Part 3

"Nonsense!" She gave him a look that had more in it than the tone in which she added: "Please do not. I shall be perfectly safe with four servants. You can tell them not to let me run away." Coming nearer, she put her hand into the bosom of her dress, then stretched out the hand toward him. "Here is the key--the key of which Zümbül Agha spoke--the key of Pandora's box. Will you keep it for me, please? _Au revoir_."

And making a sign to the servants she walked out of the kiosque.

III

The Pasha was too surprised, at first, to move--and too conscious of the eyes of servants, too uncertain of what he should do, too fearful of doing the wrong, the un-European, thing. And afterward it was too late. He stood watching until the flicker of the lantern disappeared among the dark trees. Then his eyes met the eunuch's.

"Why don't you go down too?" suggested Zümbül Agha. The variable climate of a great house had made him too perfect an opportunist not to take the line of being in favour again. "It might be better. Give me the key and I will do what there is to do. But you might send up Shaban."

Why not, the Pasha secretly asked himself? Might it not be the best way out? At the same time he experienced a certain revulsion of feeling, now that Hélène was gone, in the way she had gone. She really was prodigious! And with the vanishing of the lantern that had brought him a measure of reassurance he felt the weight of an uncleared situation, fantastic but crucial, heavy upon him. And the Negro annoyed him intensely.

"Thank you, Zümbül Agha," he replied, "but I am not the nurse of Madama, and I will not give you the key."

If he only might, though, he thought to himself again!

"You believe her, this Frank woman whom you had never seen five years ago, and you do not believe me who have lived in your house longer than you can remember!"

The eunuch said it so bitterly that the Pasha was touched in spite of himself. He had never been one to think very much about minor personal relations, but even at such a moment he could see--was it partly because he wanted more time to make up his mind?--that he had never liked Zümbül Agha as he liked Shaban, for instance. Yet more honour had been due, in the old family tradition, to the former. And he had been associated even longer with the history of the house.

"My poor Zümbül," he uttered musingly, "you have never forgiven me for marrying her."

"My Pasha, you are not the first to marry an unbeliever, nor the last. But such a marriage should be to the glory of Islam, and not to its discredit. Who can trust her? She is still a Christian. And she is too young. She has turned the world upside down. What would your father have said to a daughter-in-law who goes shamelessly into the street without a veil, alone, and who receives in your house men who are no relation to you or to her? It is not right. Women understand only one thing--to make fools of men. And they are never content to fool one."

The Pasha, still waiting to make up his mind, let his fancy linger about Zümbül Agha. It was really rather absurd, after all, what a part women played in the world, and how little it all came to in the end! Did the black man, he wondered, walk in a clearer cooler world, free of the clouds, the iridescences, the languors, the perfumes, the strange obsessions, that made others walk so often like madmen? Or might some tatter of preposterous humanity still work obscurely in him? Or a bitterness of not being like other men? That perhaps was why the Pasha felt friendlier toward Shaban. They were more alike.

"You are right, Zümbül Agha," he said. "The world is upside down. But neither the Madama nor any of us made it so. All we can do is to try and keep our heads as it turns. Now, will you please tell me how you happened to be up here? The Madama never told you to come. You know perfectly well that the customs of Europe are different from ours, and that she does not like to have you follow her about."

"What woman likes to be followed about?" retorted the eunuch with a sly smile. "I know you have told me to leave her alone. But why was I brought into this house? Am I to stand by and watch dishonour brought upon it simply because you have eaten the poison of a woman?"

"Zümbül Agha," replied the Pasha sharply, "I am not discussing old and new or this and that, but I am asking you to tell me what all this speech is about."

"Give me that key and I will show you what it is about," said the eunuch, stepping forward.

But the Pasha found he was not ready to go so directly to the point.

"Can't you answer a simple question?" he demanded irritably, retreating to the farther side of the fountain.

The reflection of the painted ceiling in the pool made him think of Hélène--and Madame Pomegranate. He stared into the still water as if to find Hélène's face there. Was any other face hidden beside it, mocking him?

But Zümbül Agha had begun again, doggedly:

"I came here because it is my business to be here. I went to town this morning. When I got back they told me that you were away and that the Madama was up here, alone. So I came. Is this a place for a woman to be alone in--a young woman, with men working all about and I don't know who, and a thousand ways of getting in and out from the hills, and ten thousand hiding places in the woods?"

The Pasha made a gesture of impatience, and turned away. But after all, what could one do with old Zümbül? He had been brought up in his tradition. The Pasha lighted another cigarette to help himself think.

"Well, I came up here," continued the eunuch, "and as I came I heard Madama singing. You know how she sings the songs of the Franks."

