tokalji herded us through the atrium and up the stairs into the large chamber with the apse where he, himself, slept.
"sit," he ordered roughly, motioning to several stools. "i have something to say."
he went to a chest in the corner, and drew from it a bottle of rakia, raw oriental brandy. i looked about for a cup as he handed it to nikka, but my comrade, better versed in the customs of the country, deftly wiped the bottle's neck with his coat-sleeve, hoisted it for a long dram, wiped the neck again and passed it to me. i imitated him as well as i could, although a passing acquaintance with cognac in my days as a student at the beaux arts and also in the a.e.f. did not save me from a choking sensation as the fiery liquid burned my gullet. tokalji regarded me with contempt when i handed it to him, tilted the bottle bottom-up and drained the equivalent of a water-glass, with a smack of gusto.
"there," he said, setting the bottle on the floor. "we'll talk better wet than dry—although i will say, giorgi, your friend is no great hand at the bottle. i hope he's a better thief."
"only try him," said nikka eagerly.
"humph, i may! but to be frank with you, my lad, i don't want you two for a thieving job. it's something more difficult, and the reward will be in proportion."
nikka permitted his fingers to caress the hilt of his knife.
"we should enjoy a good killing," he hinted.
"no, no, giorgi. that will come in time, but whatever else you do, you must keep your knife sheathed in this business. as it happens, the men we are after are worth more to us alive than dead."
"whatever you say, voivode," answered nikka equably. "but what about your own men? they're a likely-looking lot."
"yes, but not so many of them have the gifts i require in this service," retorted tokalji, lifting the bottle once more. "they are clever thieves and fighters, but what i require now is men who can follow and spy. my best men at that work have failed to produce anything worth while in two weeks, and moreover, they have become known to our enemies. i must have new men, and abler men."
he bent his brows in a ferocious grimace.
"if you succeed, you are my friends. you shall have rich pickings. but if you fail you had better leave stamboul."
nikka dropped his hand again on his knife.
"why threaten?" he asked coolly.
tokalji glared at him with the blankly savage menace of an old gorilla.
"beware how you defy beran tokalji in his own den," he snarled. "well, let it pass. it shows you have spirit, but do not tempt me too far, giorgi. when i am aroused i must taste blood."
nikka rose.
"i am a free man," he answered casually. "so is my comrade, jakka. we sell our knives and our fingers to the best bidder, and if we don't like the treatment we say so and leave."
tokalji regarded him uneasily.
"here," he said gruffly, offering the bottle, "drink again and think better of it, man. no harm is done by plain talk. that's right. sit. i get along with those who don't fear me too much. you shall not be sorry you strayed in here—but you must deal honestly with me. i am buying your wits, and i expect something for my money."
"so far it is only we who have paid," retorted nikka. "how much are we to get?"
"how much? it depends upon how much we win. there will be hundreds of gold pieces for every man if it goes right."
"if what goes right?"
tokalji hitched his stool closer to us, and glanced around.
"see you, giorgi—and you, too, jakka, if you can understand any of this talk,—the two franks you robbed live at the hotel in pera, where all the rich franks stay."
"we saw it this morning," assented nikka.
"these two franks are an english lord and his servant. they seek something which i also seek and with them in their venture are two others, an amerikansky, nash, and one named zaranko, who, they say, is a fiddler and was one of our people in his youth."
"i have heard of that one," said nikka.
"would you know his face?"
"i think i would."
"good! above everything else we wish to learn what has become of the americansky and the fiddler and when they are to arrive. also, they are two more franks at the hotel, a man named king and his daughter. they, i think, are amerikansky like nash. we do not understand how they come to be in this business. if they are really in it, perhaps it would be worth while to kidnap the girl. we might hold her to blackmail her friends."
"but what do they seek that you also seek?" asked nikka.
"if you breathe it to a soul, i will cut out your heart with my own knife, i, beran tokalji," replied the gypsy chief by way of preface. "they have the secret to a treasure."
"what?" exclaimed nikka with great pretense of astonishment. "here in stamboul?"
"close by, my lad, close by. they know its location, but if we are smart we should be able to take it from them as soon as they reveal their knowledge. it is for us to find out their secret or wring it from them, by torture, if necessary."
"this is a job worth doing," cried nikka, jumping up. "jakka and i will be diligent. we will start now to trail the franks."
but tokalji barred the door to him.
"not so fast, not so fast," he answered with his gargoyle laughter. "the job has waited for you some time. it can wait a few hours longer. i prefer to keep you under my wing for the night, until we become better acquainted. you look like the right sort of fellow, giorgi, and your friend is not so poor a man for a frank; but after all, as i said to you, you came in to me from the street this afternoon, and all i know about you is that you are a good thief.
