Paul Patoff Part 39

For one moment more she tried to struggle on, still not speaking.

Balsamides rose and quietly put the case into his pocket, antic.i.p.ating a struggle. He little knew what the result would be. The miserable creature uttered a short cry, and a wild look of despair was in her eyes. Suddenly, as she crawled upon the divan, she reared herself up on her knees, stretching out her wasted hands towards him.

"Give--give"--she cried. "I will tell you all--he is alive--he is--a wan--"

Her staring black eyes abruptly seemed to turn white, and instantly her face became ashy pale. One last convulsive effort,--the jaw dropped, the features relaxed, the limbs were unstrung, and Laleli Khanum fell forward to her full length upon her face on the peach-colored satin of the divan.

She was dead, and Gregorios Balsamides knew it, as he turned her limp body so that she lay upon her back. She was quite dead, but he was neither startled nor horrified; he was bitterly disappointed, and again and again he ground his heel into the thick Sine carpet under his feet.

What was it to him whether this hideous old hag were dead in one way or another? She had died with her secret. There she lay in her shapeless bag-like gown of snuff-colored stuff, under the brilliant lights and the gorgeous mirrors, upon the delicate satin cushions, her white eyes staring wide, her hands clenched still in the death agony, the coa.r.s.e hair clinging to her wet temples.

Presently the body moved, and appeared to draw one--two--three convulsive breaths. Gregorios was startled, and bent down. But it was only the very end.

"Bah!" he exclaimed, half aloud, "they often do that." Indeed, he had many times in his life seen men die, on the battlefield, on the hospital pallet, in their beds at home. But he had never seen such a death as this, and for a moment longer he gazed at the dead woman's face. Then the whole sense of disappointment rushed back upon him, and he hastily strode down the long hall, under the lamps, between the mirrors, without once looking behind him.

XVIII.

Balsamides found Selim outside the door at the other end of the pa.s.sage, sitting disconsolately upon the divan. The Lala turned up his ugly face as Gregorios entered, and then rose from his seat, reluctantly, as though much exhausted. Balsamides laid his hand upon the fellow's arm and looked into his small red eyes.

"The Khanum is dead," said the pretended physician.

The negro trembled violently, and throwing up his arms would have clapped his hands together. But Balsamides stopped him.

"No noise," he said sternly. "Come with me. All may yet be well with you; but you must be quiet, or it will be the worse for you." He held the Lala's arm and led him without resistance to the outer hall.

"Mehemet Bey! Mehemet Bey!" I heard him call, and I hastened from the room where I had waited to join him in the vestibule. He was very pale and grave. On hearing him enter, the porter appeared, and silently opened the outer door. Balsamides addressed him as we prepared to leave the house.

"The Khanum Effendi is dead," he said. "Selim will accompany us to the palace, and will return in the morning."

The man's face, deeply marked with the small-pox and weather-beaten in many a campaign, did not change color. Perhaps he had long expected the news, for he bowed his head as though submitting to a superior order.

"It is the will of Allah," he said in a low voice. In another moment we had descended the steps, Selim walking between us. The coachman was standing at the horses' heads in the light of the bright carriage lamps.

Balsamides entered the carriage first, then I made Selim get in, and last of all I took my seat and closed the door.

"Yildiz-Kioshk!" shouted Balsamides out of the window to the driver, and once more we rattled over the pavement and along the rough road. I imagined that the order had been given only to mislead the porter, who had stood upon the steps until we drove away. I knew well enough that Balsamides would not present himself at the palace with me in my present disguise, and that it was very improbable that he would take Selim there. I hesitated to speak to him, because I did not know whether I was to continue to personate the adjutant or to reveal myself in my true character. I had comprehended the situation when I heard my friend tell the porter that the Khanum was dead, and I congratulated myself that we had secured the person of Selim without the smallest struggle or difficulty of any kind. I argued from this, either that the Khanum had died without telling her story, or else that she had told it all, and that Selim was to accompany us to the place where Alexander was buried or hidden.

At last we turned to the left. Balsamides again put his head out of the window, and called to the coachman to drive on the Belgrade road instead of turning towards Pera. The negro started violently when he heard the order given, and I thought he put out his hand to take the handle of the door; but my own was in the hanging loop fastened to the inside of the door, and I knew that he could not open it. The road indicated by Gregorios leads through the heart of the Belgrade forest.

The fierce north wind had moderated a little, or rather, as we drove up the thickly wooded valley, we were not exposed to it as we had been upon the sh.o.r.e of the Bosphorus and on the heights above. Overhead, the driving clouds took a silvery-gray tinge, as the last quarter of the waning moon rose slowly behind the hills of the Asian sh.o.r.e. The bare trees swayed and moved slowly in the wind with the rhythmical motion of aquatic plants under moving water. I looked through the gla.s.s as we drove along, recognizing the well-known turns, the big trees, the occasional low stone cottages by the roadside. Everything was familiar to me, even in the bleak winter weather; only the landscape was inexpressibly wild in its leafless grayness, under the faint light of the waning moon. From time to time the Lala moved uneasily, but said nothing. We were ascending the hill which leads to the huge arch of the lonely aqueduct which pierces the forest, when Balsamides tapped upon the window. The carriage stopped in the road and he opened the door on his side and descended.

"Get down," he said to Selim. I pushed the negro forward, and got out after him. Balsamides seized his arm firmly.

