# Scribner's Magazine/Volume 37/Number 1/His Beatitude

His Beatitude
By H. G. Dwight
Illustrations by Sydney Adamson
I
iftings of the three continents—and even of the younger three—pour across that rough-planked highway of the Golden Horn. Every shade of complexion, from the onyx of the Soudan to the ivory of Arkhangelsk, is there. The fez of the Turk and of his hundred subject tribes, the turbans of Arab, Koord, Hindu and Afghan, the kalpak of the Persian, the lambskins of Circassian and Muscovite, the dangling gear of the Georgian, the blue tassel of the Albanian, the red-and-gold cap and the black of Croat and Montenegrin, the conventional Derby of the European, are but the more frequent among the head-dresses. A thousand varieties of costume and accoutrement proclaim that here the peoples of the earth seethe together immiscible. Since first there were to make a trade of their eves it has been so. When shall it not be so?
There is an extraordinary fascination in that fluid panorama. And it has this distinction among pleasures, that it is of the least expensive procurement. For a pedestrian the toll is ten paras—something like one cent. Or if you chance to lack the use of a limb or the sight of an eye you may cross for nothing. Such is the delicacy of Oriental sentiment. The toll-keepers also are fortunately not too curious as to what constitutes an infirmity. Coppers they doubtless take from many who do not see what an orgy of color, what an exhibition of anatomy, what a museum of the comparative, is their tumble-down draw-bridge. Races, creeds, hierarchies pass there, cast all in the same human mould, crowded into one narrow thoroughfare, but in origin and sympathy as distant as the east is from the west.
The real fascination, however, is when after the types you begin to distinguish individuals. To have observed a certain person going in certain directions at certain times, is to feel a leap of curiosity when you find him at the wrong end or out of his hour. Where does he come from? Where does he go? Why does he seem to notice nothing or everything? Elsewhere these questions might not take you far. But here there is no knowing whither they may lead. For since history began, this meeting of the waters has been the very Rialto of adventure. Mohammedan or Christian, high or low, dark or light, frank or furtive, men have somewhere left beaten tracks to come to this caldron of the world. And questioning the faces as they pass, a sense begins to press upon you of vague and secret purposes, of the romance and tragedy here symbolized.
II
Were mine a high and moving tale, I might announce my hero by saying that on a certain August morning a man of striking appearance was seen to make his way down that crowded street of Galata which opens to the Bridge. As it is, I can only point out that such an announcement would apply with equal exactness to several hundred individuals, and that while one of them did happen to be concerned with the present narrative, he would have been the last to catch a curious eve. He was merely a well-dressed and well-made young Greek, with that mobile comeliness which in many of the modern Byzantines is so curiously reminiscent of an Attic ancestor. That he was a person of the better sort was evident from his gold-tipped cigarette holder, from the portentous length of his little-finger nail, and from the modish cane which he swung in palpable ease of heart. But for the frivolity of the word I might say that he tripped along, so light-footed was the gait with which he passed the white-smocked toll-keeper and essayed the heaving passage of the Bridge. Presently, however, he stayed his steps, to approach one of the pedlers who stood along the railing. And in the extremely unattractive assortment of ​pins, needles, hooks, eyes, buttons and bodkins displayed upon a tray by this individual he proceeded to rummage.
“Have you seen the paper this morning?” inquired the pedler in Greek, as if conversation with this fine young man were more to him than commerce.
“I have seen the paper, Yorghi,” replied the fine young man. His own name, I might inform you, was Anastass.
“Well?”
“Well! It says what it says every day—that he is dying.”
“Holy saints!” exclaimed the pedler. “If——”
At that moment a second customer arrived and began to fumble in company with Anastass. The young man thereupon withdrew from the field.
“I don’t find anything,” he said, fixing Yorghi with his eye; “I am going over to the other side.”
