Black Amber

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  The very flush in her cheeks was giving her away, but she could not reach for the doorknob with his hand still upon it and she had no answer for him.

  “It is a very strange thing,” he mused. “This affinity for black amber. Anabel chose the jet at once when I offered her a tespih from my collection. I wonder why? Did you perhaps receive a letter from your sister before her death? Did she tell you anything that might be useful to you here in this house?”

  She was warned now. The smell of danger was in the air and she knew how careful she must be.

  “Yes—Anabel wrote me a letter. She wrote that she wanted me to come to Istanbul for a visit. I couldn’t make the trip at that time. Perhaps I failed her by not coming. So it was necessary for me to come now, even though too late.”

  “What you might call a sentimental pilgrimage?” He opened the door for her, bowing slightly. “I have enjoyed your visit,” he said, and there was a note of mockery in his voice.

  She thanked him again for the perfume and for his promise. The door did not close at once behind her, and she knew he must be watching as she climbed the stairs.

  The third floor seemed bleak and cold and empty when she reached it. The dim chandelier scarcely dispersed the shadows. But she had left a light burning in her own room, and there light and warmth welcomed her. Yasemin had waited. The mangal was freshly stoked with hot coals.

  Anabel’s eyes had been faintly green, Tracy thought. Was that one reason Miles so violently disliked this cat with green eyes?

  She sat down and uncorked the perfume vial again. Woods and moss and sweetness—gay as a light summer breeze. She had not thought enough of Dr. Murat Erim’s role in this picture. Samovar and sweet perfume and black amber—a pungent mixture of Turkish intrigue.

  At least she knew something about Dr. Erim that she had not known before. His very resistance to her question had given her the truth. Murat Erim had been in love with Anabel. Where that fact led she could not tell, except that it might account for Murat’s antagonism toward Miles Radburn. Miles’s own indifference toward the other man seemed to indicate either that Murat’s interest in his wife had remained ineffectual, or Miles did not care one way or the other. Somehow she found the latter hard to believe.

  In any event, each of those who knew that Tracy Hubbard was Anabel’s sister was intent in his own way upon seeing her go home as quickly as possible. This fact left her all the more certain that she was on the verge of some discovery. A discovery that would surely have to do with the ominous leitmotiv of black amber.

  Yet Miles, who still did not know her identity, was the one she feared most, and she could not yet bring herself to tell him the secret the others knew. She would do it. But not yet.

  The next few days passed quietly enough. Since she had a key to the study and Miles no longer minded if she worked in the room alone, she could go and come as she liked and was thus able to keep busy. None of her neat piles of paper had been disturbed again. No further untoward tricks had been played upon her. When it came to Turkish history, her education was growing apace. Miles had put a great deal of work into this book, she was discovering. At least into the first half of it. In recent months, it seemed, he had slowed down, perhaps losing the impetus of his first interest.

  Once or twice she managed to coax him into telling her something of the places he had visited around Turkey, about the discoveries that were still being made. Then his interest would seem to kindle. But it did not last and he would quickly fall back into listless plodding. Sometimes he would sit at his desk staring at nothing, or he would fling himself impatiently from the room and go for long walks along the Bosporus.

  For several afternoons in succession he gathered up his painting equipment and simply disappeared. Yet at these times he went on no distant trips, for his car remained in the garage and he would return too quickly to have been far away. After such disappearances restlessness and impatience would lie more heavily than ever upon him. He offered no explanation and it was not for Tracy to question him, however much she might wonder.

  Except for mealtime, and not always then, she saw little of Murat and Nursel. And she saw nothing at all of Sylvana.

  The day of her twenty-third birthday came, but she mentioned the fact to no one. Anabel had made much of every birthday of Tracy’s. Even after Tracy was grown, Anabel would remember and some surprise always arrived on time, revealing that affection and imagination had gone into the choosing of a present. Once or twice Anabel had been ill, but even then some token gift had come, to make Tracy laugh and think warmly of her sister.