The Pasha knew, but he did not say anything. As he walked up and down, smoking and thinking, his eye caught in the pool a reflection from the other side of the room, where the door of the latticed room was and where the cypress-wood chest stood as the servants had left it in the middle of the floor. Was that what Hélène had stood looking at so long, he asked himself? He wondered that he could have sat beside it so quietly. It seemed now like something dark and dangerous crouching there in the shadow of the little room.

"I sat down, under the terrace," he heard the eunuch go on, "where no one could see me, and I listened. And after she had stopped I heard----"

"Never mind what you heard," broke in the Pasha. "I have heard enough."

He was ashamed--ashamed and resolved. He felt as if he had been playing the spy with Zümbül Agha. And after all there was a very simple way to answer his question for himself. He threw away his cigarette, went forward into the little room, bent over the chest, and fitted the key into the lock.

Just then a nightingale burst out singing, but so near and so loud that he started and looked over his shoulder. In an instant he collected himself, feeling the black man's eyes upon him. Yet he could not suppress the train of association started by the impassioned trilling of the bird, even as he began to turn the key of the chest where his mother used to keep her quaint old silks and embroideries. The irony of the contrast paralysed his hand for a strange moment, and of the difference between this spring night and other spring nights when nightingales had sung. And what if, after all, only calamity were to come out of the chest, and he were to lose his last gift of hope! Ah! He knew at last what he would do! He quickly withdrew the key from the lock, stood up straight again, and looked at Zümbül Agha.

"Go down and get Shaban," he ordered, "and don't come back."

The eunuch stared. But if he had anything to say he thought better of uttering it. He saluted silently and went away.

IV

The Pasha sat down on the divan and lighted a cigarette. Almost immediately the nightingale stopped singing. For a few moments Zümbül Agha's steps could be heard outside. Then it became very still. The Pasha did not like it. Look which way he would he could not help seeing the chest--or listening. He got up and went into the big room, where he turned on the water of the fountain. The falling drops made company for him, and kept him from looking for lost reflections. But they presently made him think of what Hélène had said about them. He went out to the porch and sat down on the steps. In front of him the pines lifted their great dark canopies against the stars. Other stars twinkled between the trunks, far below, where the shore lights of the Bosphorus were. It was so still that water sounds came faintly up to him, and every now and then he could even hear nightingales on the European side. Another nightingale began singing in his own woods--the nightingale that had told him what to do, he said to himself. What other things the nightingales had sung to him, years ago! And how long the pines had listened there, still strong and green and rugged and alive, while he, and how many before him, sat under them for a little while and then went away!

Presently he heard steps on the drive and Shaban came, carrying something dark in his hand.

"What is that?" asked the Pasha, as Shaban held it out.

"A pistol, my Pasha. Zümbül Agha told me you wanted it."

The Pasha laughed curtly.

"Zümbül made a mistake. What I want is a shovel, or a couple of them. Can you find such a thing without asking anyone?"

"Yes, my Pasha," replied the Albanian promptly, laying the revolver on the steps and disappearing again. And it was not long before he was back with the desired implements.

"We must dig a hole, somewhere, Shaban," said his master in a low voice. "It must be in a place where people are not likely to go, but not too far from the kiosque."

Shaban immediately started toward the trees at the back of the house. The Pasha followed him silently into a path that wound through the wood. A nightingale began to sing again, very near them--the nightingale, thought the Pasha.

"He is telling us where to go," he said.

Shaban permitted himself a low laugh.

"I think he is telling his mistress where to go. However, we will go too." And they did, bearing away to one side of the path till they came to the foot of a tall cypress.

"This will do," said the Pasha, "if the roots are not in the way."

Without a word Shaban began to dig. The Pasha took the other spade. To the simple Albanian it was nothing out of the ordinary. What was extraordinary was that his master was able to keep it up, soft as the loam was under the trees. The most difficult thing about it was that they could not see what they were doing, except by the light of an occasional match. But at last the Pasha judged the ragged excavation of sufficient depth. Then he led the way back to the kiosque.

They found Zümbül Agha in the little room, sitting on the sofa with a pistol in either hand.

"I thought I told you not to come back!" exclaimed the Pasha sternly.

"Yes," faltered the old eunuch, "but I was afraid something might happen to you. So I waited below the pines. And when you went away into the woods with Shaban, I came here to watch." He lifted a revolver significantly. "I found the other one on the steps."

"Very well," said the Pasha at length, more kindly. He even found it in him at that moment to be amused at the picture the black man made, in his sedate frock coat, with his two weapons. And Zümbül Agha found no less to look at in the appearance of his master's clothes. "But now there is no need for you to watch any longer," added the latter. "If you want to watch, do it at the bottom of the hill. Don't let any one come up here."

"On my head," said the eunuch. He saw that Shaban, as usual, was trusted more than he. But it was not for him to protest against the ingratitude of masters. He salaamed and backed out of the room.