The pedler, a powerful fellow with the well-shaped head, the narrow brow, and the un-Oriental nose of his people, kept him in disappointed view until he was lost in the crowd. As for Anastass, he lost nothing of his careless pace. Threading his way through the motley multitude he passed in turn the landings of the various steamer companies which have termini at the Bridge. Before reaching the Stamboul end, however, he found occasion to approach another pedler.
“How is business, Dimitri?” he asked, fingering the shoestrings which hung in a great sheaf from the man’s arm.
“Would I be here if there were business?” demanded the pedler. “I watch until I am blind, and never a soul do I see. I don’t believe he exists.”
“He must exist!” laughed Anastass. “He shall exist! And you will see him better if you stand a little farther over, there, where the people spread out more after leaving the steamers.”
“Well, perhaps he does exist,” grumbled Dimitri as he changed his post. “But that does us no good if he hasn’t the sense to come in time.”
“He must have the sense! He shall have the sense!” laughed Anastass again, patting the other’s shoulder. “And if he hasn’t, why—we have enough to manage it in spite of him. Good-by. I’ll see you to-night if not before.”
With which our fine young man moved away. He did not move, however, in the direction one would have expected him to take. Instead of proceeding to Stamboul he retraced his steps toward Galata. And then again he performed the unexpected. He went down the first stairway leading to the landing of the Mahsousseh boats, walked to the café commanding the view of both approaches, and established himself at a table whose waiter greeted him as a habitué. Although he was promptly provided with coffee and paper, neither seemed much to occupy him. Indeed, neither could have occupied him for so long as he stayed. What seemed to interest him was watching the people as they passed—people going to and coming from the steamers. What was a little curious about it, though, was that he did not watch like a mere spectator. He did not allow his eye to be caught, to follow a figure until it disappeared, and then to wander idly back. He seemed to watch with an idea. He let no face escape him. Sometimes he leaned out of his chair for a better view of one that was partly hidden. But he did not scrutinize. He did not hesitate. There was no uncertainty about it. It was like one who turns over a pack of cards looking for the joker.
III
Why it was that Anastass chose as his coign of observation that particular café of that particular landing could scarcely have been told by an outsider to his idea. Those asthmatic steamers, wreckage of prouder days upon the Danube and the Thames, which ply on broken wing between the city, the Princes’ Islands, and the sunny Gulf of Nicomedia—why were they more to his purpose than the swift ferries of the Bosphorus? But that there was matter to his idea was proven at the end of the morning on which we make his acquaintance. For suddenly leaving his seat he made after someone in the stream of passengers issuing from the Prinkipo boat.
This was an old man—the most wonderful, the most beautiful old man whom one could possibly imagine. From his dress it would have been difficult to make him out—which indeed Anastass found. It was not exactly clerical, yet it was not quite ​secular; though it was wholly plain and worn. The old man might have been a priest somehow sunken to the care of his family, or he might have been the gardener of a monastery. But the white hair covering his shoulders, the white beard falling to his waist, cave him an air of the patriarchal which was indescribably sweetened by a gentleness of eye and smile. If it was possible for him to be more perfect, his great height made him so. In short, as I have said, he was the most wonderful old man imaginable.
Anastass followed him a moment, ascertained that he was alone, saw him hesitate between the two exits to the Bridge. Then he stepped forward and made a profound salute.
“Good morning, father,” he said. “Give me God’s blessing.”
The old man offered no reply, but he made a gesture half of appeal and half of deprecation.
Anastass increased at once the amenity of his regard and the keenness of his observation. The eyes, the nose, the hands—everything was right. It is only your dilettante, however, who sticks unquailing to his generalizations. Your expert will never be surprised to find his Greek turn out an Armenian or a Jew. Still; our young man ventured:
“Have you far to go?”
The old man sighed.
“I do not know,” he answered—in Greek.
“Ah—it is a hot morning. Do me the honor to come into this café and take a coffee with me.” The amenity of Anastass became unction.