  This would be the first birthday with no Anabel to remember it. The knowledge that all the good and lovely things Anabel had once been in the young Tracy’s affection were gone forever came sharply home, bringing with it a further realization of loss.

  Tracy was glad to spend the day working quietly and to avoid the rest of the household except for Miles. He was deep in one of his long silences and seemed not to know that she was about. During the afternoon he went out, as usual not mentioning where he was going. Tracy worked alone until Halide came with a not unexpected summons to Sylvana Erim’s quarters in the kiosk. Ever since her talk with Nursel several days before, Tracy had known this moment must come. Sylvana, being in possession of the truth, would not be content to let matters go indefinitely.

  As she followed Halide, Tracy touched the feather pin that was one of Anabel’s imaginative gifts. She felt closer to her sister today than she had felt for a long while.

  10

  Sylvana’s salon, though perfumed as always, was not aglow with lamplight this afternoon. Instead, all draperies had been drawn aside from the windows to allow full daylight to possess the room. Sylvana sat against piled cushions on her divan, not reclining as a Turkish lady of the past might have done, but with her straight French spine upright, and one arm resting upon an inlaid table beside her. The scene was arresting, not only because of the golden-haired woman in a saffron yellow gown, but because the Anatolian Samovar occupied the table beside her in all its copper splendor. The exterior had been burnished to a rich gleam, and highlights reflected the saffron of her dress.

  “Please come in, Miss Hubbard,” Sylvana said without moving her head. “It will not disturb Mr. Radburn if we speak together a little.”

  Today the scent of Parma violet engulfed her as Tracy entered the room. She saw that Miles had set up his easel near a window where the light was good and he stood with a brush in one hand, and palette in the other, his attention wholly concentrated on the canvas before him.

  So this was what his recent afternoon absences had meant. Apparently he was painting again—painting Sylvana Erim and her samovar. It did not help Tracy’s equanimity to find him there. With so present an opportunity, who was to know what Sylvana might have told him? Or what she might now say in front of him?

  Tracy took her place on the lower divan where she had sat before on the day when men from the villages had displayed their wares for Sylvana.

  “Mr. Radburn tells me that you are proving yourself of more help to him than he expected, and that your work progresses well.” Sylvana spoke without disturbing her pose.

  “I’m glad,” Tracy said, and ran the tip of her tongue along her lips.

  Miles paid no attention to either of them. He wore a frown between dark brows, as though he did not care for what he saw evolving upon the canvas.

  “Perhaps you know by now just how much longer this work will occupy you?” Sylvana questioned. “A week more, do you think? Two weeks?”

  “I’m not sure,” Tracy answered carefully. “Mr. Radburn has ordered a proper file for me from Istanbul. As soon as it comes I can arrange his material in folders with a cross index. In the meantime, I am retyping pages of manuscript that have been revised. There’s still a great deal to be done. I understand that much more information must be collected, many more drawings made before it will be possible to select those that are most representative.”

  She
was echoing Miles now, giving the very excuses he gave for continuing his work indefinitely.

  Sylvana remained outwardly tranquil, but one hand moved in her lap, the gesture faintly impatient.

  Miles spoke at once. “Keep your hand the way it was. I want that ring to show. It will be the only touch of green in the picture.”

  “He will not let me see,” Sylvana murmured plaintively to Tracy, and turned her hand so that the great square-cut emerald flashed, its light caught and thrown back, coppery-green, in the plump, burnished sides of the samovar. “He says I must not see this portrait until it is completed. But to return to the matter of your work, Miss Hubbard. Once this file you speak of is arranged, perhaps Mr. Radburn will then be able to keep his own work in order. Or perhaps I may be able to help him achieve such order myself.”

  The woman’s hands were quiet now, her blue eyes calm, but her lips had tightened just a little. It was not hard to imagine that Sylvana might harbor a special feeling for Miles Radburn. But if this was true, what was his response? Tracy found herself glancing at him quickly, almost anxiously.

