunlight poured in from windows facing us. I saw trees tossing, heard the splash of water.
Kara crossed the room, with a nod to the women, and opened another door. This led to a pillared portico, and I gasped in wonder at the sheer loveliness of this morsel of imperial Byzantium, buried in the frowsy lanes of Stamboul. There was a tangled stretch of garden, weed-grown, of course, and two jade-green cedars that lifted their heads in isolated majesty. Around the four sides ran the portico, although in two places the pillars had collapsed and the wreckage of the roof strewed the ground. But the gem of the place was the fountain in the center, a lion rearing back on his hind-legs with a broken spear in his chest. From his open mouth poured a stream of water that fell into a stone-rimmed pool.
"That is where I swim," volunteered Kara. "It is not far, but I can beat you across it. Would you like me to try?"
And with that pagan innocence which characterized her, she started to drop skirt and bodice.
"Another time," said Nikka, laughing, and with a single look to see if he was in earnest in refusing such sport, she promptly refastened her clothes. "This is lower than the rest of the house, isn't it?"
She assented, and it was then that I recovered from the bewilderment inspired by the unexpected charm of the picture, and realized for the first time what it meant. The bull above the entrance door, the hall, the stair, the marks of heavy hinges at its foot where a gate had hung, the room where the women sat, an atrium, in the old Roman architecture; the garden—by Jove, even the cedars!—the Garden of the Cedars; and the Fountain of the Lion! It was exactly as the first Hugh had described it in the missing half of the Instructions which we had found.
I dug my fingers into Nikka's arm.
"Yes, yes," he said quietly in English. "I see it, too. But do not let yourself seem excited."
Involuntarily I repeated to myself the concluding sentences of the Instructions which we had all memorized:
"From the center of the Fountain take four paces west toward the wall of the atrium. Then walk three paces north. Underfoot is a red stone an ell square."
The center of the Fountain—where could that be? The pool stretched sidewise to us, as we stood in front of the atrium. Plainly, then, it was intended to mean from the center of the pedestal on which the lion was perched. I stepped out from the portico, measured with my eye the distance from the pedestal west toward the wall of the atrium, and walked north on the paved walk which rimmed the central grass-plot.
The flagging here, while naturally worn by the passage of time, was as even as though it had been laid yesterday. It was composed of blocks of red and brown granite in a checker-board pattern, but they seemed to be only a foot square. It was not until I passed the center of the fountain that I discovered that at regular intervals a larger stone was inserted in the design. And sure enough, I found a red one about three and a half paces, as I roughly made it, in a northerly line from the point I had calculated as four paces west of the center of the fountain.
Kara had no eyes for any one save Nikka, and I ventured to stamp my sandaled heel on the stone as I trod over it. It gave back no different sound from those on either side of it, but when my first disappointment had passed, I told myself that this was no more than could have been expected. Had it sounded hollow, surely, some person in the course of seven centuries would have noticed it, and whether possessed of knowledge of the treasure or not, must have had sufficient enterprise to attempt to find what it concealed.
I walked on around the garden, determined to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity to survey the ground. But there was nothing else to see. On one side the porticos fringed a blank wall, evidently belonging to the adjoining property. Vernon King afterwards said that at some period this group of buildings of the Palace of the Bucoleon had been cut up into separate structures and built together in blocks. On the side toward the Bosphorus a wing of the building we had traversed intervened. Through the frequent windows I saw Gypsy men and women and a few children lounging or occupied with their household duties or playing. One of the men was teaching a boy to pick pockets. I watched him for some time with interest.
I finally abandoned my investigations because I gathered from the tones of their voices that Nikka was having an argument with Kara. When I came up to them, Nikka was offering her Watkins's watch; but she dashed it to the pavement, burst into tears and fled back the way we had come.
"What have you been doing, Lothario?" I demanded in French.
Nikka looked very unhappy.
"She wanted me to kiss her. I—I offered her that watch, in the first place. To make up for showing her up the way I did; that was to impress Tokalji, of course. And then I thought she had been pretty decent to us since."
"I daresay she has been," I agreed. "For a purpose, to be sure."
"A purpose?"
"Well, she asked you for something, didn't she?" I gibed.
"Oh, that!" Nikka's discomfort was heart-warming. "She doesn't know any better, Jack. I've seen her kind before—at least, none as bright as she or quite as pretty; but the same kind of untamed wild-cats. We Gypsies spoil our women if they have any spirit. And she— Well, you could see for yourself. She has been brought up in this atmosphere. Crime is an art with her. She looks upon a clever robbery as you do on a good job of architecture. She has lived with men ever since she left her mother's arms. She doesn't know what it means to be refused any thing. She—she's all right, you know."
