at salonika we entered a europe which was new to me, if an old story to nikka, a europe which was blended with the life and color and form of the orient. tall minarets like fingers of doom pointed skyward over bulbous domes, and driving to the railroad station through blocks of shabby houses that had replaced an area ravaged by fire, we heard the high-pitched, wail-call of the muezzin.
jews in long, black gaberdines; albanian arnauts, tosks, ghegs and malissori tribesmen, stately and savage; greek mountaineers in the dirty, starched fustenella; tall serb peasants, with the bearing of nobles and the faces of poets; bulgars, stolid, imperturbable and level-eyed; hawk-nosed ottoman turks in tasseled fezzes; armenians, fawning and humble; lank, hungry syrians; treacherous-looking greeks of the peninsula; greeks of the islands, beautiful as statues by phidias; roumanians, with heavy black brows and the stocky build of trajan's legionaries; tziganes, lean and gaudily dressed; kurds with cruel eyes and the bow-legs of a race of horsemen;—all the races of the near east swarmed and crowded and cursed and pushed along the untidy sidewalks.
"this is no man's land," said nikka as our dilapidated automobile forced a slow progress through the congested traffic. "all races here hate one another. we are two hundred years behind western europe. here treachery is the rule. might is right. the strong hand takes all. women are inferior beings—save amongst my own race."
his thin face lit with a smile.
"many things can be said against my people, but we give our women freedom. yet over us, as over all the other peoples, still hangs the shadow of islam, shutting out the sun, denying culture, restricting thought."
at the railroad station we fought for places in a first-class compartment, which had room for six and must accommodate eight. the second and third-class cars were jammed to the doors. women wept, children howled and men swore and struck each other and their women indiscriminately. in the midst of it all, with one warning whistle-blast, the train lunged out of the station, shaking off superfluous passengers as it jolted over the switch on to the main line.
that was a dreadful journey, not long as regards distance, but tediously protracted in time. the country grew steadily more mountainous as we left the coast. the engine panted and heaved; the cars rattled and shook. at frequent intervals we stopped by some station, and the scenes of our departure from salonika were repeated according to scale. but the engine toiled on, and in the full tide of hours we crawled over a mountain-ridge and saw the sun rising in the east beyond the close-packed roofs of seres.
it was a town that seemed to huddle together as though in fear, and there were great gashes and gaps in its lines of white-washed house-walls, relics of three wars, each of which had taken toll of its citizens. here and there a church or a mosque, a school or a government building, rose above the level of two-story dwellings. but it had none of the teeming squalor and gorgeous conflict of colors that made salonika so effective a gateway.
nikka commandeered a fiacre in the station-square.
"do you know the house of kostabidjian the moneylender?" he asked the driver in greek that sounded more than passable to me. "very well, then, drive us there."
"who is kostabidjian?" i inquired as the driver whipped up his small horses.
a dour, secretive look had settled on nikka's face in the last two days. his eyes had narrowed, and their gaze was fixed upon the far horizon when they were not shrewdly surveying the appearances of people around him.
"he is the agent of the tribe," he replied shortly. "it was through him i sent word to my uncle."
i held my peace after that. we drove for half an hour into the northeastern suburbs, where the houses became little villas, with courtyards and small gardens, and sometimes orchards behind. at last we stopped at a gateway overhung by olive-trees, and the driver got down to pull the bell-wire which protruded from an opening by the gate. the solemn clangor echoed faintly, and was succeeded by shuffling foot-steps. a wicket opened, and a dark, bewhiskered face was revealed. nikka ejaculated a single sentence in the gypsy dialect that toutou's gang sometimes used, and the gate swung ajar. i gave the driver of the fiacre a couple of drachmas, and followed nikka inside.
the individual with the whiskers, a dried-up, elderly man, quickly fastened the gate again, with a sidewise look at nikka, half respect, half fear. the courtyard was empty, save for some ponies and mules under a shed at the rear, and the custodian motioned to us to follow him to the house.
at the door, he stood aside and ushered us into a parlor furnished in the french style. off it opened a dining-room. a stout, smooth-faced, elderly man rose from a desk as we entered. he started to salaam, thought better of it, and offered his hand, which nikka grasped perfunctorily. then he commenced to speak in the tzigane dialect, and nikka cut him off.
"speak french," said nikka curtly. "i have no secrets from my friend, mr. nash." and to me: "this is monsieur kostabidjian."
kostabidjian bowed to me.
"my poor home is honored, indeed, by two such distinguished guests," he protested. "monsieur zaranko, it is many years now since i had the pleasure of meeting you, but you will find that i have executed all your commissions faithfully."
nikka smiled sarcastically.
"you would not be alive and whole if you had not," he commented.
"surely, you do not mean that you think i would do anything else," cried kostabidjian.