  He laid down his brush and stepped back from the canvas, regarding it with disapproval. “Get to the point, Sylvana. Tell Tracy what it is you want.”

  “The English are so blunt,” Sylvana murmured, but there was a look about her that said a Frenchwoman might be blunt too if the purpose served her. “I will tell you then. Of course I do not wish to hurry you beyond reason, but I have invited several friends who, are coming from Paris to visit me. As you can see, your room and the one next to it, both being on the Bosporus side of the yali, are considered most attractive to visitors. I am sorry, but—”

  “You’ll want me to move, of course,” Tracy said.

  Sylvana permitted herself a slight smile. “I am glad that you understand. Perhaps you will not be sorry to leave this particular room, Miss Hubbard?”

  Tracy stiffened at this reminder that the room had been Anabel’s.

  “Why should she want to leave it?” Miles asked.

  The answer came blandly. “The sounds of the Bosporus, the cold, the damp, of course. For myself—I do not care for those rooms.”

  “If you need the space,” Tracy said, “I can return to Istanbul for the remainder of my stay. I believe there are buses that come out here. I can manage.”

  “That would be difficult and inconvenient,” Miles said. “How soon are these guests of yours coming, Sylvana?”

  Mrs. Erim raised an eyebrow in mild reproach, but she gave in with seeming grace. “It is possible that we can postpone this visit for a little while. I do not of course want to inconvenience you.”

  “That’s fine,” said Miles.

  Tracy found that her fingers were tightly interlaced in her lap. The battle had been won, with Miles’s help, but she did not feel particularly reassured. Sylvana Erim’s full arsenal of weapons would not be wasted in vain display. Tracy did not think that this apparent surrender meant a great deal. She left her place, presuming that she had been dismissed, but Miles spoke to her again.

  “Come here and take a look,” he ordered. “While I never let the subject of a portrait breathe over my shoulder and start objections before I am finished, I sometimes welcome an outside eye.”

  Though she wanted only to escape, Tracy stepped behind the easel to look at the picture. The portrait had not progressed very far, but the tones in which he meant to paint were indicated. There was to be no mistiness here. He was doing Sylvana Erim in shades of gold and copper that made the canvas gleam with light. Already the samovar’s shape was evident, and a saffron flow of color that was the form of the woman on the divan. There was no detail as yet, and he had not touched her face. Tracy wondered if he were merely playing with color at this point in order to postpone the moment when he must come to grips with his subject and really paint.

  “The thing doesn’t come to life,” Miles muttered. “The colors are good and so is the general composition—woman and samovar in that juxtaposition. But it doesn’t live.”

  “Dear Miles—you must not be discouraged too quickly,” Sylvana put in. “You have grown unused to the brush. This will come. You will recover your touch, and without doubt this portrait will bring you great fame.”

  “It’s not fame I’m thinking about,” Miles said. “It’s the loss of interest in painting anything at all that troubles me. Theoretically, I want to paint. But, specifically, I don’t find a subject that sets off the necessary spark of energy.”

  Miles’s inference that he found her less than inspiring did not please Sylvana. She looked as though she might burst through her veneer of calm, thus further irritating Miles. Tracy spoke quickly to distract them both to a safer topic.

  “How beautiful the samovar is now that it has been cleaned and polished. Are you planning to use it for serving coffee, Mrs. Erim?”

  “Never! But certainly not!” Sylvana protested. “One does not give a museum piece common usage. Even the polishing I have done myself. There was a green film in some places—which has prevented corrosion of course. But the samovar has received rough treatment. There are scratches and dents. I have disturbed it as little as possible. It is enough to beautify the exterior.”

  Tracy was studying its detail for herself, and a small amusing circumstance caught her eye.

  “Do you see?” she said to Miles. “There in the samovar?”

  He stared at the great gleaming thing and a faint quirk lifted one corner of his mouth. “That’s rather interesting,” he said and picked up his brush.

