Home > Authors Index > Charles Neville Buck > Lighted Match > This page
The Lighted Match, a novel by Charles Neville Buck |
||
Chapter 26. In A Curio Shop In Stamboul |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XXVI. IN A CURIO SHOP IN STAMBOUL The _muezzin_ had called the devout to their prayer-rugs for the third time that day, when the girl and the two men turned from the Stamboul end of Galata Bridge into the tawdry confusion of buildings which cluster about the Mosque Yeni-Djami. They were bound for the bazaars. Along the twisting ways stretched the booths of native merchants stocked with the thousand fascinating trifles that the City of the Sultan markets to the journeying world. Everywhere the crowd surged and jostled. On the side street where the shops are a trifle larger than their neighbors, one Mohammed Abbas keeps his curio bazaar. In such flowery Orientalism of appeal did he couch his plea for an inspection of his wares, that Cara was persuaded and turned into the shop. Cut off by pressure of the crowd, Pagratide, who was following, some paces back, caught a glimpse of her figure in the door and fought his way to her side, but Benton, having stopped to price a bracelet of antique silver set with turquoises, lost sight of them. The girl had become interested in a quaint, curved dagger thickly studded with semi-precious stones. Mohammed Abbas urged her to see the rarer and choicer articles which he kept in an upper room. As they tailed, a half-dozen natives, swarthy and villainous of face, drifted into the shop to be promptly ordered out by the proprietor, who used for that purpose a vocabulary of scope and vividness. The ruffians retreated after a brief conversation in guttural Arabic, but not by the street door through which they had come. Instead, they left by a low-arched exit to the rear, concealed from view by the angle of the screening stairway. Abbas led his customers to an upper room which they found dark except where he lighted it as he went with hanging lamps. Its space was generous, broken here and there by piles of ebony furniture, inlaid with pearl; pieces of Saracenic armor, Damascened bucklers, and all the gear too large for the narrow confines below. Half an hour's searching through the chaos of wares failed to reveal the choice daggers which Mohammed wished them to see, and with many apologies for added annoyance he begged _Monsieur_ and _Madame_ to mount yet another flight, and visit yet another store-room. At the head of these stairs they encountered absolute darkness and the shopman, with his ever-ready apologies, paused again to light lamps. As Pagratide's pupils accustomed themselves to the murk he realized that this last room was bare except for tapestries hung flat against the wall, and that at its farther side narrow slits of light showed along the sills of two doors. Turning, he noted the darker shadow of some recess in the wall, immediately to his left. Suddenly Mohammed Abbas closed the door upon the stairs, and sharply clapped his hands. In all lands where Allah is worshiped, clapping of the hands is a signal of summons. Thrusting his hand into the pocket where he had stored an automatic pistol, Karyl found it empty, and remembered that on the stairway the merchant had apologized for jostling him. Then simultaneously the two opposite doors opened and framed against their light a momentary picture of crowding Arabs. * * * * * Outside, Benton had been searching. First he had felt only annoyance for a chance separation, but when ten minutes of futile wandering had lengthened to fifteen, annoyance gave way to fear, and fear to panic. A dozen tragic stories of mysterious disappearances in Stamboul crowded like nightmares upon his memory. At last, standing bewildered in the street, he caught sight of a familiar figure; a figure that filled him with astonishment and delight. Colonel Von Ritz had left Cairo to return to Puntal. Now here he was in a crooked Stamboul street, appearing without warning, but with his almost uncanny faculty for being at the right spot when needed. He shouldered his way to the side of the officer. Though the two men had parted several weeks before, the Galavian greeted the other only with a formal bow, and an abrupt question. "Where are they?" "I have lost them," replied Benton. He rapidly sketched the events of the last half-hour, and confessed his own apprehensions. With evidence of neither anxiety nor interest, Von Ritz listened, and replied with a second question. "Have you seen Martin?" Benton gave a palpable start. "Martin!" he ejaculated. "Is Martin in Constantinople?" For reply Von Ritz permitted himself the rare indulgence of a smile. "Martin is here," he said briefly. "And you--?" As he spoke the figure of Martin himself emerged from a shop a few paces ahead, and without a backward glance cut diagonally across the narrow street