“Will you, or will you not, tell me what became of Alexander Patoff, whom you caused to be seized in or near Agia Sophia, one night in the last week of the month of Ramazán before the last?”
Laleli’s beady eyes were fixed on his as he spoke, with an air of surprise, not unmingled with curiosity, and strongly tinged with contempt.
“I know nothing about him,” she answered steadily. “I never caused him to be seized. I never heard of him.”
“Then here is my medicine,” said Gregorios, coldly. “It is a terrible medicine. Listen to the pleasure of his Majesty the Hunkyar.” He rose, and pressed the document to his lips and forehead.
“What!” cried Laleli, in sudden terror, her voice gathering strength from her fright.
“It is an order, dated to-day, to arrest Laleli Khanum Effendi, and to convey her to a place of safety, where she shall await the further commands of his Majesty.”
“It is false,” murmured the Khanum. But her white fingers twisted each other nervously. “It is a forgery.”
“So false,” replied Balsamides, with cold contempt, “that the adjutant is waiting outside, and a troop of horse is stationed within call to conduct you to the place of safety aforesaid. I can force you to lay his Majesty’s signature on your forehead and to follow me to my carriage, if I please.”
“Allah alone is great!” groaned the Khanum, her head sinking on her breast in despair. “Kadèr, — it is my fate.”
“But if you will deliver me this man alive, I will save you out of the hands even of the Hunkyar. I will say that you are too ill to be removed from your house, — unless I give you my medicine,” he added, flattering her hopes to the last.
“Give me time. I know nothing — what shall I say?” muttered Laleli incoherently, her thin fingers twitching at the stuff of her snuff-colored gown, while as she bent her head her short, coarse, black hair fell over her yellow cheeks, and concealed her expression from Gregorios.
“You have not much time,” he answered. “The pain will soon seize you more sharply than before. If I arrest you, your sentence will be banishment to Arabia, — not for this crime, but for that other which you thought was pardoned. If I leave you here without help, my sentence upon you is pain, pain and agony until you die. It is already returning; I can see it in your face.”
“I must have time to consider,” said Laleli, her old firmness returning, as it generally did in moments of great difficulty. She looked up, tossing back her hair. “How long will you give me?”
“Till the morning light is first gray in the sky above Beikos,” replied Gregorios, without hesitation. “But for your own sake you had better decide sooner.”
Laleli was silent. She must have had the strongest reasons for refusing to tell the secret of Alexander’s fate, for the penalty of silence was a fearful one. She felt herself to be dying, but the morphine had revived in her the hope of life, and she loved life yet. But to live and suffer, to go through the horrors of an exile to Arabia, to drag her gnawing pain through the sands of the desert, was a prospect too awful to be contemplated. As the effects of the last dose administered began to disappear, and her sufferings recommenced, she realized her situation with frightful vividness. Still she strove to be calm and to baffle her tormentor to the very end. If she had not felt the unspeakable relief she had gained from his medicine, she would have wished to die, but she had tasted of life again. The problem was how to preserve this new life while refusing to answer the question Gregorios had asked of her. She was so clever, so thoroughly able to deal with difficulties, that if she could but have relief from her sufferings, so that her mind might be free to work undisturbed, she still hoped to find the solution. But the pain was already returning. In a few minutes she would be writhing in agony again.
“I will wait until morning, — it is not many hours now,” said Balsamides, after a pause. “But I strongly advise you to decide at once. You are beginning to suffer, and I warn you that unless you confess you shall not have the medicine.”
“I lived without it until you came,” answered Laleli. “I can live without it now, if it is my fate.” Her voice trembled convulsively, but she finished her sentence by a great effort.
“It is not your fate,” returned Gregorios. “You can not live without it.”
“Then at least I shall die and escape you,” she groaned; but even in her groan there was a sort of scorn. On the last occasion she had indeed exaggerated her sufferings, pretending that she was at the point of death in order to get relief without telling her secret. She had always believed that at the last minute Balsamides would relent, out of fear lest she should die, and that she could thus obtain a series of intervals of rest, during which she might think what was to be done. She did not know the relentless character of the man with whom she had to deal.
“You cannot escape me,” said Balsamides, sternly. “But you can save me trouble by deciding quickly.”
“I have decided to die!” she cried at last, with a great effort. She groaned again, and began to rock herself in her seat upon the divan.
“You will not die yet,” observed Gregorios, contemptuously. He had understood that he had been deceived the previous time, and had determined to let her suffer.
Indeed, she was suffering, and very terribly. Her groans had a different character now, and it was evident that she was not playing a comedy. A livid hue overspread her face, and she gasped for breath.
“If you are really in pain,” said Balsamides, “confess, and I will give you relief.”
But Laleli shook her head, and did not look up. He attributed her constancy to an intention to impose upon him a second time by appearing to suffer in silence rather than to sell her secret for the medicine. He looked on, quite unmoved, for some minutes. At last she raised her head and showed the deathly color of her face.
“Medicine!” she gasped.
“Not this time, unless you make a full confession,” said Balsamides calmly. “I will not be deceived again.”