When he was gone the Pasha turned to Shaban:

"This box, Shaban--you see this box? It has become a trouble to us, and I am going to take it out there."

The Albanian nodded gravely. He took hold of one of the handles, to judge the weight of the chest. He lifted his eyebrows.

"Can you help me put it on my back?" he asked.

"Don't try to do that, Shaban. We will carry it together." The Pasha took hold of the other handle. When they got as far as the outer door he let down his end. It was not light. "Wait a minute, Shaban. Let us shut up the kiosque, so that no one will notice anything." He went back to blow out the candles. Then he thought of the fountain. He caught a play of broken images in the pool as he turned off the water. When he had put out the lights and had groped his way to the door he found that Shaban was already gone with the chest. A last drop of water made a strange echo behind him in the dark kiosque. He locked the door and hurried after Shaban, who had succeeded in getting the chest on his back. Nor would Shaban let the Pasha help him till they came to the edge of the wood. There, carrying the chest between them, they stumbled through the trees to the place that was ready.

"Now we must be careful," said the Pasha. "It might slip or get stuck."

"But are you going to bury the box too?" demanded Shaban, for the first time showing surprise.

"Yes," answered the Pasha. And he added: "It is the box I want to get rid of."

"It is a pity," remarked Shaban regretfully. "It is a very good box. However, you know. Now then!"

There was a scraping and a muffled thud, followed by a fall of earth and small stones on wood. The Pasha wondered if he would hear anything else. But first one and then another nightingale began to fill the night air with their April madness.

"Ah, there are two of them," remarked Shaban. "She will take the one that says the sweetest things to her."

The Pasha's reply was to throw a spadeful of earth on the chest. Shaban joined him with such vigour that the hole was very soon full.

"We are old, my Pasha, but we are good for something yet," said Shaban. "I will hide the shovels here in the bushes," he added, "and early in the morning I will come again, before any of those lazy gardeners are up, and fix it so that no one will ever know."

There at least was a person of whom one could be sure! The Pasha realised that gratefully, as they walked back through the park. He did not feel like talking, but at least he felt the satisfaction of having done what he had decided to do. He remembered Zümbül Agha as they neared the bottom of the hill. The eunuch had not taken his commission more seriously than it had been given, however, or he preferred not to be seen. Perhaps he wanted to reconnoitre again on top of the hill.

"I don't think I will go in just yet," said the Pasha, as they crossed the bridge into the lower garden. "I am rather dirty. And I would like to rest a little under the chestnut trees. Would you get me an overcoat please, Shaban, and a brush of some kind? And you might bring me a coffee, too."

How tired he was! And what a short time it was, yet what an eternity, since he last dropped into one of those wicker chairs! He felt for his cigarettes. As he did so he discovered something else in his pocket, something small and hard that at first he did not recognise. Then he remembered the key--the key.... He suddenly tossed it into the pool beside him. It made a sharp little splash, which was reëchoed by the dripping basins. He got up and felt in the ivy for the handle that shut off the water. At the end of the garden the Bosphorus lapped softly in the dark. Far away, up in the wood, the nightingales were singing.

III

THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE*

SIR HUGH CLIFFORD

*Reprinted by permission of the author.

All the wintry afternoon we had been worming our way down the Thames, the big steamer filtering slowly through the throng of crafts like a 'bus moving ponderously amid crowded traffic. When at last we won free of the river, the Channel chop took us on its knee and rocked us roughly, while the skud of wind and rain slapped us in the face with riotous horse-play. As we came up from dinner and struggled aft, our feet slipped and slithered over the wet decks, and the shouts of the frozen Lascars at the lookout reached us through the sopping gloom, despairing as the howls of souls in torment. The ugly, hopeless melancholy of our surroundings accorded well with the mood which possessed the majority of those on board; for we were outward bound, and men who leave England for the good of their purses carry heavy hearts with them at the start. In the smoking room, therefore, with coat-collars tugged up about our ears and hands thrust deeply into our pockets, we sat smoking with mournful earnestness, glaring at our neighbours with the open animosity of the genial Briton.