to disappear into the doorway of the curio shop which is kept by Mohammed Abbas. When, after being cut off and delayed for some minutes by a passing donkey train, Von Ritz and Benton entered the place, they found it empty except for a native salesman, but as the Galavian paused to make a trivial purchase his listening ear caught a sound above. Without hesitation, he wheeled and mounted the stairs with Benton close at his heels. Behind him the shop-clerk stood irresolute--taken aback, with a vague consciousness that he should have devised a way to stop this gigantic Infidel. Assuredly the master would be angry. Orders had been explicitly given to allow no one to climb those steps to-day without permission. While Cara and Karyl had been on the second floor, a heavy _Osmanli_, wearing the Sultan's uniform, had stood in the center of the room above, looking about with keen, pig-like eyes, as he gave rapid commands to a half dozen Arabs of villainous visage. "You, Sayed Ayoub," he ordered, "take your pig of a self and others like unto you into that doorway by the stairs. Remain until you hear men enter from these two doors, facing the Infidel dogs. Then come upon them from behind. The man is to be bound, and when evening comes--but that is later! Still, if he resists too much--" The speaker shrugged his heavy shoulders and made a certain gesture. "And the woman? What of her?" The question came from a gigantic Bedouin whose evil countenance was made the more sinister by one closed and empty eye-socket. Abdul Said _Bey_ nodded. "She is to be tenderly handled," he enjoined. "She, also, must disappear, but that shall be my care. My harem is as silent as the Bosphorus." There were steps on the stairs, and instantaneously the room emptied itself and became silently dark. When Karyl heard the hand-clapping of the decoy shopman, and saw the responding ruffians in the opposite doors, he swiftly thrust the girl into the spot of blacker shadow at his back, and seized the wrist of Mohammed Abbas with a force and suddenness that wrung from him a piteous wail. Keeping the Turk before him, he backed toward the shadowed recess, with the one idea of shielding Cara. But the darker spot was the door behind which Sayed Ayoub lay in ambuscade, and as Karyl reached it, it swung open, showing them against a background as bright as though they were painted on yellow canvas. With his free arm he swept Cara into the doorway, wheeling quickly in front of her, and sent Mohammed Abbas lurching forward into the faces of the assailants led by Sayed Ayoub. Instantly, however, his arms were pinioned from behind by the reenforcements, and as he frantically struggled to turn his face, in an effort to see the girl, some thick fabric fell over his head, covering mouth and eyes, and he went down stifled and garroted into insensibility. Seeing the man overwhelmed and dragged through the door, Cara stood rigidly upright, white in the intensity of voiceless outrage, until the gigantic brute with one sightless eye and a greasy _tarboosh_ reached out his grimy hand and seized her. Then she sickened at the profaning shock of his touch, and fell unconscious. A few moments later the "English Jackal" stood nonchalantly looking down at the bound figure of the former King lying on the floor, shoulders propped against the wall, head wrapped in a richly embroidered shawl from Persia. Lamps had been kindled. The head wrappings had already been somewhat loosened and Karyl was stirring with the indication of returning consciousness. "Oh, damn it!" remarked Martin in disgust. "He doesn't need to be both trussed up and gagged, you know. He's quite safe. Take off the head cloths." He stuffed tobacco into his blunt bull-dog pipe as he supervised the undoing of the smothering fabric and complacently looked at his prisoner. Freed from the bandage, and drinking in again reviving breaths, Karyl awoke to the sense of his surroundings. His eyes at once swept the place for Cara, but he saw only the closed door of the room where she was detained. Martin looked down and as their eyes met he casually nodded. "Sorry to inconvenience you," he commented affably, "but this is politics, you know. I happen to work for the other chap, King Louis." As an afterthought he added: "And the other chap thinks that you are, to put it quite civilly, unnecessary." He smoked meditatively, while Karyl, without reply, scowled up into his face. The sense of futility left Pagratide silent. He lay insanely furious like a trapped wolf, able only to glare. Suddenly the complacency deserted the Englishman's features, for a startled expression. With a violent malediction he bent forward listening. Karyl's ears also caught the sound of feet on the stairs, immediately followed by a crash upon the door. Martin drew a heavy revolver from a holster under his coat, and his voice ripped out orders with the sharp