FullReads

Joe, who was sitting by me assisting with the water-cup, gazed into the intruder’s face a moment, then closed upon my arm with a grip as if he’d break it.

“Allah! Mahmoud Bey!” he whispered. “Yuleima’s prince. That’s him with the smooth face.”

The next instant the young man stood by my side.

“The people are only curious, monsieur,” he said in French. “If they disturb you I will have them sent away. So few painters come–you are the first I have seen in many years. If it will not annoy you, I’d like to watch you a while.”

“Annoy me, my dear sir!” I was on my feet now, hat in hand. (If he had been my long-lost brother, stolen by the Indians or left on a desert island to starve–or any or all of those picturesque and dramatic things–I could not have been more glad to see him. I fairly hugged myself–it seemed too good to be true.) “I will be more than delighted if you will take my dragoman’s stool. Get up, Joe, and give–“

The request had already been forestalled. Joe was not only up, but was bowing with the regularity and precision of the arms of a windmill, his fingers, with every rise, fluttering between his shirt-stud and his eyebrows. On his second upsweep the young prince got a view of his face–then his hand went out.

“Why, it is Hornstog! We know each other. We met in Damascus. You could not, monsieur, find a better dragoman in all Constantinople.”

Only three pairs of eyes now followed the movements of my brush, the crowd having fallen back out of respect for the young man’s rank, Yusuf having communicated that fact to those who had not recognized him.

When the light changed–and it changed unusually early that morning, about two hours ahead of time (I helped)–I said to the prince:

“It may interest you to see me finish a sketch in color. Come with me as far as Suleiman. We can sit quite out of the sun up a little back street under a wall, and away from everybody. I began the drawing yesterday. See!” and I uncovered the canvas.

“Ah, Suleimanyeh! The most beautiful of all our mosques. Yes, certainly I’ll go.”

Joe dug his knuckles into my thigh, under pretence of steadying himself–he was squatting beside me like a frog, helping with the water-cups–and gasped: “No; don’t take him–please, effendi! No–no–“

I brushed Joe aside and continued: “We can send for coffee and spend the afternoon. I’ll have some chairs brought from the cafe. Pick up everything, Joe, and come along.”

On the way to the crooked, break-neck street my thoughts went racing through my head. On one side, perhaps, a tap on the shoulder in the middle of the night; half a yard of catgut in the hands of a Bashi-Bazouk; an appeal to our consul, with the consciousness of having meddled with something that did not concern me. On the other a pair of tear-stained, pleading eyes. Not my eyes–not the eyes of anybody that I knew–but the kind that raise the devil even in the heart of a staid old painter like myself.

Joe followed, with downcast gaze. He, too, was scheming. He could not protest before the prince, nor before Yusuf. That would imply previous knowledge of the danger lurking in the vicinity of the old wall. His was the devil and the deep sea. Not to tell the prince of Yuleima’s whereabouts, after their combined search for her, and the fees the prince had paid him, would be as cruel as it was disloyal. To assist in Mahmoud’s finding her would bring down upon his own head–if it was still on his shoulders–the wrath of the chief of police, as well as the power behind him.

Once under the shadow of the wall, the trap unpacked, easel and umbrella up, and water-bottle filled, Joe started his windmill, paused at the third kotow, looked me straight in the eye, and, with a tone in his voice, as if he had at last come to some conclusion, made this request: