CHAPTER XXX.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE LAST ACT.

In all Eastern countries, where call bells are unknown, servants are summoned by the clapping of hands, a custom handed down from Bible times. So when Aroun Scutari makesthis signal he expects to have an answer. Nor does he make a mistake.

From some other means of ingress figures appear—men ready to obey his bidding. They appear as though by magic; one, two, three in all, and their looks are certainly fierce enough to inspire alarm.

Again the pasha claps his hands with all the gusto of a master of ceremonies. This business suits him exactly, he is quite at home.

The second signal brings a new surprise, for as the heavy curtains part, a man, who is plainly an American, is seen, leading a veiled woman. Of course this is Anthony Wayne and the one he believes to be Miss Dorothy, for Samson Cereal has played his game well, and the party employed to personate his daughter is one of the shrewdest detectives in Chicago.

The operator assumes much surprise at sight of his secretary and valet.

“What, you, too, Anthony!” he exclaims, in much the same tone Cæsar must have employed when he saw Brutus among his assailants.

“Ze company is all here. There is no cause for longer delay. For this hour I waited; everything comes to him who waits. Listen now, you wretch, who stole my bride years ago. To pay me, you must even now give Aroun Scutari your daughter for a wife.”

“It is you who are the wretch. I would sooner see her dead than your wife. You are many, I am one; but despair never gnawed at my heart. Let him lay hands on me who dares,” and the speculator of the Chicago Bourse draws himself up defiantly.

None of them seem to be in any hurry, but perhaps it is because they are so sure—because they have other means at hand.

“Bah! shout if you will—no one can hear you. It is our turn to laugh, and we shall enjoy it, I assure you. I have asked for your daughter—you refuse. Bismillah! she comes to me of her own will.”

He points his trembling forefinger at the veiled figure standing beside Anthony, and his mocking laugh is enough to make one’s blood run cold. These old Turks know how to make of their revenge sweetness long drawn out—they can lacerate their victims’ feelingseven as vultures pick the flesh from the bones of the dead placed in the Towers of Silence.

“Man, behold your child come to fill ze place you made vacant in my heart when you stole her mother from me. So shall ze revenge of Aroun Scutari be complete. Look upon her for ze last time, I tell you, for you go not forth from here again. It is decreed.”

With these last cutting words the Turk steps forward and tears the veil away. His manner is proud, disdainful. He feels as though he has the destiny of all present within the grasp of his hand, just as might a reckless man who holds a dynamite bomb, and looks around upon the men he hates.

As he does this, he receives the greatest shock of his life. It almost paralyzes him. He stares like a man demented.

Instead of the lovely features of Dorothy, he sees the face of a man, and a very homely face it is, to boot. The fellow shuts one eye and ogles him in a ridiculous fashion. Aroun Scutari is aghast at this failure of his plan. He turns his gaze upon Wayne.

“Where is she—what have you brought tome—zisthing? Speak, you slave, you dog of an unbeliever!”

Perhaps it is his looks, but more probably the gleaming yataghan he flashes from its sheath that scares the amazed valet into speech.

“I don’t know—I played my part—I believed it was Miss Dorothy—there’s some trickery here?” is what he gasps.

“Trickery! yes, I see; he believes he has again outwitted a pasha. Once more I am robbed of a bride, but this blade shall drink his blood. It was forged in the fire of revenge! Nothing can save you now, dog of a Christian!”

The Turk has gone mad—his appearance is positively fearful. Dante could find inspiration for his pictures of the Inferno by looking upon his frenzied countenance, scowling and blazing with the wrath that has been bottled up all these years, to burst its bonds at last.

He means every word he speaks, and backs it up by swinging on high the flashing blade.

The extraordinary temper of Damascus steel has long been the theme of song and story, and the skill which the Saracens of olddisplayed in handling their precious blades has been sung again and again. With a strong and well-trained arm, vengeance-driven, using such a weapon, it would not be difficult to sever a man’s head from his body at a single stroke.

As this yataghan, the pet weapon of Arab and Algerian, cuts the air in flashing curves, the tragedy of the Midway seems about to reach its climax.

A scream breaks forth. Saidee, the fortune teller, has thrown her form in front of the old speculator.

“You shall not strike him save through my heart, pasha!” she shrieks.