"i mean i am sure that you do as i command," returned nikka impatiently. "also, that i feel i do not have to rely upon your honesty in the matter. now, what news have you for me?"
kostabidjian—he was an armenian of uncertain parentage, i afterwards discovered, with the ingrained servility pounded into that unfortunate race by centuries of oppression—drew up chairs for us.
"the telegram was forwarded at once to the chief," he answered. "but wasso mikali sent back word yesterday that he would be delayed in waiting upon you in consequence of a caravan of cartridges which the band are running into albania. it is an affair which has attracted his attention for the past month, and he dares not trust the work to another."
"does he, himself, go to albania?"
"no, monsieur zaranko. but the starting of the caravan, and the paying of the purchase-price—"
"in advance?"
"of course."
"good," said nikka. "when will he be here?"
"he spoke of to-morrow—"
"then serve us food, and lead us to a room where we may rest."
the armenian clapped his hands, and the old man with the whiskers—who was dumb in consequence of having had his tongue cut out in one of the turkish massacres of the red past—returned and carried word in his own fashion of our wants to the kitchen. presently we sat down in the dining room to a hot meal of pilaf, with chicken, dough cakes and coffee, which kostabidjian pressed upon us officiously.
"it has been a hard year for the tribe, monsieur zaranko," he purred, rubbing his hands together. "i don't know what they would have done without your aid."
"the subject is not for discussion," rapped nikka.
"oh, ah! certainly!"
and he was quiet for a few minutes. then his loquacity gained the better of him, and he burst forth:
"it's not as it used to be in the balkans, gentlemen! the law doesn't run any stronger. i'll say that. and boundaries are still vague, for all that the great ones in paris decided. but people are poor as hajji achmet after he'd been to mecca. they earn nothing, and have nothing—and therefore there's nothing to take or to steal. hee-hee-hee!"
"you talk nonsense," said nikka savagely. "am i to be annoyed by such as you?"
no prince could have been more arrogant; no lackey could have succumbed more completely.
"p-p-par-d-dd-don!" the armenian's teeth rattled.
"you may go. i will summon you if i have need."
the man went like a whipped dog, and cowered over his mysterious accounts at the desk in the next room.
nikka sat through the meal with a black frown on his face. he was plainly out of sorts, and while i could understand his aversion to kostabidjian, i was secretly amazed by the constantly growing change in his manner, for he was normally of a uniformly pleasant disposition. but it was not until we had been shown to a bedroom on the upper floor that he unmasked his feelings. i began to undress, but he paced the floor restlessly from wall to wall. suddenly he turned on me:
"jack, i hope i haven't insulted you in the past twenty-four hours."
"i'm not aware of it, if you have," i returned cheerfully.
"i'm having a hell of a time," he groaned. "the two selfs in me are wrenching at my soul. there's nikka, the gypsy freebooter, who has been dead for years, and against him fights nikka, the artist and man of the town. neither of them owns me. until the other day—except now and then when the old self reared its head temporarily—i thought i had thrust the gypsy behind me. but i was a fool to think so, jack. god, what a fool! why, the music in me always was gypsy!
"but i thought i had submerged it, drowned it. i thought i was like you and hugh. i know better now. since we started east i have felt these half-dead instincts rising up in me, clutching at my soul, tormenting my intelligence. the hunger for the open road, contempt for order and law, the mastery of my own will, all these things call to me. and yet, jack, i feel ashamed! i feel ashamed to bring you here, to have you meet the fellow downstairs, who, when all is said and done, is the agent through whom my people dispose of what they steal and smuggle.
"for that's the truth, jack! my people are not like toutou's gang. but they are gypsies. they live by their own hands, and every man's hand is against them. they make their own laws, and abide by their own customs. they take what they need, and consider it their due. kostabidjian spoke of my uncle's running cartridges to albania. i know what it means. after the war there were vast stocks of ammunition scattered all over the balkans, treasure trove to such wild peoples. the allies ruled that it should be surrendered or destroyed. but do you suppose it was? never!
"it was stolen, hidden and smuggled. i would swear that my tribe have sold it to kemal bey, to the russian soviets. now, the greeks and the serbs are pressing down on the albanians, and my uncle sells to the albanians. if he can, too, he will sell to the greeks and the serbs; and he will take—steal, if you like—whatever of value he can get from all three of them.
"i tell you all this, because i don't want to fly false colors with you. i lived that life when i was a boy. but i should like to make you understand that in some way, by some esoteric, involved, well-nigh impenetrable process of psychology, it is not stealing in the sense that toutou steals. my people have been outcasts for centuries; they have been bred up in this way of life. it is as natural for them to take what they need, and thrive on other people's needs, as it is for the arabs to practice the same methods in battling the hardships of the desert.
"it isn't wrong in their eyes. put it that way. and i—i can see it both ways, jack. i can see how wrong it is, and i can see how right it seems to them."
i dropped my hand on his shoulder.
