"You must stay with me," he said at once. "The spare room is ready," he added, leading me to the door. Then he clapped his hands to call the servant, before I could prevent him.
"But I have already been to the hotel," I protested.
"Go to Missiri"s with a hamal, and bring the Effendi"s luggage," he said to the servant, who instantly disappeared.
"Caught," he exclaimed, laughing, as he opened the door and showed me my little room. I had slept there many a night in former times, and I loved his simple hospitality.
"You are the same as ever," I said. "A man cannot put his nose inside your door without being caught, as you call it."
"Many a man may," he answered. "But not you, my dear fellow. Now--you will have coffee and a cigarette. We will dine at home. There is pilaff and kebabi and a bottle of champagne. How are you? I forgot to ask."
"Very well, thanks," said I, as we came back to the sitting-room. "I am always well, you know. You look pale, but that is nothing new. You have been on duty at the palace?"
"Friday," he answered laconically, which meant that he had been at the Selamlek, attending the Sultan to the weekly service at the mosque.
"You used to get back early in the day. Have the hours changed?"
"Man of Belial," he replied, "with us nothing changes. I was detained at the palace. So you have come all the way from England to see me?"
"Yes,--and to ask you a question and a favor."
"You shall have the answer and my services."
"Do not promise before you have heard. "Two acrobats cannot always dance on the same rope," as your proverb says."
"And "Every sheep hangs by its own heels,"" said he. "I will take my chance with you. First, the question, please."
"Did you ever hear of Alexander Patoff?"
Balsamides looked at me a moment, with the air of a man who is asked an exceedingly foolish question.
"Hear of him? I have heard of nothing else for the last eighteen months.
I have an indigestion brought on by too much Alexander Patoff. Is that your errand, Griggs? How in the world did you come to take up that question?"
"You have been asked about him before?" I inquired.
"I tell you there is not a dog in Constantinople that has not been kicked for not knowing where that fellow is. I am sick of him, alive or dead. What do I care about your Patoffs? The fool could not take care of himself when he was alive, and now the universe is turned upside down to find his silly body. Where is he? At the bottom of the Bosphorus. How did he get there? By the kind exertions of his brother, who then played the comedy of tearing his hair so cleverly that his amba.s.sador believed him. Very simple: if you want to find his body, I can tell you how to do it."
"How?" I asked eagerly.
"Drain the Bosphorus," he answered, with a sneer. "You will find plenty of skulls at the bottom of it. The smallest will be his, to a dead certainty."
"My dear fellow," I protested, "his brother did not kill him. The proof is that Paul Patoff has come hack swearing that he will find some trace of Alexander. He came with me, and I believe his story."
"He is only renewing the comedy,--tearing his hair on the anniversary of the death, like a well-paid mourner. Of course, somebody has accused him again of the murder. He will have to tear his hair every time he is accused, in order to keep up appearances. He knows, and he alone knows, where the dead man is."
"But if he killed him the kava.s.s must have known it--must have helped him. You remember the story?"
"I should think so. What does the kava.s.s prove? Nothing. He was probably told to go off for a moment, and now will not confess it. Money will do anything."
"There remains the driver of the carriage," I objected. "He saw Alexander go into Agia Sophia, but he never saw him come out."
"And is anything easier than that? A man might learn those few words in three minutes. That proves nothing."
"There is the probability," I argued. "Many persons have disappeared in Stamboul before now."
"Nonsense, Griggs," he answered. "You know that when anything of the kind has occurred it has generally turned out that the missing man was bankrupt. He disappeared to reappear somewhere else under another name.
I do not believe a word of all those romances. To you Franks we are a nation of robbers, murderers, and thieves; we are the Turkey of Byron, always thirsting for blood, spilling it senselessly, and crying out for more. If that idiot allowed his brother to kill him without attracting a crowd,--in Stamboul, in the last week of Ramazan, when everybody is out of doors,--he deserved his fate, that is all."
"I do not believe he is dead," I said, "and I have come here to ask you to make the acquaintance of Paul Patoff. If you still believe him to be a murderer when you have heard him tell his story, I shall be very much surprised."
"I should tear him to pieces if I met him," said Balsamides, with a laugh. "The mere sight of anybody called Patoff would bring on an attack of the nerves."
"Be serious," said I. "Do you think I would be so foolish as to interest myself in this business unless I believed that it could be cleared of all mystery and explained?"
"You have been in England," retorted Gregorios. "That will explain any kind of insanity. Do you want me to pester every office in the government with new inquiries? It will do no good. Everything has been tried. The man is gone without leaving a trace. No amount of money will produce information. Can I say more? Where money fails, a man need not be so foolish as to hope anything from his intelligence."
"I am foolish enough to hope something," I replied. "If you will not help me, I must go elsewhere. I will not give up the thing at the start."
"Well, if I say I will help you, what do you expect me to do? Can I do anything which has not been done already? If so, I will do it. But I will not harness myself to a rotten cart, as the proverb says. It is quite useless to expect anything more from the police."
"I expect nothing from them. I believe that Alexander is alive, and has been hidden by somebody rich enough and strong enough to baffle pursuit."
"What put that into your head?" asked my companion, looking at me with sudden curiosity.
"Nothing but the reduction of the thing to the last a.n.a.lysis. Either he is dead, or he is alive. As you say, he could hardly have been killed on such a night without attracting attention. Besides, the motives for Paul"s killing him were wholly inadequate. No, let me go on. Therefore I say that he was taken alive."
"Where?"
"In Santa Sophia."
"But then," argued Balsamides, "the driver would have seen him carried out."
"Yes," I admitted. "That is the difficulty. But he might perhaps have been taken through the porch; at all events, he must have gone down the stairs alone, taking the lantern."
"They found the lantern," said Gregorios. "You did not know that? A long time afterwards the man who opens the towers confessed that when he had gone up with the brothers and the kava.s.s he had found that his taper was burnt out. He picked up the kava.s.s"s lantern and carried it down, meaning to return with the next party of foreigners. No other foreigners came, and when he went up to find the Patoffs they were gone and the carriage was gone. He kept the lantern, until the offers of reward induced him to give it up and tell his story."
"That proves nothing, except that Alexander went down-stairs in the dark."
"I have an idea, Griggs!" cried Balsamides, suddenly changing his tone.
"It proves this,--that Alexander did not necessarily go down the steps at all."
"I do not understand."
"There is another way out of that gallery. Did you know that? At the other end, in exactly the same position, hidden in the deep arch, there is a second door. There is also a winding staircase, which leads to the street on the opposite side of the mosque. Foreigners are never admitted by that side, but it is barely possible that the door may have been open. Alexander Patoff may have gone down that way, thinking it was the staircase by which he had come up."
"You see," I said, delighted at this information, "everything is not exhausted yet."
"No, I begin to think we are nearer to an explanation. If that door was open,--which, however, is very improbable,--he could have gone down and have got into the street without pa.s.sing the carriage, which stood on the other side of the mosque. But, after all, we are no nearer to knowing what ultimately became of him."