Uneasiness began to grow in Tracy’s mind. This was something Miles should know about. And he must be told before Sylvana sent the tube off in the mail and it could not be examined.
She worked for a little while longer and then told Sylvana she would go upstairs to see if there was anything Miles wanted of her.
Sylvana objected as though she could not bear to agree with any suggestion Tracy might make. “He has promised me we could have your help today. We have only today and tomorrow to finish this work. The shipment must be ready to be sent at the proper time. I myself will deliver it to the airport—where it will go by air freight.”
“Perhaps I’ll come back,” Tracy said.
She went upstairs to Miles’s study. The door was closed and she stood before it a moment, waiting for the thumping of her heart to quiet. She detested this excitement in herself at the mere prospect of seeing him. She would have none of it. Where Anabel had gone, she would not follow. But when She rapped on the door the sound had a hollow and hesitant ring to her ears.
Miles called, “Come in.”
She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” she said.
He sat at his desk with a sheaf of manuscript fanned out before him. There was no welcome in his eyes as he looked up. Not even in the beginning had she seen his expression so remote, so coldly forbidding.
“I have nothing to say to you,” he told her. “I have only one thing to ask—that you go home at once. There’s nothing else I want of you.”
It was difficult to stand her ground, when he looked like that, but she fought back an inclination to retreat.
“I won’t leave until I have a chance to talk to you. I want to tell you why I came. About what brought me here.”
“Why you came or what brought you here has no interest for me. I’ve no taste for hoax players. You had only to say who you were the moment you arrived.”
“And what would you have done if I had?” Tracy demanded.
“I’d have refused to let you stay, naturally. If you came as far as this house, I would have sent you home before you took off your hat.”
“That’s exactly what I thought!” Indignation restored her courage. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. I intended to stay.”
He returned his attention to the papers before him, waiting for her to go. But there was still something she must report, whether he liked it or not.
She spoke quickly. “Ahmet took your strip of calligraphy to his room yesterday without telling anyone. I think it’s possible that he added some characters of his own to the script. Sylvana is going to mail it and I thought you ought to know.”
He left his desk before she had stopped speaking and went past her on his way downstairs. She followed him to the stair bend to watch the scene below.
Sylvana and Nursel turned from their work in surprise as he broke in upon them.
“I’d like to have another look at that calligraphy piece before you send it off,” he told Sylvana.
She waved the cardboard tube at him. “But I have already packed it to mail. I am about to seal it.”
“Let me see it before you do.” He held out his hand.
For a moment it seemed that Sylvana might not oblige. Then she gave Miles a brittle smile and handed him the tube.
He drew out the rolled sheet of heavy paper, uncurling it so that he could study it carefully. Tracy leaned upon the rail and watched.
After a moment he nodded. “Something has been added. Something I didn’t put there. Halide”—he turned to the little maid—“find Ahmet Effendi. Bring him here.”
Sylvana objected quickly. “I have already spoken with the man. He has been reprimanded for what happened last night. I do not wish to disturb him further.”
Miles repeated his words in Turkish and Halide flew toward the stairs, with only a backward glance of apology for Sylvana.
“I’m sorry to interfere,” Miles said quietly, “but when I turn out a piece of work I don’t want it tampered with by amateurs. Did neither you nor Nursel notice anything different about it?”
Sylvana’s usual manner of calm affection toward Miles had begun to show signs of cracking. “It looks exactly as before to me,” she insisted. “As for Nursel—she would not know. She is not familiar with this work as I am.”
At that moment Sylvana glanced toward the stairs and saw Tracy leaning on the rail. The flat blue surface of her eyes took on a baleful expression. She had an outlet now for mounting tension.
“You are a maker of trouble!” she accused. “Whatever this is, it is a small matter and we do not need such a disturbance about it.”
“Miss Hubbard is going home,” Miles said. “She’s going back to New York as soon as I can send her there. She will cause no further disturbance of any kind.”
Nursel stared at the star sapphire on her finger, aloof from the discussion, while Sylvana looked pleased. “It is time you agreed,” she said.
When Ahmet appeared, Miles showed him the script, pointing to the hatchwork in the corner, to the curving lines that had been added. “What is this? What do you mean by tampering with my work?”
Ahmet understood English well enough when he pleased, but he answered with the Turkish gesture of the negative, throwing his head back abruptly. He had seen nothing, done nothing, added nothing. Allah ashkina—for the sake of God, would they not believe in his innocence?
Miles shrugged and let him go. “He doesn’t mean to talk. Nevertheless, someone has put in several additional characters and I’m not at all pleased.”
As Ahmet turned away, Tracy saw again the look of dark resentment he gave Miles. A look to which Miles seemed indifferent.
Sylvana was increasingly displeased. “Is this of consequence? I am sure my purchaser in New York will not know the difference. I cannot believe these small scratches have so much significance.”
Miles studied the script for a moment longer. “Perhaps you’re right. If it’s important for you to mail this at once, then I won’t object.”