"you don't need to say all this to me," i told him. "why, nikka, it's—it's—"
"it's what? hard to understand!"
"easy to understand," i corrected. "hard to phrase. but i know you too well to worry about you. as for the wrench, i'm beginning to feel it myself."
nikka resumed his restless pacing.
"i don't mind anything so much as that oily armenian downstairs," he insisted. "he—he is dishonest. and we make him dishonest. not that i've used him so, jack. most of what i earn goes to my people, who need it, poor souls, especially since the war laid its blight on all south-eastern europe. kostabidjian is one of the agents i employ to distribute my funds. i use him because of his connection with my uncle's tribe."
"most of us have to use dishonest helpers occasionally," i said. "i'd hate to have to guarantee every business associate of mine. but can we trust this man, nikka? if he's all you indicate him, isn't he likely to sell us out?"
"he'd sell us out in a minute, if he dared," rejoined nikka, with a tight-lipped smile. "but he knows that if he did he would get a knife in him. it would be only a question of time."
"nice company you've dragged me into," i grumbled. "well, let's catch up on our sleep."
his outburst had eased nikka's nervous tension, and he soon dozed off. for a while i watched the afternoon sunlight outside the windows, then the weariness of our travels overcame me, and i, too, slept.... i woke abruptly, feeling a light blazing in my eyes. my first thought was of toutou and hélène de cespedes, and i dived under the pillow for my automatic and sat up at the same time.
a man was standing in the doorway of the room, with a kerosene lamp in his hand, a tall man, with the proud face of an eagle. wisps of silver-white hair escaped from the varicolored turban that wrapped his brows, but he held himself with the erect poise of youth. he was dressed in tight breeches of brown cloth, and a blue shirt and short red jacket. flat sandals of bull's-hide, sewed to a point at the toes, were laced over his bare feet by straps that wound across his insteps and above his ankles. around his waist was twisted a heavy sash, bristling with knives and pistols.
as i prodded nikka awake, he closed the door behind him and set the lamp on a table, calmly ignoring my pistol. nikka, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, took one look at the apparition and jumped from the bed.
"wasso!" he cried.
the stranger raised fingers to lips and breast in a graceful salaam, and replied in the gypsy patois, a cadenced, musical speech when used by those to whom it was a mother-tongue. nikka grasped his hand, and exchanged a rapid-fire of question and answer, then called to me:
"this is my uncle. he arrived sooner than he expected. he guessed my need was great, and traveled without respite. come and meet him."
wasso mikali rendered me a salaam and a handshake. his bright eyes surveyed my face, and he made a comment which drew a laugh from nikka.
"my uncle thinks you have the look of one who likes to know how many cartridges his enemy carries," nikka translated.
the old gypsy sank to his haunches on the bare floor, with a sweeping gesture of invitation to both of us to join him.
"no, no," exclaimed nikka as i started for a chair. "he has never sat on a chair in his life. do as he does or he will think you are trying to demonstrate how different you are."
so i crouched cross-legged beside them—it seemed to be easy enough for nikka to resume the ways of his boyhood—and concealed my discomfort as stoically as i could. it was close to midnight when we were awakened, and the talk with wasso mikali lasted for several hours. first, nikka explained to him the circumstances of our trip to constantinople, and the old man's eyes glistened at the mention of the treasure. he interrupted with a liquid flow of polysyllables.
"he says," nikka interpreted, when he had finished, "that he has heard about it. it is just as i told you and hugh, the tradition is known all through the balkans. he says that the treasure is concealed in an ancient palace in stamboul which has been inhabited longer than men can remember by a tribe of gypsies whose chief is one beran tokalji. he says that this tokalji is a great thief—" nikka grinned ruefully—"that comes well from my uncle, jack, and that there is a rumor amongst the tribes that he, tokalji, is an ally of a group of frank thieves. there is a tradition in tokalji's tribe that their forefathers believed the treasure ultimately would go to them."
"will he help us?" i asked eagerly.
nikka gave me an odd look.
"his tribe are mine. my wish is their wish. how can they refuse?"
"yes," i insisted, "but how much will they want? is it safe to tell him all this?"
nikka's face flushed purple. for a moment i thought he would strike me. then he turned, and shot a question at the old gypsy, who replied with an amused grin.
"i did not repeat your second question," said nikka coldly. "he would not have taken it in good grace even from me. but i did tell him your first. do you want to know just what his answer was?"
"yes," i said, "and i say, nikka, don't be uppish because i don't know the ropes about your damned family. man dear, this is all new to me!"
nikka relented at once.
"my fault," he apologized, slightly shamefaced. "this gypsy complex i told you about plays funny tricks with me. but—" and his grin duplicated wasso mikali's—"my uncle's precise answer to your first question was that he would consider 'the spittle of his sister's son ample payment for whatever he could do.' he meant it, too."
