Black Amber

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Sylvana gaped at him in horror. She seemed to have lost the power to speak, even the power to stand, and she might have fallen if there had not been a divan for her to sink upon.

  “We know all that is to be known,” Murat continued ruthlessly. “We know that you have ceased to trust your accomplice and that he has tried to escape today, lest you betray him entirely.”

  Miles broke in. “This is a pack of lies!” he cried, and took a step toward Murat. At once Hasan stood warningly at his elbow.

  Tracy glanced at Nursel and saw that the girl had shrunk back in her chair as though she wanted to take no part in what was happening.

  Murat ignored Miles’s outburst. “You can see that we have enough evidence to put you in prison for many years,” he told Sylvana.

  “Perhaps I shall go for the police now, Doktor?” Hasan inquired, his tone false. In spite of Murat’s threats about prison, Tracy suspected that the police would not be informed. This was a further ruse to control Sylvana.

  Dr. Erim shook his head. “Not yet. Perhaps I will offer this woman an alternative. I do not wish to have the reputation of my house disgraced, or my work discredited with the government. I wish only to have Sylvana abdicate her claim to my brother’s property and wealth. If she will sign over all that belongs rightfully to me and my sister, I am willing to let her go free.”

  Miles’s outrage was evident. “You mean that even if she were guilty of narcotics smuggling, you’d release her, allow her to leave the country without punishment so she could commence her operations elsewhere?”

  “A strange question,” Murat said, “coming from you. I do not care what she does, so long as it is stopped in this house. The punishment will, I think, be enough. I have been waiting for this moment for a long time. The signal of the black amber has appeared recently. On the dark of the moon a boat comes down the Bosporus to the ruins. You think I do not know this, Sylvana? Many times when the moon is right I have watched, but nothing happens. This time I go to the palace ruins and find Ahmet Effendi there also. My good and faithful Ahmet. He too has been watching. He tells me that strange men have brought the box ashore to hide it in the broken floor of the house. When they leave, he opens it and finds crude opium from which Sylvana makes the heroin she sends abroad.”

  Sylvana cried out, and he silenced her with a gesture.

  “On this night when I come upon Ahmet Effendi, there is the open box at his feet. I send him back to the house while I examine everything for myself. At the yali Ahmet Effendi has attempted to pick up some of the articles Sylvana meant to send from the country. He wishes to see if heroin has been hidden in them. He has taken the strip of calligraphy as well, to study it for the code we know is being so cleverly used. Of course Mr. Radburn is angry when he finds what Ahmet Effendi is trying to do. Perhaps it is you, Miss Hubbard, who are helping these two—you who are being used, as your sister was used?”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Tracy cried.

  Murat went smoothly on. “You can see that I know everything. Ahmet, Hasan, Nursel—all have worked together with me to expose this woman and her accomplices. Now there will be an end to such things in this house.”

  Sylvana started to rise from the divan, and Hasan stepped forward to thrust her back with a none-too-gentle hand, apparently eager to reinstate himself in Murat’s favor. At once Ahmet spoke to his son in Turkish, clearly reproving him. Then, paying no attention to Murat, the old man went to Sylvana and addressed her gently in his own language, as if he were reassuring her, as if he still remembered that she was the cherished wife of a master to whom he had been devoted.

  Murat watched, in displeasure, but he did not reproach the old man.

  “There’s a point you seem to have missed, Dr. Erim,” Miles said, speaking more quietly than before. “You and I appear to be working on the same side without recognizing the fact. Why else do you suppose I’ve remained here since my wife’s death, except to learn the truth?”

  Murat threw him a look in which there was a certain triumph. He was paying Miles off, Tracy thought. Paying him off with malice because of Anabel, with whom Murat had for a time been in love. She realized with growing dismay that Murat might not even care whether the words he spoke about Miles’s complicity were true or not, providing he could injure the other man.