"I know she's the prettiest savage creature I've ever seen," I returned drily. "Since she is the first, however, that may not mean much. You seem to be very anxious to explain her savagery, my friend. Why didn't you kiss her?"
Nikka picked up the watch and examined the broken crystal.
"I don't think we'd better stay here," he answered vaguely. "Women's quarters, and all that sort of thing. Hullo, here's Tokalji, now!"
The Gypsy chief stalked out of the atrium.
"What have you been doing to the girl?" he growled.
"I wouldn't kiss her," said Nikka with a sudden grin.
Tokalji's bearded face was cracked by a burst of gargoyle laughter.
"You are a wise one! I said so! I know men, I, Beran Tokalji! But hark you," and his tone took on an edge, "be careful with her. She is all I have, and I give her to no man I do not know. You come in out of the street, whoever you are. Prove yourself, and I can make much of you. But until you prove yourself, you and this Frank jackal with you, you walk carefully and jump when you hear the lash."
"Is she your daughter?" asked Nikka.
"Never mind who she is. What are you doing here?"
"She was showing us the fountain."
"That is all right. But the young men stay out of this house. I want no troubles over women in the tribe. Remember that, you two."
Tokalji herded us through the atrium and up the stairs into the large chamber with the apse where he, himself, slept.
"Sit," he ordered roughly, motioning to several stools. "I have something to say."
He went to a chest in the corner, and drew from it a bottle of rakia, raw Oriental brandy. I looked about for a cup as he handed it to Nikka, but my comrade, better versed in the customs of the country, deftly wiped the bottle's neck with his coat-sleeve, hoisted it for a long dram, wiped the neck again and passed it to me. I imitated him as well as I could, although a passing acquaintance with Cognac in my days as a student at the Beaux Arts and also in the A.E.F. did not save me from a choking sensation as the fiery liquid burned my gullet. Tokalji regarded me with contempt when I handed it to him, tilted the bottle bottom-up and drained the equivalent of a water-glass, with a smack of gusto.
"There," he said, setting the bottle on the floor. "We'll talk better wet than dry—although I will say, Giorgi, your friend is no great hand at the bottle. I hope he's a better thief."
"Only try him," said Nikka eagerly.
"Humph, I may! But to be frank with you, my lad, I don't want you two for a thieving job. It's something more difficult, and the reward will be in proportion."
Nikka permitted his fingers to caress the hilt of his knife.
"We should enjoy a good killing," he hinted.
"No, no, Giorgi. That will come in time, but whatever else you do, you must keep your knife sheathed in this business. As it happens, the men we are after are worth more to us alive than dead."
"Whatever you say, voivode," answered Nikka equably. "But what about your own men? They're a likely-looking lot."
"Yes, but not so many of them have the gifts I require in this service," retorted Tokalji, lifting the bottle once more. "They are clever thieves and fighters, but what I require now is men who can follow and spy. My best men at that work have failed to produce anything worth while in two weeks, and moreover, they have become known to our enemies. I must have new men, and abler men."
He bent his brows in a ferocious grimace.
"If you succeed, you are my friends. You shall have rich pickings. But if you fail you had better leave Stamboul."
Nikka dropped his hand again on his knife.
"Why threaten?" he asked coolly.
Tokalji glared at him with the blankly savage menace of an old gorilla.
"Beware how you defy Beran Tokalji in his own den," he snarled. "Well, let it pass. It shows you have spirit, but do not tempt me too far, Giorgi. When I am aroused I must taste blood."
Nikka rose.
"I am a free man," he answered casually. "So is my comrade, Jakka. We sell our knives and our fingers to the best bidder, and if we don't like the treatment we say so and leave."
Tokalji regarded him uneasily.
"Here," he said gruffly, offering the bottle, "drink again and think better of it, man. No harm is done by plain talk. That's right. Sit. I get along with those who don't fear me too much. You shall not be sorry you strayed in here—but you must deal honestly with me. I am buying your wits, and I expect something for my money."
"So far it is only we who have paid," retorted Nikka. "How much are we to get?"
"How much? It depends upon how much we win. There will be hundreds of gold pieces for every man if it goes right."
"If what goes right?"
Tokalji hitched his stool closer to us, and glanced around.
"See you, Giorgi—and you, too, Jakka, if you can understand any of this talk,—the two Franks you robbed live at the hotel in Pera, where all the rich Franks stay."
"We saw it this morning," assented Nikka.
"These two Franks are an English lord and his servant. They seek something which I also seek and with them in their venture are two others, an Amerikansky, Nash, and one named Zaranko, who, they say, is a fiddler and was one of our people in his youth."
"I have heard of that one," said Nikka.
"Would you know his face?"
"I think I would."
"Good! Above everything else we wish to learn what has become of the Americansky and the fiddler and when they are to arrive. Also, they are two more Franks at the hotel, a man named King and his daughter. They, I think, are Amerikansky like Nash. We do not understand how they come to be in this business. If they are really in it, perhaps it would be worth while to kidnap the girl. We might hold her to blackmail her friends."
"But what do they seek that you also seek?" asked Nikka.
"If you breathe it to a soul, I will cut out your heart with my own knife, I, Beran Tokalji," replied the Gypsy chief by way of preface. "They have the secret to a treasure."
"What?" exclaimed Nikka with great pretense of astonishment. "Here in Stamboul?"
"Close by, my lad, close by. They know its location, but if we are smart we should be able to take it from them as soon as they reveal their knowledge. It is for us to find out their secret or wring it from them, by torture, if necessary."
"This is a job worth doing," cried Nikka, jumping up. "Jakka and I will be diligent. We will start now to trail the Franks."
But Tokalji barred the door to him.
"Not so fast, not so fast," he answered with his gargoyle laughter. "The job has waited for you some time. It can wait a few hours longer. I prefer to keep you under my wing for the night, until we become better acquainted. You look like the right sort of fellow, Giorgi, and your friend is not so poor a man for a Frank; but after all, as I said to you, you came in to me from the street this afternoon, and all I know about you is that you are a good thief.
"It is not enough. I must know more. And for another thing, it will help you to await the return of the two I have out watching these Franks in Pera. They have not found much, but they can tell you something of what the Franks do and how they spend their time. So make yourselves comfortable. You shall eat heartily, and this evening Kara will dance in the courtyard as she promised you. That is worth waiting for, Giorgi. If I were a young fellow, I would rather do that than lurk the corners of Pera. Heh-heh!"
He stepped aside, and waved us permission to go; and we walked through the courtyard to the crumbling wall which rimmed the Bosphorus at one point, its base a rubble-heap, its battlements in fragments, its platform overgrown with weeds. From its top we could look down on the margin of beach, loaded with bowlders, and the ruins of what had been a jetty enclosing a little harbor for the Imperial pleasure galleys.
"It would not be difficult to climb up here," I said idly, pointing to the gaps between the stones, and the sloping piles of bowlders. "Does he suspect us, Nikka?"
"No, that is only his Gypsy caution. He thinks we are too good to be true. He needed what we seem to be—and behold, we arrive! He has waited long. He feels he can wait a little longer."
"I'm afraid he may wait a little too long for us," I answered.
"There's a chance," Nikka admitted after a moment's reflection. "But we've got to risk it. In the meantime you must let me do all the talking. I'll tell everybody you are a sulky devil, a killer whose deeds haunt him. They'll leave you alone. Gypsies respect temperamental criminals. But come along, we mustn't stay by ourselves. We'll be suspected of considering ourselves too highly or else having something to conceal. We can't afford any suspicions or even a dislike."
So we strolled over to the young men's quarters, and while I wrapped myself in a gloomy atmosphere that I considered was typical of a temperamental killer, Nikka swapped anecdotes of crime with the others who drifted in and out. I looked for Kara, but she was nowhere in view. After Nikka had once established my character, the Gypsies gave me a wide berth, and I had nothing to do but smoke and appear murderous. And I must say I got sick of the part. I was the first man up when Mother Kathene swung the stew-pot out of the chimney and old Zitzi and Lilli began to distribute tin plates and cups in an irregular circle on the floor. It was poor food, but plenty, and anyway, it broke the monotony of being an abandoned criminal.
With the passing of the twilight the young men moved to the courtyard. In the middle of the open space was a black smirch on the paving, and here they built a fire of driftwood collected from the beach under the wall. It was a tribute to the immemorial habits of their race. Even here in the crowded city they must close the day with a discussion of its events around a tribal blaze, exactly as they would have done upon the road, exactly as thousands of other Gypsy tribes were doing at that very moment on the slopes of the Caucasus, in the recesses of the Kilo Dagh, in the pine forests of the Carpathians, on the alien flanks of the Appalachians far across the sea.