  Tracy stepped back, not daring to watch him. The reflection in the copper curves of the samovar was not flattering to Mrs. Erim. If he chose to develop it, she would be even less pleased.

  Sylvana stirred against her cushions. “What is it? You must tell me what you see.”

  “Don’t wriggle, please,” Miles said. “I’ll give you a chance to rest in a moment. Let me catch this first. And don’t ask questions. If I pull it off, you’ll see it in plenty of time.”

  Sylvana sighed and settled back. The emerald winked on her finger and repeated its green fire in the samovar’s mocking reflection. Tracy noted for the first time that just below the tall chimney a circlet of blue beads had been hung.

  “Why is it wearing a necklace?” she asked.

  Sylvana smiled. “That is Halide’s notion. It is the only way I can get the girl to come into the same room with the samovar. She thinks the blue will halt its evil emanations.”

  “I like the beads there,” Miles said. “A good Turkish touch. I’m not sure Halide isn’t right about the emanations. Nor am I sure the blue beads are strong enough magic to protect us.”

  He worked for a while longer and then stopped with an impatient gesture and began to put away his painting things.

  “Nothing comes right today, and I’ve tired you enough for this sitting, Sylvana. Will you give me a hand with this stuff, Tracy?”

  As Tracy moved to help him, Sylvana spoke with calm authority. “I wish to see Miss Hubbard for a few moments, please. I will send her to you later.”

  It was clear that the unpleasantness for which Tracy had braced herself earlier was coming, and she waited, standing once more with her thumbs hooked into the belt of her dress in her attitude of resistance. She caught Miles’s amused glance upon her before he took his equipment away, but that merely strengthened her determination not to be put down, no matter what was coming.

  As he left, Nursel slipped into the room in the manner of one who did not expect to be sent away, and Tracy wondered if she had come to watch the final performance, in which Anabel’s sister was to be sent home.

  Idly the girl paused beside a table where a box stood open. “I see you have received the new shipment of tespihler from Hasan Effendi,” she said.

  Sylvana nodded carelessly. “The demand for them in New York seems to be growing. I can help the young man a little by buying such things from him.”

  Nursel dipped her hand into the box and scoop
ed up a bright handful of beads. Tracy watched as they slipped through her fingers. Among the blue and red and brown she caught a brief gleam of shiny black before the beads clattered into the box.

  “Perhaps there are other ways in which Ahmet Effendi’s son could be helped,” Nursel said without looking at Sylvana.

  Tracy paid little attention to the older woman’s indifferent reply. The dark refrain had been sounded again. Meaningless, or otherwise? There had been no black amber among the beads Hasan had shown them in the shop. At what point, in what manner had these been added? Their presence would seem of no significance if it were not for Tracy’s memory of a voice on the telephone and the desperate whistling of a nursery tune.

  Sylvana’s attention returned to Tracy. She did not ask her to sit down, but spoke out frankly. “Murat has told me that you are the sister of that unfortunate girl who caused us so much trouble, so much grief.”

  “That’s true,” said Tracy and felt again the dryness of her mouth. “I’m Anabel’s sister.”

  “May I ask why you have come to Istanbul without giving us this information in which we would all naturally be interested?”

  Stiffly Tracy repeated the reasons she had given to Murat and to Nursel, and nothing she said rang convincingly in her own ears. Sylvana listened with calm attention, and the samovar beside her gave back an oddly malevolent reflection.

  “You expect us to believe this story?” she said when Tracy finished.

  “It’s all true,” said Tracy, knowing very well that it was true, but that it was not enough of the truth.

  “I have thought of this for several days,” Sylvana said. “I have taken no action because I wished to consider the matter fully. Since the truth is now known to everyone in this house, it would seem natural to me that you must now inform Mr. Radburn. But you have not done so?”

  Tracy shook her head and stood her ground. She could only hope that the churning of unreasonable fright that had risen in her so suddenly did not show. The sight of black amber beads had been unnerving.