  “Be quiet!” he told Miles. “I do not care for more of your lying words. When I am done with Sylvana, your turn will come, my friend. For the moment you will go to one of the empty rooms on this floor and remain there. Hasan Effendi—you will guard him well?”

  To Tracy’s dismay, Murat took the revolver from the pocket of his jacket and handed it to Hasan. That young man looked enormously pleased as he gestured Miles from the room.

  Murat did not wait to see them go, but turned at once to his sister. “You have the documents ready for Sylvana?”

  Nursel brought forward a folder of papers she had held in her lap. Sylvana’s eyes had a blank, glazed look as if she did not wholly comprehend what was happening. Her fingers would not grasp the pen Murat tried to thrust into her hand. Ahmet and Nursel stood watching. For the moment, no one was thinking about Tracy Hubbard.

  She had remained near the door, and she slipped through it unnoticed in the wake of Miles and Hasan. Across the salon Miles had been ushered into a room and Hasan stood in the doorway, the revolver held confidently in one hand, his back to Tracy.

  She ran downstairs, pushing past a startled Halide and out into the garden. She had no plan, no purpose—she wanted only to get away before someone remembered her and she too was imprisoned in that house.

  The familiar path beckoned and she ran through newly leafing woods toward the side gate. Out on the road, she turned from the direction of the palace ruins and hurried toward the village. Perhaps there would be someone there to whom she could turn for help. Perhaps she could find a telephone and call Istanbul. Or go to the police.

  But as she walked, turning these plans over in her mind, their futility grew increasingly clear. The barrier of language was too great for her to hurdle. The red tape of going to any authority would be immense, or of putting a call through from a place where no one spoke English. The time which any sort of action would take defeated her.

  She did not know how much Murat might be concealing in his accusation of Sylvana. She did not know how far he might go in order to silence Miles. Certainly there had been a threat in his words. The stake was high for all of these people. Once rid of Sylvana and her hold upon the Erim wealth, they all stood to gain. Even Hasan, whose help with his education had been cut off when the older brother died and there was little money left for Murat and Nursel. Under other circumstances Nursel might have been an ally to whom Tracy could turn for help. As things stood, she would certainly do as her brother and Ahmet and Hasan ordered her to do. Aside from her Turkish heritage of obedience to the male, she too stood to gain. Once Tracy had hoped to sting her into action, but that hope had dimmed completely.

  Only Tracy Hubbard was still free to stop what was happening. Yet she could think of no possible way in which she might take action swiftly.

  More and more she distrusted the scene she had witnessed in Sylvana’s room. As she followed the road, her mind turned it over again and again, allowing it to spin through her thoughts like a reel of film that could be replayed while she watched and listened to it all over again. The conviction was growing in her that something was vitally wrong with both picture and sound. Sharply, acutely wrong. Not just because of Murat’s false accusation that Miles was as guilty as he claimed Sylvana to be. Something was missing. Something that Tracy could not find in Sylvana’s shocked and helpless state, in Nursel’s downcast eyes and uneasy manner, or even in Murat’s triumphant anger. The thing that had not appeared was the face of evil. The face that Miles had painted in the samovar reflection.

  She had reached the streets of the little village that ran uphill from the water. This was apparently the day for an open market, and she saw that stalls had
been set up, displaying fruits and vegetables, articles of clothing, all sorts of oddments. Her attention was solicited by eager sellers as she went by, and on any other day she would have stopped to look. Today she passed the stalls without pause. Once she nearly stepped on one of the numerous cats that abound in every Turkish city and village. The animal spat at her and leaped away.

  When she had escaped the bustle of the market, she found a stone wall where she could sit undisturbed in the sun. She knew that she could not linger idly. Somehow she must act. After what she had just witnessed, she could not believe in Sylvana’s guilt. And from the gentle way Ahmet had treated her, she did not think he believed in it either. Miles had painted the evil he saw in the crime, but he had not painted Sylvana.

  Whose, then, was the face she must identify? Whose was the wickedness that had returned Anabel to the taking of drugs, played tricks to frighten and threaten and eventually destroy by driving her to her death? Tracy had not seen that face as yet. The mask was still in place, the identity hidden. Yet there must be some way in which to snatch the mask away and expose the truth. But how—how?

  A small, plaintive mewing sounded nearby. Tracy turned, startled, as a white cat sprang onto the wall to sit inquiringly behind her. A cat not unlike poor Yasemin, though perhaps a little larger and not as well groomed. It was the same breed, however, and its eyes were as green as the eyes of Anabel’s cat.

  Tracy put out a coaxing hand and the cat did not leap away. It seemed more friendly than Yasemin and was willing to come close and rub its head against her hand. She stroked it gently and talked to it for a moment or two. Once it looked up at her as though the sounds she made were puzzling and unfamiliar. Still, it was a friendly cat and after a moment it stepped into her lap and settled down to a pleasant purring.

  The beginning of a plan stirred in Tracy’s mind. What if there was a way, after all, to get behind the mask? Here was a chance—wild and fantastic, perhaps, but still a chance. And nothing else had offered itself. She bent above the purring white creature in her lap.

  The cat offered no resistance, but hung limply willing when she picked it up. It cradled itself against her shoulder with none of Yasemin’s suspicion and allowed itself to be carried as Tracy started back toward the yali.

  She had no knowledge of custom when it came to Turkish cats. They swarmed everywhere and were always being chased from restaurants. But if she seemed to be kidnaping somebody’s pet, there might be an outcry that she would have no way of answering. However, she met no one as she followed back ways to avoid the busy area of the market. The cat, undoubtedly, would find its own way home from the yali, once she set it free.

  When she reached the road, she hurried so fast that once or twice the cat set its claws uncertainly into her shoulder. Tracy soothed it and went on without slackening her pace. When she neared the gate, she put the cat under her coat, where it made no objection to the warm shelter that hid it from view.

  She avoided Sylvana’s kiosk and went directly to the yali, passing no one on the way. She climbed the stairs to the second-floor salon where, clearly, she had the upper house to herself. Everyone must still be across the way in the hillside house. The test she considered must be made as unobtrusively as possible and with only one person at a time. Perhaps that very fact made the whole idea impossible. How, for instance, was she to see Sylvana alone?

  For the moment she could only wait and do nothing. Sooner or later she would be missed, and the likely place to look for her was here. She held the white cat in her lap, shielded by a fold of her coat, whispering to it soothingly, petting it into a continuous purr of contentment.

  The big, empty salon stretched in echoing shadows about her, replete with the usual creakings that haunted the old wooden house. The big green porcelain stove stood cheerless and unlighted, and the room seemed damper and colder than the outdoors.

  When steps sounded on the marble corridor below and someone started up the stairs, Tracy sat up expectantly, breathing more quickly, her hand tightening without intention upon the warm fluff of the cat. But it was only Nursel coming up the stairs. Of course she was the messenger they would send, once they remembered Tracy Hubbard. She drew the coat more closely about the cat and waited.

  As Nursel came around the bend of the stairs, she saw Tracy sitting there, and paused. Her eyes moved evasively from Tracy’s own, and it was easy to guess that the girl was torn by feelings that warred within her and left her not without a sense of guilt. If only it was possible to play upon this guilt.

  “My brother wishes to see you,” Nursel said in a low voice.

  “Then let him come here,” Tracy said. “I’m tired of being ordered around. I’m not guilty of any wrongdoing and I’m not a prisoner in this house. Or am I?”

  Nursel sighed. “It is better if you do as Murat wishes. He will not like it if I return without you.”

  “That’s your problem,” said Tracy boldly. “Are you planning to take me to him by force, perhaps?” She braced herself mockingly in her chair. She did not believe Nursel would attempt any such thing. With all the stubbornness in her Tracy meant to stay where she was and force them to come to her—one at a time, if that was possible. Nursel moved somewhat uncertainly toward her, and at that moment the cat mewed in protest against a hand that had forgotten to be gentle. The Turkish girl stopped in her tracks.

  “What was that?” she asked in surprise.

  The moment for the first test had come. “Why, it’s Yasemin, of course,” said. Tracy and drew back her coat.

  The white cat sat up and stared at Nursel out of sea-green eyes. Then it struggled free of Tracy’s restraint and sprang through the air. Nursel froze where she stood, and Tracy saw her face, saw the reaction of shock, the rousing of superstitious terror. Nursel started backward out of the cat’s path, crying out in fear. Without warning, the mask was down and the face behind it revealed. The thing that Miles had painted in the samovar reflection was exhibited in all its frightening reality for anyone to read.

  Tracy touched her tongue to dry lips. “Did you think you could send Anabel twice to her death? Did you think she would not return to accuse you? You’ll never be free in all your life of what you’ve done!”

  Nursel recovered herself and clapped her hands furiously at the cat. There was a wild brightness in her eyes. “This is not Yasemin!” she cried.

  “Of course it isn’t,” said Tracy softly. “How could it be? You drowned Anabel’s cat in that dreadful way and left her for me to find. You thought you could frighten me into running away, didn’t you? It was you all along who played tricks on Anabel, and then on me. On Anabel because she had discovered what you were doing. She knew it wasn’t Sylvana. Or your brother Murat, whom you’ve duped so wickedly. It was you who gave Anabel drugs to keep her quiet. You could control her for a while that way, couldn’t you? And you managed to poison her mind against Miles. But what did you do in the end to send her to her death? You might as well tell me, Nursel, since I know everything else.”

  The wildness had not died from Nursel’s eyes, but she veiled them now with lowered lids and made an effort to control herself. “We cannot speak together here. If you wish to know the answer to such questions, then come to my room.”

  She circled the cat warily and walked toward her bedroom door. For a moment Tracy hesitated. It would be better to remain here in the open, but she was not particularly afraid of the other girl now that she knew where true danger lay. There was much more she needed to know. As yet she had no proof of Nursel’s guilt that anyone else would accept. She bent to pick up the cat and followed Nursel into her bedroom.

  She had never been in this room before, and she found it crowded with huge black walnut furniture and heavy draperies that shut out the sun. She blinked for a moment in this murky twilight, trying to orient herself. Nursel went to a cabinet across the room and took from it some object wrapped in a handkerchief. When she turned she made no effort to veil what Tracy had seen in her eyes.


  “You are as foolish as your sister!” Nursel said. “How I have despised you! Telling me always that I am meek and too easily managed—that I can be used by anyone. When it is I who have used these others. They are not so clever as they think. Murat believes what I wish him to believe. Sylvana walks stupidly into every trap I have set. Hasan kneels at my feet and will do all that I ask for love of me—though I let him have the illusion that he rules. Of course it was I who devised the calligraphy code and made the changes. And now I must deal with you—another silly Anabel!”

  She whisked away the handkerchief and Tracy saw the thing in her hands. It was an object that had not only the look of evil, but the look of death. Yet, strangely, she was not afraid. With sudden clarity she knew her own identity. She was Tracy Hubbard and she would not flee across the Bosporus in a boat she could not handle, as Anabel had done in her terror. This was why Anabel had gone, of course—the death Nursel held in her hands. Miles’s words flashed through Tracy’s mind: “A tenth of a gram will kill.” Anabel must have known it would come to this. And she had lacked the strength and courage to stand and fight.

  Tracy found that she was keyed to a pitch of excitement so heady that it filled her with a queer confidence. Knowing that death was inches away, she did not move. She had only herself to depend on. Herself—all of one piece, as Miles had told her she must be.

  The door behind her stood open, but if she tried to escape, the other girl would be upon her at once. If she so much as opened her mouth to scream for help, the plunge of the needle would come. She had only words to fight with. Perhaps with words there was still a chance.

  “Anabel told me about the black amber, you know,” she said almost conversationally. “That was the signal, wasn’t it? Of opium coming down the Bosporus?”