"it is not enough. i must know more. and for another thing, it will help you to await the return of the two i have out watching these franks in pera. they have not found much, but they can tell you something of what the franks do and how they spend their time. so make yourselves comfortable. you shall eat heartily, and this evening kara will dance in the courtyard as she promised you. that is worth waiting for, giorgi. if i were a young fellow, i would rather do that than lurk the corners of pera. heh-heh!"
he stepped aside, and waved us permission to go; and we walked through the courtyard to the crumbling wall which rimmed the bosphorus at one point, its base a rubble-heap, its battlements in fragments, its platform overgrown with weeds. from its top we could look down on the margin of beach, loaded with bowlders, and the ruins of what had been a jetty enclosing a little harbor for the imperial pleasure galleys.
"it would not be difficult to climb up here," i said idly, pointing to the gaps between the stones, and the sloping piles of bowlders. "does he suspect us, nikka?"
"no, that is only his gypsy caution. he thinks we are too good to be true. he needed what we seem to be—and behold, we arrive! he has waited long. he feels he can wait a little longer."
"i'm afraid he may wait a little too long for us," i answered.
"there's a chance," nikka admitted after a moment's reflection. "but we've got to risk it. in the meantime you must let me do all the talking. i'll tell everybody you are a sulky devil, a killer whose deeds haunt him. they'll leave you alone. gypsies respect temperamental criminals. but come along, we mustn't stay by ourselves. we'll be suspected of considering ourselves too highly or else having something to conceal. we can't afford any suspicions or even a dislike."
so we strolled over to the young men's quarters, and while i wrapped myself in a gloomy atmosphere that i considered was typical of a temperamental killer, nikka swapped anecdotes of crime with the others who drifted in and out. i looked for kara, but she was nowhere in view. after nikka had once established my character, the gypsies gave me a wide berth, and i had nothing to do but smoke and appear murderous. and i must say i got sick of the part. i was the first man up when mother kathene swung the stew-pot out of the chimney and old zitzi and lilli began to distribute tin plates and cups in an irregular circle on the floor. it was poor food, but plenty, and anyway, it broke the monotony of being an abandoned criminal.
with the passing of the twilight the young men moved to the courtyard. in the middle of the open space was a black smirch on the paving, and here they built a fire of driftwood collected from the beach under the wall. it was a tribute to the immemorial habits of their race. even here in the crowded city they must close the day with a discussion of its events around a tribal blaze, exactly as they would have done upon the road, exactly as thousands of other gypsy tribes were doing at that very moment on the slopes of the caucasus, in the recesses of the kilo dagh, in the pine forests of the carpathians, on the alien flanks of the appalachians far across the sea.
a buzz of talk arose. the primitive gypsy fiddles and guitars began to twang softly. nikka was the center of a gossiping group. men and women from the opposite side of the court joined the circle. young girls, with the lithe grace of the gypsy, as unselfconscious as animals, sifted through the ranks of the bachelors. beran tokalji, himself, a cigarette drooping sardonically from the corner of his mouth, stalked out and sat down with nikka.
in the changing shadows beyond the range of the firelight children dodged and played unhindered by their elders. high overhead the stars shone like fireflies under a purple vault. and from the spreading mass of stamboul echoed a gentle hum, the hum of a giant hive, a myriad voices talking, singing, praying, laughing, shouting, cursing, screaming. none of the discordant night noises of the west. no whistle-blasts, no shrieking of flat wheels on tortured rails, no honking of motor-horns, no clamor of machinery. only the drone of the hive.
a man raised his voice in a song, and the exultantly melancholy pæan to beauty blended with the other sounds like a skillfully woven thread in a tapestry. it died away so gradually as to seem as if it had never been. the fiddles sighed to silence in a burst of expiring passion.
nobody spoke for several moments. music was bred in the bone of these wild folk. it held them as could nothing else.
"what of giorgi bordu?" said tokalji presently. "does he sing or play or dance?"
nikka reached out his hand almost eagerly.
"i will play, if you wish. i vowed not to touch the fiddle again, but—"
his fingers closed lovingly on the crude instrument, and he cuddled it under his chin. his bow swept the strings in a torrent of arpeggios. he stood up and strode into the firelight as if upon a stage. and then he began to play, plaintively, at first, in a minor key. there were the noises of the night, a crackling fire, animals stirring, the cry of a child, awakening. the music brightened, quickened, became joyous. you felt the rays of the sun, and comfort of work. men and women danced and sang. a harsh note intervened. there was a quarrel. anger yelled from the strings. turmoil ensued. faster and faster went the tune. and then peace, and the measure became slower, almost stately.
the caravan had passed on. a forest encompassed it. boughs clashed overhead, birds twittered and sang. cool shadows fell athwart the path. but the way grew steep. the music told of the rocks and the slippery mud where a stream had overflowed, of the steady climb, of the endurance required. the caravan reached the height. a chill wind blew, but fair before them stretched a pleasant land, and the descent was easy to the warm, brown road that wound across the plain. sunset and camp again, firelight, the moon overhead, talk of love, the sensuous movement of a dance. then, languorous and slow, the coming of sleep.
i did not know it, but i was listening to the composition of zaranko's gypsy sonata op. 27, which some day, i suppose, will be as famous as the revolutionary etude or the hungarian rhapsody or beethoven's dream of the moonlight. but no audience will ever hear it with greater appreciation than those ragged gypsies who sat around the fire in the dirty courtyard of the house in sokaki masyeri. as nikka resumed his place in the outer circle, only the whispering of the flames broke the stillness. the very children were frozen on their knees, drunk with the ecstasy of melody.