The wretched woman cast an imploring glance at him, and seemed trying to speak. But he thought she was acting again, and did not move from his seat.
“You understand the price,” he said, slowly taking the case from his pocket. “Tell what you know, and you shall have it all, if you like.”
The old Khanum’s eyes glittered as she saw the receptacle of the coveted medicine. Her lips moved, producing only inarticulate sounds. Then, with a convulsive movement, she suddenly began to try and drag herself along the divan to the place where Gregorios sat. He gazed at her scornfully. She was very weak, and painfully moved on her hands and knees, the straight hair falling about her face, while her eyes gleamed and her lips moved. Occasionally she paused as though exhausted, and groaned heavily in her agony. But Balsamides believed it to be but a comedy to frighten him into administering the dose, and he sat still in his place, holding the case in his hand and keeping his eyes upon her.
“You cannot deceive me,” he said coldly. “All these contortions will not prevail upon me. You must tell your secret, or you will get nothing.”
Still Laleli dragged herself along, apparently trying to speak, but uttering only inarticulate sounds. As she got nearer to him, still on her hands and knees, Gregorios thought he had never seen so awful a sight. The straight black hair was matted in the moisture upon her clammy face; a deathly, greenish livid hue had overspread her features; her chin was extended forward hungrily and her eyes shone dangerously, while her lips chattered perpetually. She was very near to Balsamides. Had she had the strength to stretch out her hand she could almost have touched the small black case he held. He thought she was too near, at last, and his grip tightened on the little box.
“Confess,” he said once more, “and you shall have it.”
For one moment more she tried to struggle on, still not speaking. Balsamides rose and quietly put the case into his pocket, anticipating a struggle. He little knew what the result would be. The miserable creature uttered a short cry, an
d a wild look of despair was in her eyes. Suddenly, as she crawled upon the divan, she reared herself up on her knees, stretching out her wasted hands towards him.
“Give — give” — she cried. “I will tell you all — he is alive — he is — a wan—”
Her staring black eyes abruptly seemed to turn white, and instantly her face became ashy pale. One last convulsive effort, — the jaw dropped, the features relaxed, the limbs were unstrung, and Laleli Khanum fell forward to her full length upon her face on the peach-colored satin of the divan.
She was dead, and Gregorios Balsamides knew it, as he turned her limp body so that she lay upon her back. She was quite dead, but he was neither startled nor horrified; he was bitterly disappointed, and again and again he ground his heel into the thick Siné carpet under his feet. What was it to him whether this hideous old hag were dead in one way or another? She had died with her secret. There she lay in her shapeless bag-like gown of snuff-colored stuff, under the brilliant lights and the gorgeous mirrors, upon the delicate satin cushions, her white eyes staring wide, her hands clenched still in the death agony, the coarse hair clinging to her wet temples.
Presently the body moved, and appeared to draw one — two — three convulsive breaths. Gregorios was startled, and bent down. But it was only the very end.
“Bah!” he exclaimed, half aloud, “they often do that.” Indeed, he had many times in his life seen men die, on the battlefield, on the hospital pallet, in their beds at home. But he had never seen such a death as this, and for a moment longer he gazed at the dead woman’s face. Then the whole sense of disappointment rushed back upon him, and he hastily strode down the long hall, under the lamps, between the mirrors, without once looking behind him.
XVIII.
BALSAMIDES FOUND SELIM outside the door at the other end of the passage, sitting disconsolately upon the divan. The Lala turned up his ugly face as Gregorios entered, and then rose from his seat, reluctantly, as though much exhausted. Balsamides laid his hand upon the fellow’s arm and looked into his small red eyes.
“The Khanum is dead,” said the pretended physician.
The negro trembled violently, and throwing up his arms would have clapped his hands together. But Balsamides stopped him.
“No noise,” he said sternly. “Come with me. All may yet be well with you; but you must be quiet, or it will be the worse for you.” He held the Lala’s arm and led him without resistance to the outer hall.
“Mehemet Bey! Mehemet Bey!” I heard him call, and I hastened from the room where I had waited to join him in the vestibule. He was very pale and grave. On hearing him enter, the porter appeared, and silently opened the outer door. Balsamides addressed him as we prepared to leave the house.
“The Khanum Effendi is dead,” he said. “Selim will accompany us to the palace, and will return in the morning.”
The man’s face, deeply marked with the small-pox and weather-beaten in many a campaign, did not change color. Perhaps he had long expected the news, for he bowed his head as though submitting to a superior order.
“It is the will of Allah,” he said in a low voice. In another moment we had descended the steps, Selim walking between us. The coachman was standing at the horses’ heads in the light of the bright carriage lamps. Balsamides entered the carriage first, then I made Selim get in, and last of all I took my seat and closed the door.
“Yildiz-Kiöshk!” shouted Balsamides out of the window to the driver, and once more we rattled over the pavement and along the rough road. I imagined that the order had been given only to mislead the porter, who had stood upon the steps until we drove away. I knew well enough that Balsamides would not present himself at the palace with me in my present disguise, and that it was very improbable that he would take Selim there. I hesitated to speak to him, because I did not know whether I was to continue to personate the adjutant or to reveal myself in my true character. I had comprehended the situation when I heard my friend tell the porter that the Khanum was dead, and I congratulated myself that we had secured the person of Selim without the smallest struggle or difficulty of any kind. I argued from this, either that the Khanum had died without telling her story, or else that she had told it all, and that Selim was to accompany us to the place where Alexander was buried or hidden.
