by Harold Lamb
Galin made a fine host. We sat late over brandy and soda in the cabin, while he showed me some of his paintings. The one hanging over the table was a nude Tahitian girl, against a background of purple foliage. Her body was green, except for scarlet lips and breasts.
Galin got out the brandy, and told me how that Tahitian girl had belonged to him. He talked about women, but I felt he was studying me carefully. Then he dragged out a scrapbook, and showed me yards of newspaper clippings.
Galin had the recklessness, I thought, that women love. And he did exactly what he wanted. In the end he would be successful, and I would fail—except that I would translate some pages of unknown writings.
I DIDN’T sleep well that night on the boat. And I didn't join Galin when he took a plunge off the side the next morning—he went into the water like a seal. It isn’t pleasant to be made to feel that you are futile and middle-aged ... so I said goodby to him, and I gave the white villa a wide berth on my way back to Gallipoli village.
I might never have gone back there if it hadn’t been for Oglu. He showed up, unexpectedly, that afternoon and announced that calamity was about to come to the white villa.
“Eh, Oglu,” I asked, “how?”
The tall effendi, he announced, was trying to dig through the stones at the bottom of the hole.
“God is great,” I reminded Oglu. “That is not your affair or mine. It is the affair of the other effendi.”
“It is now the affair,” he protested, “of the other hanim
I looked blank, knowing of no other lady.
“The one,” Oglu explained, “who has crossed the black water and waits now for us to take her to the villa.”
This sounded intriguing. But when I drove Oglu back to the shore—I only needed half an excuse to go back there—the mysterious stranger turned out to be the landlady, the owner of the white villa, who had crossed over from Nagara Kalessi,
When I saw her face I had a shock of surprise, because it was the face of a Turkish girl who wore a half veil—as delicate as a shadow of flesh and blood. After one swift glance, she lowered her dark eyes demurely.
Of course there was a woman servant along with the girl, wrapped up in one of those black enveloping things. I began to suspect, too, that Oglu was the young landlady’s servant, sent to the white villa to watch her property.
So I drove them all up the hill to the white villa.
“This is Miss Miriam Saidlerbey,” I informed Anya, “your landlady. As nearly as I can make out, she’s come to ask you not to dig in her garden.”
“But we’re making a pool,” said Anya. “A nice swimming pool. Tell her that.”
“Yok,” said Miriam, studying Anya under her lashes.
“She says no,” I told Anya.
“And I say yes.” Anya wasn’t pleased. She was tired of objections. Even the Armenians had quit work, and Oglu had gone off—
“Suppose,” I suggested, “you offer your visitor some coffee?”
“Anything to oblige a friend of yours.”
IT BEGAN to feel a decided chill in the air when Anya went off into the house. It vanished when Mikhail Galin lounged up and stared at Miriam frankly.
“Oh!” he said. “If I could paint her!” He had a way with women. That patrician Turkish girl let him see her face, behind the half veil. When he had the nerve to ask where she lived, she pointed out a brown villa among some willow trees, on the other side of the strait. We picked out the place through Galin’s glasses.
When Anya came back with the coffee, the atmosphere grew cold again. Miriam barely sipped from the little cup.
“Effendi," she said sweetly to me, “I want my house back again. Tell that girl she must go away at once, tonight.” She pointed down at the schooner. “On that boat of her tall man, the one that sails against the current.”
“She says,” I interpreted to Anya, “you have a friend and a boat, and she wants you to leave tonight.”
Anya’s chin went up at that. She had leased the villa. She didn’t want to give it up, and she was not going to.
When I made this clear to Miriam, the girl put down her coffee and walked out on us. Oglu went off with them.
“I didn’t know,” Anya assured me, her eyes shining, “that I was intruding on your friends.”
I hated to say it, but I had to. “I think you’d better leave, Anya.”
“And pray—why?”
“I’m afraid it would be dangerous to stay.”
“Why?”