The Turk has started back as she comes between his weapon and its intended victim; but his confusion is only momentary. Then over his dark face spreads a smile that is absolutely fiendish. He intended taking one victim—two will do just as well.

“Together, then, you shall die! I have made a vow! A Turk always keeps his word.”

“Pardon me, but I’m afraid you lie, pasha,” says Wycherley, as he strikes theyataghan out of Scutari’s hand with a cudgel he picks up from the floor. Then as he places his foot upon the weapon, he continues calmly: “My dear man, don’t you know the race isn’t always to the swift? When you come to America and buck against Chicago brain and muscle it’s ten to one you go home a sadder and a wiser man. That’s right, scowl as you please, I’m quite impervious to it. Now you feel for another weapon and start for me! Well, I’m cheerfully on deck, every time. Come on with your circus, band-wagon and all. The show has begun and I am ready to play my part.”

With considerable adroitness the ex-actor has whipped out his bowie, and the other hand withdraws the revolver that Wild Bill once handled. Such a display might well cause dismay even in the breast of a fire-eater, and perhaps the Turk might have paused before rushing to impale himself, but the detective in woman’s clothes, feeling that he is expected to do something more in order to earn his fat fee, now fastens upon the back of the pasha, just as the Old Man of the Sea did upon Sinbad, and, pinioning his arms to hissides, despite his mad bellowings, prevents him from either flight or any dangerous move.

Anthony Wayne turns to fly, but Aleck gives him a whirl that sends him into a corner. The three Turkish adherents of the pasha have already dashed from the room by means of the other exit.

Another scene is taking place on the right. Dorothy has left Aleck’s side. Straight as an arrow in its flight she passes to the woman still kneeling at Samson’s feet. She bends, she places her arms about Marda’s neck, and into her ear she sobs:

“Oh, my mother, my mother!”

The woman snatches her in a fierce embrace. Cheated by a cruel fate all these long years, still the mother-love for its child has remained within her heart, and now asserts its power.

Samson Cereal cannot gaze upon the spectacle without deep emotion. Strange indeed that two specters of his early life should thus be resurrected so close together. It is true that our destiny is often molded by unseen hands.

Aleck goes over and takes hold of the valetwho has played his master false. He brings him to the speculator, cowering and trembling.

“Turn him around—so. I only want one kick at the dog that could bite the hand which has fed him. Now, go, and never let me see your face again, you base wretch!”

Urged on by the impetus of the old operator’s boot, Wayne flies through the passage, bawling like a calf, but the dulcet sounds of the wedding procession music still swell through the narrow street, and no one would be apt to pay any attention to such a small outburst of anguish and fright as the discharged valet gives vent to while he runs.

There remains only the Turk.

Having exhausted his fit of passion, and finding he cannot break away from the strong arms that pinion him, Scutari stands there and glares into the face of his foe.

“What shall be done with this pretty thing?” says that inveterate cuckoo, Wycherley. “I think he can be locked up for five or ten years at hard labor.”

The pasha hears; at first he looks defiant, but at the mention ofworkhe wilts like ablighted flower. Such a fate would scare the average Turk half to death.

“Anything but that! take my life if you will, but to work like a slave, Allah deliver me! I swear to you on the Koran that if you allow me to depart, I will return to Stamboul and never again remember that you live!” he cries eagerly.

Samson Cereal hesitates, but from an unexpected quarter help comes for the Turk.

“You can believe him. What a pasha swears on the Koran, that he will do.”

It is Marda who speaks, and the speculator makes up his mind.

“Pasha, you have played a bold game and you have lost. Make up your mind to accept the inevitable. As your people so philosophically say, 'Kismet—it is fate.’ Go then to your home, to your wives, on the Bosphorous. Forget that we live. May our lives never again cross.”

The pasha keeps his word, and before another sun has set his face is turned toward the Orient.

Under charge of Aleck and Wycherley the two ladies—for they refuse to be separated—goto the princely home of the wheat king. Samson Cereal soon leaves his friends and joins them, for, even before the proof Marda has promised is forthcoming, his heart acquits her.

A singular meeting truly, between the two women this man has loved, but both have been purified by suffering, and Adela, knowing her days are few, rejoices in the fact that the girl she has already learned to love has found a mother.

THE END.

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