A buzz of talk arose. The primitive Gypsy fiddles and guitars began to twang softly. Nikka was the center of a gossiping group. Men and women from the opposite side of the court joined the circle. Young girls, with the lithe grace of the Gypsy, as unselfconscious as animals, sifted through the ranks of the bachelors. Beran Tokalji, himself, a cigarette drooping sardonically from the corner of his mouth, stalked out and sat down with Nikka.
In the changing shadows beyond the range of the firelight children dodged and played unhindered by their elders. High overhead the stars shone like fireflies under a purple vault. And from the spreading mass of Stamboul echoed a gentle hum, the hum of a giant hive, a myriad voices talking, singing, praying, laughing, shouting, cursing, screaming. None of the discordant night noises of the West. No whistle-blasts, no shrieking of flat wheels on tortured rails, no honking of motor-horns, no clamor of machinery. Only the drone of the hive.
A man raised his voice in a song, and the exultantly melancholy pæan to beauty blended with the other sounds like a skillfully woven thread in a tapestry. It died away so gradually as to seem as if it had never been. The fiddles sighed to silence in a burst of expiring passion.
Nobody spoke for several moments. Music was bred in the bone of these wild folk. It held them as could nothing else.
"What of Giorgi Bordu?" said Tokalji presently. "Does he sing or play or dance?"
Nikka reached out his hand almost eagerly.
"I will play, if you wish. I vowed not to touch the fiddle again, but—"
His fingers closed lovingly on the crude instrument, and he cuddled it under his chin. His bow swept the strings in a torrent of arpeggios. He stood up and strode into the firelight as if upon a stage. And then he began to play, plaintively, at first, in a minor key. There were the noises of the night, a crackling fire, animals stirring, the cry of a child, awakening. The music brightened, quickened, became joyous. You felt the rays of the sun, and comfort of work. Men and women danced and sang. A harsh note intervened. There was a quarrel. Anger yelled from the strings. Turmoil ensued. Faster and faster went the tune. And then peace, and the measure became slower, almost stately.
The caravan had passed on. A forest encompassed it. Boughs clashed overhead, birds twittered and sang. Cool shadows fell athwart the path. But the way grew steep. The music told of the rocks and the slippery mud where a stream had overflowed, of the steady climb, of the endurance required. The caravan reached the height. A chill wind blew, but fair before them stretched a pleasant land, and the descent was easy to the warm, brown road that wound across the plain. Sunset and camp again, firelight, the moon overhead, talk of love, the sensuous movement of a dance. Then, languorous and slow, the coming of sleep.
I did not know it, but I was listening to the composition of Zaranko's Gypsy Sonata Op. 27, which some day, I suppose, will be as famous as the Revolutionary Etude or the Hungarian Rhapsody or Beethoven's dream of the moonlight. But no audience will ever hear it with greater appreciation than those ragged Gypsies who sat around the fire in the dirty courtyard of the house in Sokaki Masyeri. As Nikka resumed his place in the outer circle, only the whispering of the flames broke the stillness. The very children were frozen on their knees, drunk with the ecstasy of melody.
"Heh!" called Beran Tokalji, first to shake off the spell. "I do not wonder you vowed not to touch the fiddle, if you like the open road. With that bow of yours, Giorgi Bordu, you could wring hundreds of gold pieces from the Franks. You play like the Redcoats in the khans in Buda and Bucharest. Heh-heh! I have heard Niketu and Stoyan Mirko and Karaji, and they were not to be compared with you. It is seldom the bravest men have the touch of the fiddler."
Others spoke up readily in praise or asked questions as to Nikka's opinion on moot points of harmony and the desirable methods of interpreting various Gipsy songs. They would have had him play again, but he refused. I think he was emotionally exhausted.
"We have no fiddler to match with you," remarked Tokalji, "and the gaida[1] and the flute are not fit for real music. But our maidens can dance. Heh, girls, come out, shy ones! Let the strangers view your grace."
[1] Bagpipes.
They giggled amongst themselves, and swayed into a group that was as spontaneously instinct with rhythm as an old Greek temple frieze. But suddenly they split apart.
"Kara will dance," they cried. "Let Kara dance for the strangers."
And Kara floated into the circle of firelight like a spirit of the forest. She still wore only the scanty madder-red skirt and torn bodice. The cloud of her hair tumbled below her waist. Her tiny naked feet barely touched the ground. Slowly she whirled, and the Gipsy fiddles caught her time. A man with cymbals clashed an accompaniment. A flute whistled soprano. She increased the tempo; she varied her steps. She was a flower shrinking beneath the grass. She was a dove pursued by a falcon. She was a maiden deserted by her lover. She was a fairy hovering above the world.