“I don't know why. I just feel it.” Anya looked at me as if I were a poor kind of fish. Then without a word she went off through the garden with Galin.
I knew the villa was dangerous for Anya now, but I couldn't reason out why it should be so. Except that Oglu was really frightened. And he had warned me not to let her go on digging that hole. Suppose Anya had really uncovered a tomb by accident, and the tomb happened to be the family vault of Miriam’s people—
Once in Persia I’d known an American consul to be knifed by a mob within a mosque enclosure because he happened to take a picture of a sacred well.
But this stonework wasn't Turkish. It was the ghost of a forgotten past, rising up out of the ground . . . and then I hit on a key to the mystery.
The ghost Anya had heard. It had disappeared somehow from the cellar when she looked for it. Obviously—the walls of the villa were solid enough— there was no way out of the cellar to the upper ground. But if these stones were the vault of a tomb it must be about on a level with the cellar, and not far away. Suppose Anya’s visitor that night had slipped from the cellar into this place, until she had gone away? Yes—she had heard the sound of a door closing.
SO I went to look for that door, taking the electric torch Galin had left in the hall. And I found the door behind a stack of faggots.
There was just space enough to edge myself behind the wood. The door itself—heavy with rusted ironwork—rose only as high as my shoulder. It clanked when I shook it—locked fast. But as nearly as I could judge it was in the wall exactly opposite where we‘d been digging.
When I went to tell the others about it, I found them off at the edge of the garden. Galin had his arm around the girl, and he grinned at me when I explained about the door. Anya didn’t say anything—she looked as if she’d been crying.
“And so what, Professor?” he demanded.
“If that door leads to a family burial vault,” I said, “Anya oughtn’t to open it—”
“Afraid of a spook or an ancient Oriental curse?”
“No,” I told him. “I’m afraid of a knife in Anya’s back.” I looked at her. “Will you let me drive you back to Constantinople to a hotel?”
It sounded weak enough. Anya moved impatiently and Galin looked amused. “If you want to know,” he said, “she won’t be in Turkey tomorrow. She’s coming on the Argos.”
“I want to see,” Anya cried suddenly, “what’s in that place.”
And she insisted we open the door. Galin, as usual, was equal to the job. Oglu hadn’t come back yet, so Galin went down to his schooner and returned with one of his men, a stocky Italian named Joe.
All Joe used was a bent wire. After he worked at the lock a minute the door creaked open.
“Come on, Pandora.” Galin picked up his torch, and squeezed his bulk through the door. As the girl followed, I caught a glimpse of a narrow stone passage. A breath of damp air touched my face, and Anya hesitated.
“Forward, darling,” Galin called over his shoulder. “I do not see the skeleton yet—the skeleton that is always lying in the entrance of such a mysterious tomb. Hullo—”
We were filing after him, our heads bent, our shoulders touching the damp stones.
“Looks like a prison cell,” Galin muttered.
The passage ended in a larger chamber, where we were able to stand up. In front of us a grillwork, green with age, barred the way. I had been keeping track of the distance and I thought we were under Anya
’s swimming pool. Overhead, the roof made a half dome.
“The ghosts,” said Anya, “have left their traveling bags.”
Two large valises stood by the grille—cheap straw affairs of the kind you buy in the bazaar for a couple of Turkish pounds. Galin pulled them open, and they were both empty.
When Galin flashed his torch through the grille, we saw an inner compartment, some twenty feet square. In the center of it something that looked like a large casket of purple stone. A porphyry sarcophagus, of the kind made for the imperial families of ancient Constantinople.
When I explained what we’d found, Anya gave a little gasp, and even Galin was quiet.
“Anyway,” I assured them, “no Turks are buried here.”
A thing like that dated back a thousand years. Wars and plagues had passed over it, leaving it untouched—until someone, sinking the foundation of the house, had come upon its entrance passage.
Galin gave an impatient tug at the bronze grille, and it creaked open. It was not locked! “Open sesame!" he laughed.