At last we turned to the left. Balsamides again put his head out of the window, and called to the coachman to drive on the Belgrade road instead of turning towards Pera. The negro started violently when he heard the order given, and I thought he put out his hand to take the handle of the door; but my own was in the hanging loop fastened to the inside of the door, and I knew that he could not open it. The road indicated by Gregorios leads through the heart of the Belgrade forest.
The fierce north wind had moderated a little, or rather, as we drove up the thickly wooded valley, we were not exposed to it as we had been upon the shore of the Bosphorus and on the heights above. Overhead, the driving clouds took a silvery-gray tinge, as the last quarter of the waning moon rose slowly behind the hills of the Asian shore. The bare trees swayed and moved slowly in the wind with the rhythmical motion of aquatic plants under moving water. I looked through the glass as we drove along, recognizing the well-known turns, the big trees, the occasional low stone cottages by the roadside. Everything was familiar to me, even in the bleak winter weather; only the landscape was inexpressibly wild in its leafless grayness, under the faint light of the waning moon. From time to time the Lala moved uneasily, but said nothing. We were ascending the hill which leads to the huge arch of the lonely aqueduct which pierces the forest, when Balsamides tapped upon the window. The carriage stopped in the road and he opened the door on his side and descended.
“Get down,” he said to Selim. I pushed the negro forward, and got out after him. Balsamides seized his arm firmly.
“Take him on the other side,” he said to me in Turkish, dragging the fellow along the road in the direction of a stony bridle-path which from this point ascends into the forest. Then Selim’s coolness failed him, and he yelled aloud, struggling in our grip, and turning his head back towards the coachman.
“Help! help!” he cried. “In the name of Allah! They will murder me!”
From the lonely road the coachman’s careless laugh echoed after us, as we hurried up the steep way.
“It is a solitary spot,” observed Balsamides to the terrified Selim. “You may yell yourself hoarse, if it pleases you.”
We continued to ascend the path, dragging the Lala between us. He had little chance of escape between two such men as we, and he seemed to know it, for after a few minutes he submitted quietly enough. At last we reached an open space among the rocks and trees, and Balsamides stopped. We were quite out of earshot from the road, and it would be hard to imagine a more desolate place than it appeared, between two and three o’clock on that March night, the bare twigs of the birch-trees wriggling in the bleak wind, the faint light of the decrescent moon, that seemed to be upside down in the sky, falling on the white rocks, and on the whitened branches torn down by the winter’s storms, lying like bleached bones upon the ground before us.
“Now,” said Balsamides to the negro, “no one can hear us. You have one chance of life. Tell us at once where we can find the Russian Effendi whose property you stole and sold to Marchetto in the bazaar.”
In the dim gloom I almost fancied that the black man changed color as Gregorios put this question, but he answered coolly enough.
“You cannot find him,” he said. “You need not have brought me here to ask me about him. I would have told you what you wanted to know at Yeni Köj, willingly enough.”
“Why can he not be found?”
“Because he has been dead nearly two years, and his body was thrown into the Bosphorus,” answered the Lala defiantly.
“You killed him, I suppose?” Balsamides tightened his grip upon the man’s arm. But Selim was ready with his reply.
“You need not tear me in pieces. He killed himself.”
&nbs
p; The news was so unexpected that Balsamides and I both started and looked at each other. The Lala spoke with the greatest decision.
“How did he kill himself?” asked Gregorios sternly.
“I will tell you, as far as I know. The Bekjí of Agia Sophia, the same who admitted the Effendi, took me up by the other staircase. Franks are never allowed to pass that way, as you know. When we were halfway up, holding the tapers before us, we stumbled over the body of a man lying at the foot of one of the flights, with his hand against the wall. We stooped down and examined him. He was quite dead. ‘Selim,’ said the Bekjí, who knows me very well, ‘the Effendi has fallen down the stairs in the dark, and has broken his neck.’ ‘If we give the alarm,’ said I, ‘we shall be held responsible for his death.’ ‘Leave it to me,’ answered the Bekjí. ‘Behold, the man is dead. It is his fate. He has no further use for valuables.’ So the Bekjí took a ring, and a tobacco-box, and the watch and chain, and some money which was in the man’s pockets. Then he said we should leave the corpse where it was. And when the prayers in the mosque were over, before it was day, he got a vegetable-seller’s cart, and put the body in it and covered it with cabbages. Then we took it down to the point below Top Kapu Serai, where the waters are swift and deep. So we threw him in, for he was but a dog of a Giaour, and had broken his neck in stumbling where it was forbidden to go. Is it my fault that he stumbled?”
“No,” answered Balsamides, “it was not your fault if he stumbled, and the Bekjí was a Persian fox. But you robbed his body, and divided the spoil. What share did the Bekjí take?”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 285