Again saying nothing, the old man allowed himself to be led to one of the little tables. There he sat, alike inscrutable in his silence and in his benignity. The fragrance of the smoking zarjs, however, when the waiter set them down, seemed to touch him to expression.
“Son,” he said, “you are good. There—there—they were not good.” He made a vague motion with his hand.
“On the island?” suggested Anastass.
“Yes,” replied the old man. “On the island.”
So far, so good. But Anastass wondered.
“Where was the house?” he asked.
“Oh—far,” said the old man. “Far. And up—there were the pines, and down—there was the sea. Far, yes. And they were not good. There was only the little Pipina. But she went away. And then went, too—far.”
To which Anastass quickly made answer:
“Father, come to-night to me. I am alone in the world. I have nothing but an empty house, a solitary garden. Let us share them together!”
An ordinary old man would have betrayed some excess of emotion, of curiosity, of repugnance. This old man had none. He merely smiled and said:
“Son, you are good.”
And then he gave himself as in a dream to contemplation of the spectacle which his companion had hitherto found so engrossing. The latter, however, had now other ideas in mind. After a certain interval he said “Come,” and taking the old man’s arm he led the way to the main level of the Bridge. They made a curious couple as they walked toward the Stamboul side—the shabby old man and the smart young one. But they were not more curious than many another pair that stumbled across that hot planking; nor, perhaps, was their errand so strange as that of the first man to whom they might have spoken.
Yet they did speak to a man—or Anastass did. It was indeed to Dimitri, the vender of shoestrings, whom we have already seen. This personage was apparently more interested in the companion than in the patronage of Anastass. For it was the latter who, after fingering at his leisure in the sheaf of laces, spoke first.
“So I have found,” he said, “exactly what I wanted. They told me it didn’t exist, but I told them it did!”
“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Dimitri, coming back with a start, “these?” and he pulled out a pair of laces. He could not, however, keep his eyes off the old man.
That gentle person, unmoved by the flow of the bizarre world about him, smiled without eagerness and without ennui. Dimitri shifted under it, and Anastass, with his superior knowledge, smiled as well.
“Yes,” he said, “those. And now I am going home. When you have found what you want, why stay out any longer? And then, too, it is better not to let too many people see. You might lose it.”
With which he led the way to the landing of the Bosphorus boats.
There is an extraordinary fascination in that fluid panorama.—Page 70.
IV
If the solitary garden to which Anastass had referred was made less solitary by the arrival of an inmate, it must be said that, on the other hand, the number of habitués at the Bridge was diminished by three. But it is likely enough that the addition made more difference in the one than did the decrease to the other. Since the days of the Pasha who had loved his narrow strip of hillside enough to flatten his house into a long corridor against the rising slope, I think no one had so appreciated that terrace of many trees as our old man. He continued to have no words. He merely smiled, as if his heart were full of patience and peace. So Anastass, while treating him with unfailing deference, soon left him to wander by himself under the tragic cedars of Lebanon and the cheerful copper beeches which the Pasha had taught to live in strange conjunction before the rambling house.
It was not long before the old man found what the Pasha had known when he created this little paradise—that the most wonderful thing about it was the view. There was a certain rose arbor on the edge of the terrace where he would spend the long hot days, looking down as from a box at the play, upon the most romantic scene in the world. This was a bit of the Bosphorous, framed between a round crenellated tower and a steep stairway of red roofs. From the lane at the bottom of the terrace wall the hill fell away so suddenly that the wonderful sweep of blue lay almost under the old man’s eyes. The color of it alone was better than breakfast. But it was constantly overshot by things of passage: by great steamers hurrying on the business of the Black Sea; by the side-wheelers of the Bosphorus, with their prodigies of smoke and foam; by sailing ships of the strangest build, that might have come from Colchis and Iolcos—and probably did; by the light caïques slipping merrily down the Devil’s Current or laboriously making their way against it. And the Lost Souls! I do not know how they figure in the Debretts of Science, those fleet sea-swallows; but they forever skimmed up and down like clouds on the surface of the water, as if they filled the darker part in the purpose of the play.