The tomb chamber was bare except for the sarcophagus. Galin and the sailor Joe tried to open it.
“The whole top slides off,” I told them.
GALIN was working with Joe to raise the heavy lid and edge it to one side. “Sure there isn’t a curse written somewhere around—something like ‘Death to him who enters here,’ in archaic Greek or—” Then he looked down, and said, “Grosser Gott!"
The beam of the torch shone on gold and the fire of precious stones inside the sarcophagus. The lid slipped down with a smash. We stood like fools, looking at an actual treasure.
At gold goblets and belts of square sapphires—at flaming rubies in the hilts of daggers inlaid with gold. At silks sewn with pearls, and turban crests gleaming with cornelian. I saw one opal as large as my two thumbs.
It was all neatly arranged on a white satin cloth, and not even a jeweler could have guessed its value.
Galin and Joe peered at it silently. Then the adventurer lifted one of the goblets, whistling as he felt its weight. Joe was turning the sapphire girdle in his fingers hungrily.
After the first shock of surprise, I realized what they were. That combination of Byzantine jewel work, Turkish weapons, and Chinese silks and jades could come from only one place.
With an exclamation, Galin swung the torch around. Through the grille, Oglu advanced on us, his arms reaching out. “Robbers!” the big Turk grunted.
Putting the torch down, Galin stepped toward Oglu and hit him hard under the eye. The Turk blinked and shook his head and came on. The sailor Joe smashed Oglu’s legs with his shoulder, throwing him off balance. And Galin swung twice, at his belt and throat.
Oglu went down heavily.
Joe ran out of the tomb chamber and came back with the loose ropes that had been lying on the bags. After that the two of them tied him up.
Behind the light, Anya was watching us all. I wondered how much this stuff might mean to her—I’d have given about a year of life to have that pair of gold drinking cups myself.
“Do you know what this is?” I asked. “It came from the Seraglio.”
“And what might that be?”
“The old palace at Istanbul—the treasury of the Sultans. Those jade disks were a present to Suleiman the Magnificent from a Chinese emperor. And it’s all stolen.”
Galin nodded, his eyes glowing.
“Some gang got away with it”—I began to piece the parts of the puzzle together—“as far as the quarantine station on the Dardanelles. Then something must have gone wrong, or the police pressed them too close. Evidently they trusted Miriam. Hid it here in the closed tomb the night Anya heard ghosts. Safe enough. The police scouted the place. They wouldn’t suspect a European lady—”
“But the Turks did, the thieves did, when Anya kept on digging down.” Galin struck his hands together. “What luck?”
“And then you came, with the schooner.” I could see it clearly enough now. “They must have planned to get it away on a boat themselves.”
“Exactly,” Galin nodded, “what we’ll do.”
“No,” I shook my head. No, I couldn’t go back to the Seraglio, to my work with Ahmed Bey, knowing this had been looted. “It belongs to the Turks.”
“Yes,” said Anya suddenly, “it must go back, Mike.”
GALIN’S face changed. He said something to the sailor in another language, and he strode over to me, his lips working. “What’s the matter with you? You can’t be such an idiot. It's a chance that comes once in a thousand years.”
I was too angry to think. Because his eyes probed into me, enjoying my helplessness. “You poor, sentimental fool,” he whispered for my ears alone.
And I reached for him blindly. He had anticipated that. He caught up the light, flashing it in my eyes. When I grabbed for it, his fist smashed my head back. The glare turned red in my eyes. Galin moved quickly, jabbing at my throat. He was a cool and very efficient fighter.
Swinging to one side, I dived for his legs and caught them, bringing him down against the wall. His fingers clawed into my throat, twisting. I hit him hard on the mouth, and he cursed. Then a rope was passed around my elbows, and pulled tight.
I lay there beside Oglu while they got the two valises and piled the treasure of the sarcophagus into them, Galin talking the while. He wasn’t wasting any more time on me, he said. If I loved the Turks so much, I could stay with them and keep my mouth shut.