Through the thickening fog of the tobacco-smoke, the figure of a man seated immediately opposite to me was dimly visible; but presently his unusual appearance claimed my closer attention and aroused my curiosity. His emaciated body was wrapped in a huge ulster, from the up-turned collar of which a head emerged that I can only describe as being like nothing so much as that of a death's-head moth. He was clean-shaven, and his cheeks were as hollow as saucers; his temples were pinched and prominent; from the bottom of deeply sunken sockets little wild eyes glared like savage things held fast in a gin. The mouth was set hard, as though its owner were enduring agony, and trying his best to repress a scream. As much of his hair as his cap and his coat-collar suffered to be seen was of a dirty yellow-white; yet in some indefinable way the man did not give the impression of being old. Rather he seemed to be one prematurely broken; one who suffered acutely and unceasingly; one who, with rigid self-control, maintained a tight grip upon himself, as though all his nerves were on edge. I had marked a somewhat similar expression of concentrated determination upon the faces of fellow-passengers engaged in fighting the demon of sea-sickness; but this man sucked at his pipe, and obviously drew a measure of comfort from it, in a fashion which showed that he was indifferent to the choppy motion. Yet though those buried eyes of his were glaring and savage--eyes that seemed to be eternally seeking some means of escape from a haunting peril--they were not restless, but rather were fixed in a venomous scowl; while the man himself, dead quiet, save for the light that glinted from them, was apparently sunken in a fathomless abstraction. All this I noted mechanically, but it was the extraordinary condition of his face that chiefly excited my wonder. It was literally pock-marked with little purple cicatrices, small oblong lumps, smooth and shining feebly in the lamplight, that rose above the surface of the skin, and ran this way and that at every imaginable angle. I had seen more than once the faces of German duellists wonderfully and fearfully beslashed; but the scars they wore were long and clean, wholly unlike the badly healed lumps which disfigured my queer _vis-à-vis_. I fell to speculating as to what could have caused such a multiplicity of wounds: not a gunpowder explosion, certainly, for the skin showed none of the blue tattooing inseparable from injuries so inflicted; nor yet the bursting of a gun, for that always makes at least one jagged cut, not innumerable tiny scars such as those at which I was looking. I could think of no solution that would fit the case; and as I watched, suddenly the man withdrew his hands from his pockets, waggling them before his face with a nervous motion as though he were warding off some invisible assailants. Then I saw that every inch of the backs and palms, and as much of his wrists as were exposed to view, were pitted with cicatrices similar to those with which his face was bedecked.

"Evening, you folk!" said a nasal voice in the doorway, breaking discordantly upon the sulky silence which brooded over us; and I looked up to see the figure of a typical "down-easter," slim and alert, standing just within the room. He had a keen, hard face on him, like a meat-axe, and the wet rain stood upon it in drops. He jerked his head at us in collective greeting, walked through the haze of smoke with a free gait and swinging shoulders, and threw himself down in a heap on the horse-hair bench beside the man whose strange appearance had riveted my attention. Seated thus, he looked round at us with quick humorous glances, as though our British solemnity, which made each one of us grimly isolated in a crowd, struck him as at once amusing and impossible of endurance.

"Snakes!" he exclaimed genially. "This is _mighty_ cheerful!" His strident twang seemed to cut wedges out of the foggy silence. "We look as though we had swallowed a peck of tenpenny nails, and the blamed things were sitting heavy on our stomachs. Come, let us be friendly. I ain't doing any trade in sore-headed bears. Wake up, sonny." And he dug his melancholy neighbour in the ribs with an aggressive and outrageous thumb.

It was for all the world as though he had touched the spring that sets in motion the clockwork of a mechanical toy. The man's cap flew from his head--disclosing a scalp ill-covered with sparse hairs and scarred like his face--as he leaped to his feet with a scream, torn suddenly, as it were, from the depths of his self-absorbed abstraction. Casting quick nervous glances over his shoulder, he backed into the nearest corner, his hands clawing at the air, his eyes hunted, defiant, yet abject. His whole figure was instinct with terror--terror seeking impotently to defend itself against unnumbered enemies. His teeth were set, his gums drawn back over them in two rigid white lines; a sort of snarling cry broke from him--a cry that seemed to be the expression of furious rage, pain, and agonisingly concentrated effort.

It all took place in a fraction of a second--as quickly as a man jumps when badly startled--and as quickly he recovered his balance, and pulled himself together. Then he cast a murderous glance at the American--who at that moment presented a picture of petrified astonishment--let fly a venomous oath at him, and slammed out of the room in a towering rage.

"Goramercy!" ejaculated the American limply. "I want a drink. Who'll join me?" But no one responded to his invitation.

That was the occasion of my first meeting with Timothy O'Hara: but as I subsequently travelled half across the world in his company, was admitted to his friendship, and heard him relate his experiences, not once but many times, I am able to supply the key to his extraordinary behaviour that evening. I regret that it is impossible to give his story in his own words, for he told it graphically, and with force; but unfortunately his very proper indignation got the better of his discretion, with the result that he frequently waxed blasphemous in the course of his narrative, and at times was rendered altogether inarticulate by rage. However, the version which I now offer to the reader is accurate in all essential details: and my own first-hand knowledge of that gentle race called Muruts, at whose hands O'Hara fared so evilly, has helped me to fill in such blanks as may have existed in the tale as it originally reached me.