All these things made a ceaseless web of circumstance on the shining blue floor between Mahommed’s tower and the stair of climbing roofs, and the old man spent his days in watching. Smiling alone in his arbor on the hill, as if everything were wonderful to him, one could not have told whether he ever thought of his island, and of the people who were not good, and of the pines that were up and the sea that was down. One could not even have told which of the changing panoramas of the day he found most wonderful. It might have been the early morning piece, when everything was so limpid that the water-side palace in the green background of Asian hills was cut of pearl. It might have been the late afternoon piece, when in the magic ​of a hidden sun the same palace burned with opaline fire. It might have been the night piece, when there was nothing to hear in the silence but the rush of the Devil’s Current and when, out of the vague shadow beyond, a faint carcanet of lights glimmered—like gold beads in the dusk. To him it was all wonderful.
There did come a day, however, when something was more wonderful than anything else. I have spoken of a lane that skirted the retaining wall of the garden. There street venders would pass on their way from one village to another, prodding their donkies through the sun and crying picturesque cries. Or sheep would tumble by, punting between a small boy and a large dog. Or sometimes people of more leisurely sort would stroll past and would raise their eves upon the hanging masonry to where the white old man sat in his arbor above the world. And he would smile at them, so that the blackest of them could not help smiling back. At best, though, it was no better than a deserted by-way. So that when one morning at the end of the summer a child capered up in her white dress and white bonnet, followed by a somewhat breathless nurse, it was something new to look at and smile at. And even before the old man’s train of association could rise to consciousness she piped:
“Why, Grandfather Cyril! Grandfather Cyril! When did you come?”
The old man gave a start.
“The little Pipina!” he cried. “Come!”
“You come!” she shrilled. “You come! The wall is too high! Jump!”
She stood on tiptoe below him, with her little arms in the air.
The old man rose as if he intended to do what the child said. Then, after standing at the edge of the parapet, looking down, he walked back and forth in his trouble.
“The little Pipina! The little Pipina!” he kept repeating.
Just then Anastass appeared on the walk leading from the house.
“Have you lost something, father?” he asked. “Can I help you?”
“Yes,” said the old man. “The little Pipina!” And he pointed down to the lane.
“Come! Come!” screamed the child below the wall, in her eagerness.
Hearing her, Anastass remained where he stood.
“Who is that?” he inquired, with more of sharpness than he had ever shown before.
“The little Pipina,” answered the old man. “She calls.”
“Ah!” And Anastass remembered the island. Then he said firmly: “Come into the house, please, father.”
“But—the little Pipina!” faltered the old man.
“Yes, I know,” smiled Anastass. “Come!”
The old man turned and waved his hand.
“I am coming!” he said. “Wait, little Pipina!”
But the little Pipina waited in vain. At last the nurse had to carry her away, crying.
V
That night there came at the door a great ring which raised slow-dying echoes in the sleeping house. Anastass sent back to bed the cowering servant who fumbled at an upper casement, and went down himself. Apparently, however, he was not without expectation of some such visit. For to the man whom he let in he uttered merely:
“Well?”
“He is dead at last!” announced the other. “I saw him myself an hour ago, lying high among his vestments and candles, like a rag on a rose-bush.”
“It was time!” commented Anastass. “When will they bury him?”
“To-morrow,” replied Yorghi. “It is summer, you know.”
“Then the appointment will be soon,” said Anastass. “I began to think we had picked a plum for a peach. If this old——”
A look from Yorghi made him turn around. There in a doorway stood the old man, white and strange in his disordered array. He stared confusedly, blinking a little at the candle held by Anastass.
“What are you doing here?” demanded that personage with considerable sternness.
“I heard the bell—I don’t sleep, you know—I am old—I have seen many things. They come and go before my eyes—so.” He waved his hand before his face. “I heard the bell—I thought the little Pipina——”
Anastass met this silently. Then he went to the old man, took his hand, knelt, and said slowly, looking up into the faded eves:
Drawn by Sydney Adamson
“Son, he said, “you are too good”—Page 72.