decision which had survived the days when he wore a British uniform. "Here, you beggars," he shouted, "to that door!" As the Bedouins swarmed forward there came a second crash under which the panels fell in, precipitating Von Ritz and Benton into a fierce swarm of human hornets. Falling desperately upon the newcomers with swords, knives and _naboots_, the bravos afforded them no time to take breath after their climb of the stairs. Martin, standing with his pipe clamped between his teeth, took no part in the onslaught. He cast a glance at the turmoil, then deliberately cocked his weapon and leveled it at the breast of his captive. Karyl realized that the Jackal was not to be led away from his single purpose: that of execution. If he himself were to speak to his rescuers, he must do it quickly. He raised his voice. "Von Ritz! To that door!" he shouted loudly, but the Galavian and his companion, fighting desperately to hold their own, with the shouts and clamor of the struggling Moslems in their ears, did not hear, and the Englishman only smiled. "They are quite busy, you know," he drawled in a half-apologetic tone. "Give them a bit of time." Von Ritz was fighting with the blade of his sword-cane, while Benton, too closely pressed to make use of his pistol, was relying upon his fists. Indeed, the two white men owed their lives to the crowding which made effective fighting impossible on either side. At last the Turks gave back a few steps for a fresh rush and Benton, taking instant advantage of the widened space, fired into the crowd. They turned in terror at the first report and went stampeding to the several doors. Then for the first time the rescuers caught sight of the Englishman standing guard over the bound figure on the floor. With the grim smile of one who, recognizing the end, neither flinches nor dallies, Martin fired two shots from his leveled revolver. A half-second too late Benton's magazine pistol ripped out in a frenzied series of spats. The Englishman swayed slightly, his face crimson with blood, then, propping himself weakly against the wall, he fired one ineffectual shot in reply. Slowly wilting at waist and knees, his figure slipped to the floor and lay shapelessly huddled near that of Karyl. The stench of powder filled the room. Twisting spirals of smoke curled ceilingward. Von Ritz and Benton, kneeling at the King's side, raised him from the floor. The wounded man attempted to speak. His eyes turned inquiringly toward the door of the other room. Benton caught the questioning look and nodded his head. Then Karyl settled back against the officer's supporting shoulder after the fashion of a reassured child. "The King is dead," said Colonel Von Ritz quietly. There was something very pathetic in the steady despair of his voice. A door opened, and several Bedouins retreated shame-faced and cowed before a heavy Turk who wore the Sultan's uniform. His small, pig-like eyes blazed with terrifying wrath. Looking about the room for a moment, he volcanically reviled them. "You dogs! You pigs! You serpents!" he shrieked. "Your hearts shall be thrown to the buzzards! Your children dishonored! You have dared to attack the foreign _Pashas_, and you--Mohammed Abbas--!" The shopkeeper fell trembling to his knees. "Your filthy shop shall be pulled down about your ears. You make it a trap--your feet shall be _bastinadoed_ until you are a cripple for life!" Then his rage choked him, and, wheeling, he walked over to Benton, contemptuously kicking the prostrate body of Martin _Effendi_ as he went. From every pore Abdul Said _Bey_ exuded sympathy and commiseration. Scenting liberal _backshish_, he promised absolute secrecy for the affair, coupled with soothing assurances of private vengeance upon the surviving miscreants. Also, he bewailed the disgrace which had fallen upon the Empire by reason of such infamy. He presumed that the foreign gentlemen preferred secret punishment of the malefactors to a public sensation. It should be so. In his anxiety for Cara, Benton left Von Ritz to adjust matters with the Turk, who with profound courtesy and amazing promptness had closed carriages at a rear door, and caused his _kavasses_ to clear the alley-way of prying eyes. When the American reached the room where Cara had been left it was deserted by the assassin's guards. With a sudden stopping of his heart, he saw her lying apparently lifeless on a stacked-up pile of rugs. In a terror that he scarcely dared to investigate, he laid his ear hesitantly to her breast, then, reassured, he gave thanks for the anesthetic of unconsciousness with which nature had blinded her to the tragedy beyond the closed door. Two curtained carriages drove across Galata Bridge and in the mysterious quiet of Stamboul there was no ripple on the surface of affairs as other tourists haggled over a few _piastres_ in the curio shops of the bazaar. _ |
||