Then he looked up at Anya. “You’re all washed up here. Pack your things quick, and come with me.”
“No, Mike.”
He stared at her curiously.
“I don’t want to leave my house,” she said unsteadily.
Galin could judge a woman’s mood. With a word to the sailor, he moved toward her. And stopped abruptly, flashing the light full on the girl. She held the sailor’s knife gripped close to her, the point toward him.
For a moment he considered her. If he had been willing to risk a cut, he could have got that knife away from her.
“Well, there are always other women, little Anya,” he said. And he picked up one of the bags and went out, the sailor following with the other.
It was some time before Anya came over and cut the rope loose from my arms, in the darkness. Then she kissed me, her hair falling soft against my eyes.
“Don’t try to follow him, please,” she whispered.
I sat in the darkness, thinking of nothing but the scent of her hair, and her quiet breathing against me.
When I thought Mikhail Galin was under way with his schooner, I felt my way upstairs and brought down a lamp. Oglu’s agonized eyes followed every move I made. When I cut the big Turk loose, he scrambled up and went out of the cellar and the house.
Anya and I went out to the garden. The wind was blowing in gusts and the strait was dark as a barn.
But the next morning, just after sunrise, I saw the Argos still at her anchorage, with a Turkish patrol boat alongside her. I went down to the shore and got a skiff to pull out to her.
The sailor Joe helped me over the side. He looked scared to the bone. “He never came back, signor,” he whispered. “He said he would swim, alone by himself. Look! It is there they find his body.”
The spot Joe pointed out to me was across the strait, in front of a brown villa in a clump of willows. The Turkish police said Mikhail Galin’s body had been washed up there a little before sunrise.
The thing that flashed through my mind was that Leander had drowned in that same way, on just such a stormy night, fighting the Devil’s Current, two thousand years ago. Trying to get across to a woman. So Galin had made his gesture at the last. He had gone out with a reckless swagger.
But the two suitcases frightened Joe more than the death of his employer. He fairly forced them into my hands, protesting that they were mine. He did that when he saw a boat pulling over from the guardship, with uniformed Turks in it, and a man in old-fashioned robes.
This proved to be Ahmed Bey, the curator of the palace, and he looked twice at the bags when he greeted me politely, asking if my health were good, and if I had enjoyed my vacation at the Dardanelles.
So I took him and the Turkish major, his companion, down into the cabin. I had Joe carry down the bags, and I closed the doors on the three of us. The major stared curiously at the picture of the nude green Tahitian girl hanging over the table, while Ahmed Bey looked uncomfortable.
He explained that he had been called out to Nagara Point because the quarantine police believed they had traced the things stolen from the palace to a house there. “It is a calamity,” he added. “My soul is sick. But don’t you think we should say it was an accident?”
“Yes,” I agreed. “We’ll say I found them.”
Silently he stared at me. “What did you find, effendi?" he asked at last.
WHEN I opened the bags he nearly gasped. Then, when he had checked up his missing treasures of the Seraglio, he beamed with joy. He didn’t even question me when I explained lamely that they’d been found in a grave up the hill. Only his dark eyes gleamed. “You were lucky to find them.”
But I had something to ask him: “Ahmed Bey, what made your soul sick?”
The police, he said. They had been watching that brown villa last night, when the unfortunate other effendi had come up from the water. In that windy darkness the police had not seen who he was. They had simply watched, while he tried to make his way into the women’s part of the house. They had heard a woman cry out, and then the servants of the house had forced the intruder back to the water, and into the water. Only at daybreak had they seen the body floating in the wash.
“So he got across,” I said. “He swam the strait.”
Ahmed Bey shook his head. “No. If he had been swimming, who would have heard him? He crossed in a rowboat, and the people of the house heard the oars, and they heard the boat pulled up on the stones.” Ahmed Bey looked at me cautiously. “But who can escape his fate? After all, he drowned.”