“Dead?” uttered the old man, looking about uncertainly. “I—— Dead?”
“No, father,” replied Anastass, solemnly kissing the hand he held. “It is you who are now Patriarch of Constantinople and Primate of Greece.”
Upon which he rose and made a sign to Yorehi. The latter knelt in turn before the old man, kissed his unwilling hand, and said:
“Your Beatitude, give me the blessing of God.”
The old man blinked again in the candlelight.
“I—I think—I will go to bed,” he stammered.
At this Yorghi rose hastily and turned away. Anastass, however, immediately spoke:
“That is right, your Beatitude. You must rest while you can, for weary days await us.”
VI
There was truth in what Anastass had said. He announced that they would have now to move into town, and a change came upon the house on the hill. The long rooms, bare as they were, were quickly made barer still; the halls were made impassable by boxes; the very garden was despoiled. The old man saw his little world dismantled under his eyes—its peace shattered by the fury of hammers and porters, its comfort buried in the depths of packing-cases. But the days were not many before Anastass decreed that it was time to go.
If the old man was bewildered by the fatiguing strangeness of these events, he still found it possible to smile—albeit somewhat wanly. And when the last moment came, the sharpness of it was turned by the novelty of what happened. For he was dressed in a long black robe with flowing sleeves, upon his head was set the Brimless cylinder of the Greek Church, about his neck was hung a chain of gold, and over his shrunken finger was slipped a great ring. Then a sedan chair was brought, and four sturdy porters carried him lightly away. He made a wonderful figure as they went down the break-neck cobblestones to the water—the stately old man in his black and white and gold. And perhaps a certain childish consciousness of it, an excitement of new impressions, made it easier for him to leave the garden and the arbor. At all events it was a great thing to get into the two-oared sandal that waited at the bottom of the hill, to be at last a part of the busy play which he had watched so long from afar. The presence of a stranger in the boat, whom Anastass called Dimitri, awed him a little at first. But he soon forgot everything in the pleasure of slipping down the Bosphorus on mid-current, with the gardened hills on each side running by like pictures in a dream.
The dream came to an end at Top-Haneh, where they swung inshore. There two victorias were waiting on the quay, and a brilliant red-and-gold cavass came ceremoniously forward to help them from the boat. Perhaps it was because he recognized the visitant of some nights before that the old man made less of having his hand kissed. But he was accustomed now to marvels, so that when he was put alone in the first carriage, with Yorghi on the box, he merely wore his patient smile as of old. Then the little cortège climbed the long hill to the Taxime, clattered down the Grande Rue de Péra, and drew up splendidly at the door of an establishment not far from Galata Serai.
The old man and the door-boy had each a moment for admiration. The old man had never seen anything so magnificent as the emblazonments—to him perfectly unintelligible—that covered the great windows: “Karaghieuze Frères, Orfèvrerie et Joaillerie, Fournisseurs de S.M.I. le Sultan.” As for the door-boy, he was accustomed to equipages as smart, and he had a particular salaam for certain diaphanous bundles of beauty that came in behind the Palace eunuchs: but he now decided that here was a new occasion for that salaam. So when the cavass held the carriage door and Anastass offered the old man his arm, the boy threw open his domain with an unction never to be surpassed. And perhaps his respect was only deepened by Yorghi’s cold refusal, after Dimitri had humbly followed the others, to entertain any relation whatsoever.
“So I have found,” he said, “exactly what I wanted.”—Page 68
Karaghieuze Frères were oblivious to what was going on at their door. Indeed, one of them who happened at that moment to be there, glided forward to meet these correct personages, and immediately conducted them into his small private cabinet. It had the air of a large jewel box, being completely lined with red velvet. Anastass, after the old man had been solemnly seated in a big armchair and Dimitri had assumed the post of inferiority near the door, confidentially approached Monsieur Karaghieuze and bestowed upon him a visiting card of portentous size.