We who watched her were breathless with the joy of the spectacle, and when she sank to the ground in a little pile of rags and hair as the music ended, I thought she must be worn out. But she bounded up at once, breathing regularly, radiating vitality.
"Now I will dance the Knife Dance!" she exclaimed. "Who will dance with me?" And before any could answer her, she seized a blazing stick from the fire, and ran around the circle waving it overhead until she came to where Nikka sat. "Ho, Giorgi Bordu, you who do not fear the knife, will you dance the Knife Dance with me?"
Every eye in the circle was fixed on Nikka, for, although I did not know it then, to have refused her invitation would have been a deadly insult, equivalent to a declaration of enmity toward her family and tribe. Similarly, acceptance of it amounted to an admission that he considered her favorably as a wife, without definitely committing him to matrimony.
Nikka did not hesitate. He stepped to her side. She slipped one arm around his waist, and with the other swung her torch in air until it showered sparks over the circle.
"Hi!" she cried.
"Hi!" echoed Nikka.
And they pranced around the fire while the music commenced an air so fiercely wild that it made the blood tingle to listen to it. Then she flung down her torch, and tore free from Nikka's arm. He followed her. She eluded him. Bound and round they tore, keeping step the while. Now she accepted him, now she rejected him. At last he turned from her, arms folded, contemptuously unmoved. She wooed him with rhythmic ardor. He denied her. She drew her knife; he drew his. Eyes glaring, lips pinched, they circled one another, feinting, striking, leaping, posturing.
"Click!" The blades struck together.
"Hi! Hi!" they cried.
"Click! Clack! Click!" went the knife-blades.
"Ho! Ho!" they shouted.
The game was to see how near you could come without cutting. To avoid hurt the dancers required quick eyes and agile bodies. The blades flashed like meteors in the shifting light, wheeling and slashing and stabbing. In the beginning Kara forced the pace. Nikka retired before her, rather than risk doing her harm. But slowly he assumed the mastery. His knife was always at her throat, and active as she was, he refused to be shaken off. She fended desperately, panting now, bright-eyed and flushed. But he pressed her. Their blades clashed, he gave his a twist and hers dropped from her hand.
He seized her, forcing her back across his knee, knife up-raised to strike, while the fiddles clutched at one's nerves and the cymbals clanged with wicked glee. The scene—Nikka's tall figure, with the poised knife, and the lithe, slender form he held, expressing in every curve and line its tempestuous, untamed soul—brought to my memory the song I had heard him sing one morning in the music-room at Chesby:
And best of all, I shall hearThe wild, mad Tzigane songs,Cruel and gay and lustful,Like fiddles and clanging gongs.
And in the glare of the campfiresI shall see the Tziganes dance—Women with lithe, round bodies,Men straight as a heiduck's lance.
And perhaps a wild brown maidenWill seek me—
Crash! boomed a knock on the street-door. And rap-rap-rap! it was repeated. Crash! again.
The music stopped. Nikka released his partner, and Kara stooped quickly and snatched up her knife, tossing the hair out of her eyes, heedless as usual of the rags that slipped off her shoulders.
Men looked at each other uncertainly. Hands crept to waist-sashes.
"Heh!" said Tokalji. "Who can it be in such a hurry at this hour?"'
Crash! The door resounded under the battering of a pistol-butt.
The women and children—all save Kara—withdrew into the shadows. The men gathered together. Tokalji crossed to the entrance.
"Less noise there!" he shouted threateningly. "This is a peaceful house."
But his manner changed the moment he opened the wicket. What he said we could not hear, but we saw him quickly turn the lock and throw back a leaf of the door, salaaming low as he stepped aside. Six men burst in, four of them in European clothes, and Nikka and I exchanged a glance of apprehension as we recognized the broad shoulders of their leader and heard his snarling voice.
Toutou LaFitte had arrived. With him were Hilyer, Serge Vassilievich and Hilmi Bey. The two who brought up the rear, somewhat sulky and fearful, were the spies we had seen in front of the Pera Palace that morning.
"Can I trust nobody to fulfill my orders?" whined Toutou, striding toward the fire. "I tell you to spare no efforts—and I come to find you singing and dancing around a fire! Is that working? Is that carrying out our treaty? But all are the same! My best people fail me."