Sylvana’s smile rewarded him, though it seemed a bit frayed around the edges and the flat blue gaze was without warmth. “Thank you, my good friend. It is important to me only because I do not like to disappoint the buyer who has ordered this calligraphy and has someone waiting to purchase it from his store.”
“Very well,” said Miles. “But after this, let’s have no fancy additions to what I’ve done.”
Sylvana seemed about to answer sharply, but when he had rolled the script and put it carefully into the tube, taking his time, she accepted it without a word. Miles went upstairs past Tracy. She had to hurry to catch him before he shut himself into his study again. She reached the door just in time.
“You’d better watch Ahmet,” she said breathlessly. “He dislikes you intensely. I wouldn’t feel comfortable if someone looked at me like that.”
“Thank you, Miss Hubbard.” Miles was elaborately polite. “I must take lessons from Ahmet Effendi. I’d like to learn his method of frightening at a glance. Then perhaps I could persuade you to go home without further delay.”
He went into his study and she found the door closed in her face. She stood looking at it stupidly for a moment. Then she went back to her room and lay down on the bed, feeling more frightened than she had at any other time in this house. Her fear was not for herself, but for this man who openly detested her and would not recognize his own possible danger.
15
For the rest of that day Tracy was of little help to Sylvana. She did not need to placate the woman now, or to keep to any commitment Miles might have made in offering her services. Nor did she mean to accept the order from him to go home at once. She would stay until they sent her home forcibly. Now there was something she must still do this very day.
In the afternoon she picked up Yasemin for company, and she and the white cat went again to the ruins of the Sultan Valide’s palace. Today it seemed a melancholy place,
for all that the sun was shining. At least it was empty. There seemed to be no one here ahead of her and she had no sense of a hidden watcher. She set Yasemin down and the cat ran off on a hunting expedition, while Tracy began her own search. There were only two places she did not attempt to investigate. She avoided the veranda with its rotting wooden arches and broken roof, since it looked to be an exposed and unlikely hiding place. Its floor overhung the water, and she had no wish to trust its boards beneath her feet. The stairs and second story looked even more treacherous, and she doubted that even Anabel would go up there. Room by room, however, she went through the lower floor of the house.
She suspected that her search would be useless since Murat had apparently done a good deal of looking himself, without result. Still, there was the chance that some inspiration would come to her, that she might find some answer, simply because she had once known Anabel.
The main difficulty, of course, was that she did not know what she searched for. Had Anabel hidden something in this place, or perhaps discovered something hidden here? What other “secret” was possible?
If it was a hiding place she looked for, a thousand crannies offered concealment. Rotted floors presented pockets by the score. Stone crumbled and could be moved to form apertures. Plaster had fallen away, leaving bare lath exposed, offering possible compartments in the very walls. Only marble stood solid, and even that was cracked in places.
When she had wandered outdoors in the garden, she found that vines and weeds and newly budding shrubbery grew in a vast tangle, with secret concealment likely almost anywhere. What particular place among all these would have suggested itself to Anabel—if, indeed, this was the answer?
Tracy poked here and there in a desultory fashion, with no inspiration coming to her. Her efforts were as useless as Murat’s had apparently been. She wondered again what his interest in such a search could be. What did he know? How deeply had he been involved with Anabel?
Once more she stepped through the marble doorway and was in time to see Yasemin vanish into the same large hole in the floor of the main room that she had hidden in when Murat had threatened her. A place, perhaps, with which she was familiar. With quickening interest, Tracy called to her and Yasemin mewed in plaintive alarm from within the hole. Today going in had apparently been easier than coming out.
Tracy knelt on a board she thought least likely to crack beneath her weight, and reached gingerly into the splintery hollow beneath. Something blocked the way. It seemed to be something loose that must have moved when Yasemin crept in, wedging itself against her exit as she turned around inside.
Tracy scolded gently as she worked the object free. “You could get caught in there and starve to death, you foolish little cat. No one would ever know where you were. You must be more careful in your hunting.”
The object felt like an oblong box with a slippery plastic wrapping around it. Excitement grew in her and she worked earnestly until it came free in her hands. She lifted out the closed wooden box and laid it upon the floor beside her. At once Yasemin sprang free, her white fur streaked with grime and splinters of wood. She went off a little way and set herself busily to work, washing and tidying.
How fitting that Anabel’s cat should be the one to lead her sister to whatever had been hidden in this place. Tracy stared at her find. The package was the size of several cartons of cigarettes. She pulled off the plastic wrapping and found that the wooden lid had already been pried loose and came off easily. Inside were a number of lumps of some substance she could not identify. The stuff looked rather like thick pats of porous, yellow-brown dough. Or even like dried manure. When she crumbled a bit of the substance it came away in her fingers. She pressed together a small wad the size of her thumb and wrapped it in a handkerchief. Then she sniffed her fingers and turned her head away. The odor was sickeningly sweet.
What this box and its contents meant, Tracy could not be sure. Someone had hidden it here. Ahmet, perhaps? Had the fishing boat that had veered in toward shore last night come, not to land at the yali, but farther upstream at the marble steps of a ruined palace?
It was time to go—and quickly. She had discovered something she had not been meant to find. Perhaps not Anabel’s secret, but someone else’s. Perhaps something far more dangerous and illicit than anything Anabel could have been involved in. A faint illumination, a suspicion was beginning to form at the back of her mind. She shivered as she replaced the wooden lid and plastic covering, slid the parcel into its hollow in the floor. She hoped she could approximate its original position so that no one would guess it had been moved. The small lump of yellowish-brown stuff was in her pocket, and she wondered if her whole person was permeated with the smell. She had better go home at once and get rid of it.
She was suddenly aware of her exposed position and she glanced around hastily. Overhead the sun shone through a break where roof and upper floor had crumbled into ruin. The empty palace rustled faintly with its own sounds of deterioration. Birds sang undisturbed and the Bosporus lapped gently nearby. Otherwise stillness lay upon the ruins and their surrounding vegetation. Yasemin sat unconcernedly washing her fur with an energetic pink tongue. The cat, being a nervous creature, would have told her if any watcher was about.
Nevertheless, she felt increasingly uneasy. All too well she remembered other encounters in this place. The very first time she had come here, Ahmet had appeared suddenly from the veranda. That was one place she had not looked into. She glanced toward it hastily now, but all seemed quiet and at peace. The wide arch of a doorway opened upon the overhanging gallery above the water. Through splintered wooden balustrades the Bosporus was visible. Examining the expanse for the first time at floor level, Tracy saw something that brought a catch to her breath.
The toe portion of a man’s shoe, sole upward, protruded its tip past the place where the arch met the floor. It lay motionless as though the shoe had been tossed there carelessly. Moving as quietly as she could, Tracy went toward it.
As she peered around the arch she saw the man who lay there face down upon the broken floor. One leg was fully extended, the other drawn up to his body. His head lay cradled in the crook of an arm and he was fast asleep.
Tracy fled the house, picking Yasemin up on her way. Out upon the road she met no one, but she hurried as though pursued. She had recognized the man who lay sleeping on the veranda. He was Hasan, the son of Ahmet.
The side gate to the Erim grounds stood open when she reached it, and Miles Radburn leaned against a gatepost, smoking his pipe and staring expressionlessly at the sky.
She went toward him and at once the white cat sprang out of her arms, streaking through the trees toward home. Tracy came to a quick decision. From her pocket she took the wadded handkerchief and held it out to him.
“Will you tell me what this is, please?” she asked, sounding stiff and unfriendly as she remembered their last encounter.
He caught the odor at once. “Good Lord! What have you been into?”
He opened the handkerchief and looked at the contents with an expression that told her nothing. “You’d better tell me where you found this.”
She told him exactly and he listened without comment. From his pocket he drew a tobacco pouch and put the lump, handkerchief and all, into it. Then he rubbed his fingers with tobacco until he had satisfied himself that the odor was sufficiently disguised.
“You probably smell of it thoroughly,” he said. “You’d better go back to the house and take a bath.”
“Or douse myself with perfume the way Ahmet did last night?” Tracy said.
Miles made no reply. He was staring at the sky again as though he had not heard her.
She spoke impatiently. “Just tell me what this stuff is. You owe me that, at least.”
He grimaced. “You don’t know how to stay out of trouble, do you? All right—it’s opium. Crude opium, my innocent. Now that you know, what use do you mean to make of the information?”
This was the inkling that had sti
rred at the back of her mind. Turkey, she knew, grew a good portion of the opium poppies of the world as a legitimate business intended for medical use only.
“Then this means that Ahmet is mixed up in a smuggling operation?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” said Miles remotely.
“His son Hasan is there now. I found him sleeping on the veranda.”
“And I suppose you wakened him to announce your find?” Miles asked.
“Of course not! I got out of there as fast as I could.”
“May I congratulate you on such excellent judgment,” said Miles.
She had no time to be angry with him now. She went on, half to herself. “I’ve read about Turkey’s exporting of opium. But the poppies are grown under government control, aren’t they?”
“At a place called Afyon Karahisar,” Miles informed her. “Afyon means poppy. It’s a long way from here. Three hundred miles, at least.”
“And this isn’t the season for poppies,” Tracy mused.
“All the better time for moving the stuff after it’s been secretly stored for a few months. Farmers have been known to withhold a portion of their production for greater profit. Inspectors have been known to take bribes. The stuff is easily hidden and could be moved gradually toward Istanbul and the outer world. The undercover drug traffic is always a worry to Turkey. In the last few years everything has tightened up and all precautions increased. But still a quantity slips through.”
“What are you going to do?” Tracy asked. “Will you call the police and turn this information over to them?”
“I shall do nothing,” Miles said, his tone coolly remote. “I advise you to do the same.”
She could only gape at him in dismay. “But I should think—”
Black Amber Page 21