“I have the honor,” he said, “to accompany His Beatitude Innocent I, the new Greek Patriarch.”
Monsieur Karaghieuze bowed so low as almost to sweep the carpet with his forelock, and insisted upon kissing the ​Patriarchal hand. Which was indeed significant of an admirable tolerance, for he could not be supposed to entertain the deepest reverence for the head of a schismatic faith. Anastass then drew him apart and laid before him the object of their call.
“Before giving an order,” he said, “I must particularly request that you maintain A certain rose arbor on the edge of the terrace where he would spend the long hot days.—Page 73. perfect silence about anything which we may ask you to do. I should let you know that we have selected your house simply because we judged that your discretion would be quite equal to your resources, taste, and skill.”
Monsieur Karaghieuze intimated that he was profoundly sensible of the honor conferred upon his house, and that he would rather suffer bankruptcy a thousand times than give occasion for shaking such confidence. Anastass then went on:
“In assuming the affairs of the Patriarchate His Beatitude has made a painful discovery. He has found that the treasury has been ransacked, that certain objects are missing, and that from the most valuable of our antique regalia the stones are”—Anastass lowered his voice—“gone! Whether it happened during the lifetime of the late Constantine Emmanuel, or during the interregnum ensuing upon his death, there has been no time, it may never be possible, to determine. But His Beatitude is to be installed within the month, and, naturally, he is gravely concerned for the honor of the church should these losses become known.” At this they both glanced toward the old nan, who was diffusing in the small bright place the benediction of his smile. “Accordingly he proposes,” continued Anastass, “to make good the loss as best he can out of his private means. Fortunately they are—adequate.”
Again Monsieur Karaghieuze glanced at the old man, this time in greater admiration than before.
“What noble self-sacrifice!” he exclaimed.
“Eh, these men of the church!” smiled Anastass. “They, unlike ourselves, think only of laving up treasures in heaven!”
“You may count upon our discretion!” declared Monsieur Karaghieuze feelingly. “Will it be—a—goldsmith’s work that you will require, or jewelry?”
“Chiefly jewelry,” replied Anastass. “A considerable number of unset gens. And the work, you understand, will have to be done in His Beatitude’s apartments, under his own supervision. With despatch also. We shall wish to begin to-morrow morning. What we will do now will be to select the stones from which the losses may be repaired. Of course you will have ample security to cover their value until the work is done and the price paid.”
Drawn by Sydney Adamson
“Your Beatitude, give me the blessing of God.”—Page 76.
It was Anastass who made most of the selection, describing as he did so the priceless relics of Byzantine and even of earlier times which had been so ruthlessly abstracted or defaced. His Beatitude, however, was frequently appealed to, and was skilfully made to exercise his choice among the shining treasure scattered before him. The decision, it must be said, usually rested upon the more visible of the precious objects displayed, and never failed to elicit from Monsieur Karaghieuze the warmest eulogies upon His Beatitude’s taste. So at last a prodigious number of little boxes were set aside.
“Now,” said Anastass, “to show how business-like we can be in the church!” But after starting to unbutton his frock coat he suddenly put his hand to his hair, looking first at His Beatitude and then at the jeweller. “I meant to stop at the bank first, but I forgot it. We have just come, you know, from having our audience at the A brilliant red-and-gold cavass came ceremoniously forward.—Page 76. Sublime Porte.”
“My dear sir!” cried the jeweller, “do you insult me? Here! Take your jewels! Go!”
He was quite purple with protest.
Anastass laughed.
“Be careful!” be said. “We might take you at your word. But I have it. I would ask you to send someone with us, but I am afraid His Beatitude is a little fatigued after his hard day. So if he will excuse me a moment and if you will permit him to rest here until I return, I think I will step around to the bank. Dimitri, call the cavass.” Turning back to the jeweller he added: “A priceless servant! It may save you a little uneasiness if we take them now.”
Monsieur Karaghieuze scorned to consider His Beatitude in the light of security.
“The bank will be there another day!” he said. “If His Beatitude wishes to return home at once——”
“On the contrary,” put in Anastass at once. “I am sure His Beatitude would prefer a moment of repose. If you could let him lie down here until——”
“Certainly! Certainly!” cried the jeweller. “If he will deign to endure our meagre accommodations!”
And he pulled forward the billowy red velvet couch. Upon this His Beatitude, divested of the uncomfortable head-dress, was laid unmurmuring. As a matter of fact he was fatigued after his hard day, and his eyes closed a moment in the contentment of relaxation. The four—for Dimitri had come back with Yorghi—regarded in silence the extraordinary picture he made. Then Anastass turned to the jeweller:
“I commend him to you, Monsieur Karaghieuze. You will find him of a tractability!”
At this the old man opened his eyes.
“Son,” he asked, “do you go?”
“Yes, father,” answered Anastass, “I go. But sleep until I come. Good-by.”
The old man smiled, a little wearily. They looked at him for another moment of silence. Then they left him alone.
VII
His Beatitude came slowly to consciousness with the impression of being under alien eyes. He had been dreaming, and the little red room was as strange to him as the countenance of Monsieur Karaghieuze.
“I beg His Beatitude’s pardon if I have disturbed him!” uttered that worthy with an anxious smile. “The coachman wishes to know—— He is still waiting—— The other coachman has brought a message which I do not quite understand—— May I accompany you to the Patriarchate?”
“The Patriarchate?” asked the old man vaguely.
“Yes. The coachman doesn’t seem to be sure where he was to take you. You have taken possession, have you not?”
The old man held a brief inner examination. Then he announced judicially:
“Son, I do not know.”
Drawn by Sydney Adamson
So at last a prodigious number of little boxes were set aside.—Page 80.
His Beatitude considered a moment.
“With Kyrio Anastass,” he replied, and he looked around him as if to discover the whereabouts of that personage.
“No, he is not here!” exclaimed the jeweller. “He said he would be back in twenty minutes, and he has been gone three hours. But where did he bring you from this afternoon?”
Again His Beatitude considered.
“It was up,” he answered, lifting his hand. “Upon the hill. Below was water. And I saw the little Pipina!” he added triumphantly.
“The little Pipina!” burst out the distracted jeweller. “I thought it was the Grand Vizier. Excuse me a moment while I speak to the coachman.”
Bowing himself out he hurried to the door. It was as he said. The other coachman had returned and seemed to be having some discussion with the one who had waited.
“Look at me!” called the jeweller imperiously.
Both men turned.
“Where did you bring these effendis from this afternoon?”
“From Top-Haneh, Effendim,” they answered in concert.
“Top-Haneh, eh? And what street?”
“From the quay,” they chorused again. “They came in a boat.”
“In a boat!” The jeweller’s heart became as lead within him. But he looked at the new-comer. “And where did you drive the three young ones from here? The two and the cavass?”
“First they said the Ottoman Bank,” replied the man, “but then they changed their minds and told me to drive down to the Galata Quay——”
“The quay!” cried Monsieur Karaghieuze, turning pale.
“Yes. They said they had to catch a steamer.”
“A steamer!” almost shrieked the jeweller. “What steamer?”
The man shrugged his shoulders:
“Who knows? There are a thousand. They went out in a sandal. They told the boatman to row for his soul. But they threw me back a lira!” Rising a moment he reached into his pocket and held up the glittering gold piece with a grin. “I just happened to pass, and Mahmoud here told me that he hasn’t got his yet!”
“A-a-ah!” uttered the jeweller slowly, between his teeth. Then he wheeled in a flash. “If I don’t tear out by the root every hair of that goat’s beard of his!” he cried. And he ran back like a tiger into the little red cabinet where lay His Beatitude.