"Take him on the other side," he said to me in Turkish, dragging the fellow along the road in the direction of a stony bridle-path which from this point ascends into the forest. Then Selim's coolness failed him, and he yelled aloud, struggling in our grip, and turning his head back towards the coachman.

"Help! help!" he cried. "In the name of Allah! They will murder me!"

From the lonely road the coachman's careless laugh echoed after us, as we hurried up the steep way.

"It is a solitary spot," observed Balsamides to the terrified Selim.

"You may yell yourself hoa.r.s.e, if it pleases you."

We continued to ascend the path, dragging the Lala between us. He had little chance of escape between two such men as we, and he seemed to know it, for after a few minutes he submitted quietly enough. At last we reached an open s.p.a.ce among the rocks and trees, and Balsamides stopped.

We were quite out of earshot from the road, and it would be hard to imagine a more desolate place than it appeared, between two and three o'clock on that March night, the bare twigs of the birch-trees wriggling in the bleak wind, the faint light of the decrescent moon, that seemed to be upside down in the sky, falling on the white rocks, and on the whitened branches torn down by the winter's storms, lying like bleached bones upon the ground before us.

"Now," said Balsamides to the negro, "no one can hear us. You have one chance of life. Tell us at once where we can find the Russian Effendi whose property you stole and sold to Marchetto in the bazaar."

In the dim gloom I almost fancied that the black man changed color as Gregorios put this question, but he answered coolly enough.

"You cannot find him," he said. "You need not have brought me here to ask me about him. I would have told you what you wanted to know at Yeni Koj, willingly enough."

"Why can he not be found?"

"Because he has been dead nearly two years, and his body was thrown into the Bosphorus," answered the Lala defiantly.

"You killed him, I suppose?" Balsamides tightened his grip upon the man's arm. But Selim was ready with his reply.

"You need not tear me in pieces. He killed himself."

The news was so unexpected that Balsamides and I both started and looked at each other. The Lala spoke with the greatest decision.

"How did he kill himself?" asked Gregorios sternly.

"I will tell you, as far as I know. The Bekji of Agia Sophia, the same who admitted the Effendi, took me up by the other staircase. Franks are never allowed to pa.s.s that way, as you know. When we were halfway up, holding the tapers before us, we stumbled over the body of a man lying at the foot of one of the flights, with his hand against the wall. We stooped down and examined him. He was quite dead. 'Selim,' said the Bekji, who knows me very well, 'the Effendi has fallen down the stairs in the dark, and has broken his neck.' 'If we give the alarm,' said I, 'we shall be held responsible for his death.' 'Leave it to me,' answered the Bekji. 'Behold, the man is dead. It is his fate. He has no further use for valuables.' So the Bekji took a ring, and a tobacco-box, and the watch and chain, and some money which was in the man's pockets. Then he said we should leave the corpse where it was. And when the prayers in the mosque were over, before it was day, he got a vegetable-seller's cart, and put the body in it and covered it with cabbages. Then we took it down to the point below Top Kapu Serai, where the waters are swift and deep. So we threw him in, for he was but a dog of a Giaour, and had broken his neck in stumbling where it was forbidden to go. Is it my fault that he stumbled?"

"No," answered Balsamides, "it was not your fault if he stumbled, and the Bekji was a Persian fox. But you robbed his body, and divided the spoil. What share did the Bekji take?"

"He took the ring and the tobacco-box and the money, for he was the stronger," answered the Lala.

"Selim," said Balsamides quietly, "before the Khanum died to-night she said that Alexander Patoff was alive. If so, you are lying. You are a greater liar than Moseylama, the false prophet, as they say in your country. But if not, you are a robber of dead bodies. Therefore, Selim, say a Fatihah, for your hour is come."

With that, Balsamides drew a short revolver from his pocket and c.o.c.ked it before the man's eyes. The negro's limbs relaxed, and with a howl he fell upon his knees.

"Mercy! In the name of Allah!" he cried. "I have told all the truth, I swear by the grave of my father"----

"Don't move," said Gregorios, with horrible calmness. "You will do very well in that position. Now--say your Fatihah, and be quick about it. I cannot wait all night."

"You are not in earnest, Gregorios?" I asked in English, for my blood ran cold at the sight.

"Very much in earnest," he answered in Turkish, presenting the muzzle of the pistol to the Lala's head. "This fellow shall not laugh at our beards a second time. I will count three. If you do not wish to say your prayers, I will fire when I have said three. One--two"----

"He is alive!" screamed the Lala, before the fatal "three" was spoken by Balsamides. "I have lied: he is alive! Mercy! and I will tell you all."

"I thought so," said Balsamides, coolly unc.o.c.king his pistol and putting it back into his pocket. "Get up, dog, and tell us what you know."

Selim was literally almost frightened to death, as he kneeled on the sharp stones at our feet. He could hardly speak, and I dragged him up and made him sit upon the trunk of a fallen tree. I was indeed glad that he was still alive, for though Balsamides had not yet told me the events of the night, I could see that he was in no humor to be trifled with.

Even I, who am peaceably disposed towards all men, felt my blood boil when the fellow told how he and the Bekji had robbed the body of Alexander Patoff, and thrown it into the Bosphorus for fear of being suspected. But the whole story seemed improbable, and I had a strong impression that Selim was lying. Perhaps nothing but the fear of death could have made him confess, after all, and Balsamides had a way of making death seem very real and near.