by Lew Wallace
CHAPTER XX
THE SILHOUETTE OF A CRIME
A genius thoroughly wicked--such was Demedes.
Quick to see the disgust the young men of Constantinople had falleninto for the disputes their elders were indulging about the Churches,he proposed that they should discard religion, and reinstatephilosophy; and at their request he formulated the following:
"Nature is the lawgiver; the happiness of man is the primary object ofNature: hence for youth, Pleasure; for old age, Repentance and Piety,the life hereafter being a respectable conjecture."
The principles thus tersely stated were eagerly adopted, and goingforward with his scheme, it may be said the Academy was his design, andits organization his work. In recognition of his superior abilities,the grateful Academicians elected him their High Priest.
We have seen how the public received the motto of the society.Patience, Courage, Judgment looked fair and disclosed nothing wrong;but there was an important reservation to it really the only secretobserved. This was the motto in full, known only to theinitiated--Patience, Courage, Judgment _in the pursuit of Pleasure_.
From the hour of his installation as High Priest, Demedes was consumedby an ambition to illustrate the motto in its entirety, by doingsomething which should develop the three virtues in connection withunheard of daring and originality.
It is to be added here that to his own fortune, he had now the treasuryof the Academy to draw upon, and it was full. In other words, he hadample means to carry out any project his _judgment_ might approve.
He pondered the matter long. One day Lael chanced to fall under hisobservation. She was beautiful and the town talk. Here, he thought, wasa subject worth studying, and speedily two mysteries presentedthemselves to him: Who was the Prince of India? And what was her truerelationship to the Prince?
We pass over his resorts in unravelling the mysteries; they were manyand cunning, and thoroughly tried the first virtue of the Academicalmotto; still the sum of his finding with respect to the Prince was amere theory--he was a Jew and rich--beyond this Demedes took nothingfor his pains.
He proceeded next to investigate Lael. She too was of Jewish origin,but unlike other Jewesses, wonderful to say, she had two fathers, thediamond merchant and the Prince of India.
Nothing better could be asked--so his judgment, the third virtue of themotto, decreed. In Byzantine opinion, Jews were socially outside decentregard. In brief, if he should pursue the girl to her ruin, there waslittle to fear from an appeal by either of her fathers to theauthorities. Exile might be the extremest penalty of discovery.
He began operations by putting into circulation the calumny, tooinfamous for repetition, with which we have seen him attempt to poisonSergius. Robbing the victim of character would deprive her of sympathy,and that, in the event of failure, would be a half defence for himselfwith the public.
He gave himself next to finding what to do with the little Princess, ashe termed her. All his schemes respecting her fell short in that theylacked originality. At last the story of the Plague of Crime, stumbledon in the library of the St. James', furnished a suggestion novel, ifnot original, and he accepted it.
Proceeding systematically, he first examined the cistern, paddlingthrough it in a boat with a flambeau at the bow. He sounded the depthof the water, counted the pillars, and measured the spaces betweenthem; he tested the purity of the air; and when the reconnoissance wasthrough, he laughed at the simplicity of the idea, and embodied hisdecision in a saying eminently becoming his philosophic character--thebest of every new thing is that it was once old.
Next he reduced the affair to its elements. He must steal her--such wasthe deed in simplest term--and he must have assistants, but prudencewhispered just as few of them as possible. He commenced a list, headingit with the keeper of the cistern, whom he found poor, necessitous, andanxious to better his condition. Upon a payment received, that worthybecame warmly interested, and surprised his employer with suggestionsof practical utility.
Coming then to the abduction, he undertook a study of her daily life,hoping it would disclose something available. A second name wasthereupon entered in his list of accomplices.
One day a beggar with sore eyes and a foot swollen withelephantiasis--an awful object to sight--set a stool in an angle of thestreet a few doors from Uel's house; and thenceforward the girl's everyappearance was communicated to Demedes, who never forgot the great jumpof heart with which he heard of the gorgeous chair presented her by thePrince, and of the visit she forthwith made to the wall of the Bucoleon.