"heh!" called beran tokalji, first to shake off the spell. "i do not wonder you vowed not to touch the fiddle, if you like the open road. with that bow of yours, giorgi bordu, you could wring hundreds of gold pieces from the franks. you play like the redcoats in the khans in buda and bucharest. heh-heh! i have heard niketu and stoyan mirko and karaji, and they were not to be compared with you. it is seldom the bravest men have the touch of the fiddler."
others spoke up readily in praise or asked questions as to nikka's opinion on moot points of harmony and the desirable methods of interpreting various gipsy songs. they would have had him play again, but he refused. i think he was emotionally exhausted.
"we have no fiddler to match with you," remarked tokalji, "and the gaida[1] and the flute are not fit for real music. but our maidens can dance. heh, girls, come out, shy ones! let the strangers view your grace."
[1] bagpipes.
they giggled amongst themselves, and swayed into a group that was as spontaneously instinct with rhythm as an old greek temple frieze. but suddenly they split apart.
"kara will dance," they cried. "let kara dance for the strangers."
and kara floated into the circle of firelight like a spirit of the forest. she still wore only the scanty madder-red skirt and torn bodice. the cloud of her hair tumbled below her waist. her tiny naked feet barely touched the ground. slowly she whirled, and the gipsy fiddles caught her time. a man with cymbals clashed an accompaniment. a flute whistled soprano. she increased the tempo; she varied her steps. she was a flower shrinking beneath the grass. she was a dove pursued by a falcon. she was a maiden deserted by her lover. she was a fairy hovering above the world.
we who watched her were breathless with the joy of the spectacle, and when she sank to the ground in a little pile of rags and hair as the music ended, i thought she must be worn out. but she bounded up at once, breathing regularly, radiating vitality.
"now i will dance the knife dance!" she exclaimed. "who will dance with me?" and before any could answer her, she seized a blazing stick from the fire, and ran around the circle waving it overhead until she came to where nikka sat. "ho, giorgi bordu, you who do not fear the knife, will you dance the knife dance with me?"
every eye in the circle was fixed on nikka, for, although i did not know it then, to have refused her invitation would have been a deadly insult, equivalent to a declaration of enmity toward her family and tribe. similarly, acceptance of it amounted to an admission that he considered her favorably as a wife, without definitely committing him to matrimony.
nikka did not hesitate. he stepped to her side. she slipped one arm around his waist, and with the other swung her torch in air until it showered sparks over the circle.
"hi!" she cried.
"hi!" echoed nikka.
and they pranced around the fire while the music commenced an air so fiercely wild that it made the blood tingle to listen to it. then she flung down her torch, and tore free from nikka's arm. he followed her. she eluded him. bound and round they tore, keeping step the while. now she accepted him, now she rejected him. at last he turned from her, arms folded, contemptuously unmoved. she wooed him with rhythmic ardor. he denied her. she drew her knife; he drew his. eyes glaring, lips pinched, they circled one another, feinting, striking, leaping, posturing.
"click!" the blades struck together.
"hi! hi!" they cried.
"click! clack! click!" went the knife-blades.
"ho! ho!" they shouted.
the game was to see how near you could come without cutting. to avoid hurt the dancers required quick eyes and agile bodies. the blades flashed like meteors in the shifting light, wheeling and slashing and stabbing. in the beginning kara forced the pace. nikka retired before her, rather than risk doing her harm. but slowly he assumed the mastery. his knife was always at her throat, and active as she was, he refused to be shaken off. she fended desperately, panting now, bright-eyed and flushed. but he pressed her. their blades clashed, he gave his a twist and hers dropped from her hand.
he seized her, forcing her back across his knee, knife up-raised to strike, while the fiddles clutched at one's nerves and the cymbals clanged with wicked glee. the scene—nikka's tall figure, with the poised knife, and the lithe, slender form he held, expressing in every curve and line its tempestuous, untamed soul—brought to my memory the song i had heard him sing one morning in the music-room at chesby:
and best of all, i shall hear
the wild, mad tzigane songs,
cruel and gay and lustful,
like fiddles and clanging gongs.
and in the glare of the campfires
i shall see the tziganes dance—
women with lithe, round bodies,
men straight as a heiduck's lance.
and perhaps a wild brown maiden
will seek me—
crash! boomed a knock on the street-door. and rap-rap-rap! it was repeated. crash! again.
the music stopped. nikka released his partner, and kara stooped quickly and snatched up her knife, tossing the hair out of her eyes, heedless as usual of the rags that slipped off her shoulders.
men looked at each other uncertainly. hands crept to waist-sashes.
"heh!" said tokalji. "who can it be in such a hurry at this hour?"'
crash! the door resounded under the battering of a pistol-butt.