His green eyes shone evilly; his hands writhed with suppressed ferocity. Tokalji, having refastened the door, followed him across the courtyard. The Gypsy looked uncomfortable, but showed no fear.
"What could we have done that we have not done?" he retorted. "Was it our fault that you lost track of the two missing ones? As for the English lord and his servant, my two men that I see with you have shadowed them day and night."
"And lost them to-day, as they admit," snarled Toutou. "Lost them for a whole day! Who knows what has been accomplished in that time?"
"You are right there," agreed Tokalji coolly, "and I have just picked two new men to take their places. Zlacho and Petko are good enough for ordinary thievery, but this job seems to be above them."
"That is well," said Toutou, partly mollified. "There must be a change in our methods or we shall fail in this coup. I decided to hasten on to Constantinople with my colleagues because I was sure the two who have escaped us must come here sooner or later, and whenever they come we shall find them. But I cannot do everything. It is for you to follow their trails."
"Never fear! We shall," replied Tokalji. "My new men start out at once. One of them is a Frank like yourself; the other is a Tzigane."
"Ha; let me see that Frank," exclaimed Toutou. "I know many of the Franks who live with the Tziganes."
"Step out, Giorgi Bordu and Jakka," called Tokalji.
Nikka sunk his fingers in my arm in a warning grip, and we stepped forth from the group of Tziganes clustered in front of the fire. There was at least a chance that we should not be identified—but its value was demonstrated the instant the firelight splashed over Nikka's aquiline face and tense, febrile body.
"Surely, I have seen that lean fellow before," piped Hilmi Bey, pointing at Nikka.
"I saw them standing near the Frank lord and his servant in Pera this morning," said one of the spies.
"What of that?" shouted Tokalji angrily. "It is true they followed the Franks—which was more than you could do, Petko—and robbed them."
"No, the Franks followed them," protested Zlacho, the other spy.
"You lie, you dog!" bellowed Tokalji. "You think to discredit them because they will do the work you bungled."
Vassilievich pushed in front of the newcomers.
"Is it my imagination," he inquired softly, "or does the stocky one bear a resemblance to the Americansky, Nash?"
"By jove, I think you're right!" exclaimed Hilyer, speaking for the first time.
"Be ready," hissed Nikka from the corner of his mouth, without shifting his eyes from our enemies.
His right hand was thrust into his waist-sash.
"I do not like this business," rasped Toutou, pulling a knife from inside his vest. "Somebody shall be tortured until he tells the truth."
I felt a pressure between Nikka and myself, and Kara's voice whispered:
"Run, you fools! To the House of the Married!"
Nikka's pistol flashed blue in the firelight.
"Shoot, Jack!" he cried.
A ruddy flame jetted from his muzzle, and the spy Petko dropped dead. Toutou LaFitte pushed Zlacho in the line of fire before himself, and dived into the encircling shadows as Zlacho crumpled up with a broken leg. Tokalji, Hilyer, Vassilievich and Hilmi scattered. I swung on my heel and shot twice over the group of Gypsies by the fire. I could not bring myself to shoot at them, for there were women and children close by. Then a bullet whistled past my ear, and Toutou's voice whined:
"No shooting! Use your knives! Take them alive!"
I had a fleeting glimpse of Kara, running at me with her knife raised.
"There are only two!" roared Tokalji. "Pull them down!"
"Run!" I heard Nikka shout.
We pelted for the house on our left, the House of the Married, as Kara had called it. Despite Toutou's warning, a second bullet spattered on the stones between Nikka and me; but we were poor marks in the half-light, with people running in every direction, many of them uncertain who were friends or foes. I turned as I ran, and fired into the ground in front of Kara, who was the closest of our pursuers; but she refused to be frightened and actually plunged through the doorway on our heels.
"I'll tend to her," panted Nikka. "You fasten the door, Jack."
There was a wooden bar, which I dropped into place, and the next minute the framework groaned under a weight of bodies.
"No shooting," yelled Tokalji. "You fools, you'll have the Frank police in here!"
"One hundred Napoleons a head for them," barked Toutou. "Dead or alive."
The uproar redoubled, and then Tokalji evidently invaded the throng hammering at the door.
"Leave that door alone," he snapped. "You're wasting time. Go through the windows."
"Come on, Nikka," I urged. "We can't guard every point. We must run for it."
"But what about this?" demanded Nikka whimsically. He jerked his pistol muzzle at Kara sitting demurely on the floor, playing with her knife. "If we show our backs, she'll knife us or open the door—and besides, where shall we go?"
"Tie her up," I answered impatiently.