Soon as he satisfied himself that the Bulgarians were in the Prince'spay, he sounded them. They too were willing to permit him to make themcomfortable the remainder of their days, especially as, after thebetrayal asked of them, they had only to take boat to the Turkish sideof the Bosphorus, beyond pursuit and demand. His list of assistants wasthen increased to four.
Now indeed the game seemed secure, and he prepared for the hour whichwas to bring the Jewess to him.
The keeper of the cistern was the solitary occupant of a house builtround a small court from which a flight of stone steps admitted to thedarkened water. He had a felicitous turn for mechanics, and undertookthe building of a raft with commodious rooms on it. Demedes went withhim to select a place of anchorage, and afterward planned the structureto fit between four of the pillars in form thus:
Seeing the design on paper, Demedes smiled--it was so like a cross; thepart in lines being the landing, and the rest a room divisible atpleasure into three rooms. A boat was provided for communication, andto keep it hid from visitors, a cord was fixed to a pillar off in thedarkness beyond ken, helped though it might be by torches; so standingon the stone steps, one could draw the vessel to and fro, exactly as aflag is hoisted or lowered on a staff.
The work took a long time, but was at last finished. The High Priest ofthe Epicureans came meantime to have something akin to tender feelingfor his intended victim. He indulged many florid dreams of when sheshould grace his bower in the Imperial Cistern; and as the time of herdetention might peradventure extend into months, he vowed to enrich thebower until the most wilful spirit would settle into contentment.
Neither the money nor the time spent in this part of the preparationwas begrudged; on the contrary, Demedes took delight in the occupation;it was exercise for ingenuity, taste, and judgment, always a pleasureto such as possess the qualities. In fact, the whole way through helikened himself to a bird building a nest for its mate.
After all, however, the part of the project most troublesome ofarrangement by the schemer, was getting the Princess into the cisternkeeper's house--that is, without noise, scuffle, witnesses, or a clewleft behind. To this he gave more hours of reflection than to the restaltogether. The method we have seen executed was decided upon when hearrived at two conclusions; that the attempt was most likely to succeedin the garden of the Bucoleon, and that the Princess must be lured fromher chair into another less conspicuous and not so well known. Greatlyto his regret, but of necessity, he then saw himself compelled toincrease his list of accessories to six. Yet he derived peaceremembering none of them, with exception of the keeper, knew aught ofthe affair beyond their immediate connection with it. The porters, forinstance, who dropped the unfortunate and fled, leaving her in thesedan to intents dead, had not the slightest idea of what was to becomeof her afterwards.
The conjunctions needful to success in the enterprise were numerous;yet the Greek accepted the waiting they put him to as a trial of thePatience to which the motto pledged him. He believed in being ready.When the house was built and furnished, he drilled the Bulgarians withsuch particularity that the scene in the garden may be said to havebeen literally to order. Probably the nearest approach to the mythicalsixth sense is the power of casting one's mind forward to a comingevent, and arranging its occurrence; and whether some have it a gift ofnature, while others derive it from cultivation, this much iscertain--without it, no man will ever create anything originally.
Now,
if the reader pleases, Demedes was too liberally endowed with thefaculty, trait or sense of which we have just spoken to permit thesedan to be broken; such an accident would have been very inconvenientat the critical moment succeeding the exchange of chairs. The prompterever at the elbow of a bad man instructed him that, aside from what thePrince of India could not do, it was in his power to arouse the city,and set it going hue and cry; and then the carriage, rich, glittering,and known to so many, would draw pursuit, like a flaming torch atnight. So it occurred to Demedes, the main object being to conceal thegoing to the cistern keeper's, why not use the sedan to deceive thepursuers? He scored the idea with an exultant laugh.
Returning now to the narrative of the enactment, directly the strangeporters moved out of the copse with their unsuspecting passenger, theBulgarians slung the poles to their shoulders, and followed up thezigzag to the Y of the fourth terrace; there they turned, and retracedtheir steps to the promenade; whence, after reaching Point Serail, theydoubled on their track, descended the wall, traversed the garden, and,passing the gate by which they came, paraded their empty burden aroundthe Hippodrome and down a thronged street. And again doubling, theyreturned to the wall, and finding it forsaken, and the night havingfallen, they abandoned the chair at a spot where the water on theseaward side was deep and favorable for whatever violence theory mightrequire. In the course of this progress they were met by numberlesspeople, many of whom stopped to observe the gay turnout, doubting notthat the little Princess was within directing its movements. Finally,their task thoroughly done, the Bulgarians hurried to where a boat wasin readiness, and crossing to Scutari, lost themselves in the growingdominions of their rightful Lord, the Sultan.
One casually reading this silhouette of a crime in act is likely torest here, thinking there was nothing more possible of doing either toforward the deed or facilitate the escape of those engaged in it; yetDemedes was not content. There were who had heard him talk of thegirl--who knew she had been much in his thought--to whom he hadfurnished ground for suspecting him of following her with evilintent--Sergius amongst others. In a word, he saw a necessity foraverting attention from himself in the connection. Here also his witwas willing and helpful. The moment the myrmidon dropped from theportico with news that the Princess was out in her chair unattended, hedecided she was proceeding to the wall.
"The gods are mindful of me!" he said, his blood leaping quick. "Now isthe time ripe, and the opportunity come!"
Looking at the sun, he fixed the hour, and reflected:
"Five o'clock--she is on the wall. Six o'clock--she is still there.Half after six--making up her mind to go home. Oh, but the air will besweet, and the sea lovely! Seven o'clock--she gives order, and theBulgarians signal my men on the fourth terrace. Pray Heaven the Russiankeep to his prayers or stay hearkening for my father's bell!... Here amI seen of these thousands. Later on--about the time she forsakes thewall--my presence shall be notorious along the streets from the Templeto Blacherne. Then what if the monk talks? May the fiend pave his pathwith stumbling-blocks and breaknecks! The city will not discredit itsown eyes."
The Epicureans, returning from the Hippodrome, reached their Templeabout half after five o'clock. The dispersal occupied another hour;shortly after, the regalia having been put away, and the tripods andbanners stored, Demedes called to his mounted assistants:
"My brothers, we have worked hard, but the sowing has been bounteousand well done. Philosophy in flowers, religion in sackcloth--that isthe comparison we have given the city. There will be no end to ourharvest. To-morrow our doors open to stay open. To-day I have onefurther service for you. To your horses and ride with me to the gate ofBlacherne. We may meet the Emperor."
They answered him shouting: "Live the Emperor!"
"Yes," cried Demedes, when the cheering was over, "by this time heshould be tired of the priests; and what is that but the change ofheart needful to an Epicurean?"
Laughing and joking, they mounted, eight of them, in flowers as when inthe Hippodrome. The sun was going down, but the streets were yet brightwith day. It was the hour when balconies overhanging the narrowthoroughfares were crowded with women and children, and the doors besetwith servants--the hour Byzantine gossips were abroad filling andunfilling their budgets. How the wooden houses trembled while thecavalcade went galloping by! What thousands of bright eyes peered downupon the cavaliers, attracted by the shouting and laughter! Now andthen some person would be a little late in attempting to cross beforehim; then with what grace Demedes would spur after him, his bow andbowstring for whip! And how the spectators shrieked with delight whenhe overtook the culprit, and wore the flowers out flogging him! Andwhen a balcony was low, and illuminated with a face fairer than common,how the gallant young riders plucked roses from their helms andshields, and tossed them in shouting:
"Largesse, Lady--largesse of thy smiles!"
"Look again! Another rose for another look!"
"From the brave to the fair!"
Thus to the gate of Blacherne. There they drew up, and saluted theofficer of the guard, and cheered: "Live Constantine! To the goodEmperor, long life!"
All the way Demedes rode with lifted visor. Returning through thetwilight, earlier in the close streets than in the open, he led hiscompany by the houses of Uel and the Prince of India. Something mightbe learned of what was going on with the little Princess by what wasgoing on there; and the many persons he saw in the street signifiedalarm and commotion.
"Ho, here!" he shouted, drawing rein. "What does this mean? Somebodydead or dying?"
"Uel, the master of the house, is afraid for his child. She should havebeen home before sundown. He is sending friends out to look for her."
There was a whole story in the answer, and the conspirator repressed acry of triumph, and rode on.