Kara, who, of course, could not understand a word of what we were saying, laughed with glee.
"Do you think I am your enemy?" she demanded in the Tzigane dialect. "I tell you I am your friend. See!"
And she tossed her knife across the room.
"I came with you to help you, Giorgi Bordu."
"My name is Nikka Zaranko," he answered shortly.
"What matters your name?" She leaped up and flung her arms around his neck. "It is you I love—not your name."
Nikka eyed me sheepishly across her shoulder.
"See you, little one," he remonstrated, "this is no time for talking of love. We may be dead in five minutes."
"Oh, no," she said, releasing him, nevertheless, "you shall be off and away. I, Kara—" and it was ridiculous how she strutted in the manner of Tokalji, himself—"will set you free—because I love you."
"But I am the enemy of your tribe—your enemy," replied Nikka. "You do not realize what you do."
"I care not who you are," she insisted. "I love you. I care that for the tribe!"
She snapped her fingers.
"But come," she added as a crash sounded outside. "They have broken in a window. Follow me."
She led us into an adjoining room, where in the thickness of the wall a narrow stairway corkscrewed upward, debouching on the upper floor. Here was a long hall, with rooms opening off it, their windows usually on the inner courtyard, the Garden of the Cedars of the First Hugh's Instructions. She turned to the right, and entered one of the rooms. A ladder leaned against the wall below a trap-door in the roof. In a corner stood a bedstead, which she stripped of its clothes, revealing the cords that served for springs.
"Cut those with your knife," she said. "When we take to the roofs we will need them to help us down again."
Nikka did as she directed, while I shut the door, and piled the few articles of furniture against it. Tokalji's men were in full cry downstairs.
"There is more than enough rope here," said Nikka, coiling it on his arm. "Some of it I am going to use for you."
"What?"
Passion dawned in her big eyes.
"You cannot go with us, little one. We have no place to take you. And you do not know me. To-morrow you would cry your eyes out."
"I tell you I love you," she answered proudly. "I, Kara Tokalji."
"The daughter of my deadly enemy," reiterated Nikka.
"Oh, he is not my father," she said lightly. "No, I think I will go with you, Nikka."
"And I think you won't," retorted Nikka, gritting his teeth. "Here, Jack, catch hold."
He cut the rope in two, gave me half, and with the remaining section, approached her. She backed away from him.
"I'm not going to hurt you," pleaded Nikka. "But I must bind you so they will not suspect that you aided us. Don't you see? And we could not run so fast with you."
"I can run as fast as the Frank," she declared. "But—"
"Our enemies will be here in a moment," warned Nikka.
She extended her hands, wrists joined together.
"Bind me," she said wearily. "I love you, Nikka Zaranko. If I can help you in no other way, then, I will help you by staying here."
He bound her gently, hand and foot, without a word, and laid her on the floor by the bed. I ascended the ladder, and pushed back the trapdoor.
"You will come again?" she asked, looking up at him with mournful eyes.
"If I do, it will be as an enemy," he returned.
"Your enemies are my enemies," she cried, struggling to a sitting position. "With a woman it is her man who counts. She cares nothing for the tribe—unless it be her man's. Now, you are my man, Nikka Zaranko."
Nikka stooped over her, and I scrambled up on the roof. I believe he kissed her. I heard his feet on the ladder-rungs, and his voice calling back:
"You are a brave girl. We will talk about this some other time, if the stars are kind."
"Oh, we shall meet again," she replied, her cords creaking as she dropped flat on the floor. "I am as sure of it as if Mother Kathene had told me when the sight was on her."
To me he merely said:
"Hurry, Jack! We've lost too much time. Which way?"
But I reached down first, and hauled up the ladder. The door was shaking under a shower of blows. Kara looked interested as my arm appeared, and her lips shaped themselves for a kiss. Then she saw it was I, and scowled.
"Next house," I panted, and we set off across the roof.
To our left was the inner courtyard, a well of darkness in which tinkled the Fountain of the Lion. To our right lay Sokaki Masyeri. Ahead was a drop of ten feet on to the adjoining roof, the difference in height representing the declining slope of the ground. We made it without any difficulty. The people in this house had been aroused by the shooting, and we could hear their voices and movements. But we shuffled on cautiously, until we came to their courtyard, which ran clear from the street-front to the old sea-wall.
"No choice," grunted Nikka. "Here's a chimney. Knot your rope. It can't be more than twenty-five feet to the ground.'
"Why not slide directly into the street?" I argued.
"They might catch us coming down. Do as I say, and we can make sure whether the coast is clear before we leave the courtyard."
He went down first, and I followed him, scorching my hands, for the rope was thin and had no knots to check one's descent. I was in mid-air when I heard an exclamation beneath me, and a thud.
"What the devil—" I started to whisper.
"Hsst!" came from Nikka. "Don't say anything."
He was standing over an inert figure lying on the ground beside a half-opened door.
"Did you—"
"No, only belted him over the head with my pistol."
A woman's voice sounded inside the house, aggressively inquisitive.
"My God!" breathed Nikka. "She'll be out in a minute, and I can't hit her. We've got to try the street."
We stole through the courtyard to the street-door. Behind us Toutou's house was seething with activity. Somebody, apparently, had just gained the roof. The woman inside the house we had invaded became impatient, and a light showed. My fingers fumbled for the latch; it seemed to me I should never find it. The light wavered into the doorway, and a scream rose shrilly.
"Let me try," said Nikka. "Here it is!"
He pulled the door toward us very slowly, and we peered into the street. Not a figure showed in the direction of Tokalji's house. Ahead of us only a kerosene lantern burned in front of a coffee-shop on the corner where Sokaki Masyeri curved to the north. And the woman in the doorway of the house behind us was shrieking for dear life.
We sped out into the street, letting the door slam behind us. The noise distracted the attention of the woman from her unconscious husband, and she left him to run after us. We also made the mistake of taking the middle of the way instead of sticking to the shadows under the walls. And we had not gone fifty feet when we were seen by Gypsies on the roof of Tokalji's house, and they, with the woman to help them, cried the rest of the pack hot on our trail.
At the corner by the coffee-shop I looked back and counted six in a tapering string, with more emerging from the courtyard or climbing over the roofs. Luckily for us, however, there was a four-way crossing a hundred yards beyond the coffee-shop, and Nikka turned left, away from Pera, toward which they would expect us to head. We would have been safe then if we had not blundered into a Turkish gendarme. He was naturally suspicious of our haste, and blocked the narrow way; but I gave him a terrific punch in his fat stomach before he could pull his gun.
We got by, of course, but his roars put the Tziganes right, and they followed the scent instead of losing it as we reckoned they would. The only thing for Nikka to do in the circumstances was to twist and turn without heed to direction and lose both pursuers and ourselves in the breakneck purlieus of Stamboul. He succeeded in shaking off the Gypsies finally, but we were hopelessly astray, and it was past midnight when we found the Khan of the Georgians and staggered through the gate to thread a precarious path between sleeping men, camels, bullocks, asses and horses.
Wasso Mikali awakened with the first knock on his door, and admitted us. Smoking cigarette after cigarette as rapidly as he could roll them, he listened to the story of our adventures with avidity,—although I discovered later that Nikka had suppressed Kara's part—and immediately dispatched his young men to spy around Tokalji's house, and learn the dispositions the enemy were taking. Then he insisted that we should sleep while he kept watch, and the last memory I have of that awful night is of the old Gypsy's figure stretched out on the floor, his back against the bolted door and a cigarette in his mouth.
When we awakened the sun was streaming in through the open door along with all the noises of the Khan and many of its smells. Our guardian had coffee ready for us in a pot on the brazier, and his young men had sent in a report. The women and children had left Tokalji's house under escort of several of the men shortly after dawn. A vigilant guard was being maintained on the entrance, and nobody had come or gone—aside from the party of women and children—since observation had been established. Before sunrise our spies had heard the sounds of digging inside the premises.
Wasso Mikali looked doubtful as he imparted this last information.
"Perhaps they, too, have discovered the location of the treasure," he suggested.
"No," said Nikka, smiling. "They are burying their dead."
"Ha, that is a good thought to hold in the mind," exclaimed the old Gypsy, immensely pleased. "What better pleasure could a man ask than to contemplate his enemies burying their brother that he slew!"
But instead of indulging in this Tzigane pastime we decided to take our European clothing and adjourn to a neighboring Turkish bath where we could remove the evidence of our Gypsy life. Wasso Mikali went with us to carry back to the khan our discarded Gipsy costumes. I urged him to join us in the pool after we had soaked off the top layer of iniquities in a private room; but he shook his head with a grimace of disgust.
"Tell Jakka, O son of my sister," he said, "that I marvel at the way you risk your naked skins. How can a man hope to withstand the cold and heat if he has nothing but clothing to cover him? Too much water is bad for the strongest. It weakens the muscles."