“Now what?” demanded Dmitri cheerily. “You look as stark as a dead
fish, my friend. Have some wine.”
Steccho took the full glass gratefully, drained it, his head thrown far
back, and wiped his lips with a sweep of his hand.
“I thought it was the police,” he said unsteadily.
Dmitri lit the fire in the brazier before he spoke. His eyes were
filled with brooding solicitude when he looked back at the boy.
Steccho’s whole posture showed more than mere exhaustion. There were
dejection and fear in the slouch of his body as he sat forward on the
edge of the couch, his fingers crumpled in his hair.
“You have done something to-night?”
The boy nodded.
Dmitri measured powdered Arabian coffee into the copper pot carefully.
“It is a pitiful penalty of wrongdoing,” he said compassionately,
“the little ghosts of fear one must forever entertain. You have been
followed here?”
“I am not afraid. I am hungry.” A shudder like a chill shook his
narrow, stooped shoulders. Dmitri eyed him anxiously. “Let us go around
to Barouki, some place where it is quiet and we can talk.”
“None better than here. Lay off your coat and lie down. I will have
you such a meal in twenty minutes as you have not tasted in months,
not since you left home. I have broth, wine, and lamb to broil; grapes
and bread and coffee.” He set a pot of broth over the blaze, brought
out lamb from the cupboard with a small, smooth board to cut it on,
and sat cross-legged on the floor before the brazier while he cut the
meat into slices and skewered it with slices of raw onion between. “I
am no wanderer at heart, you see. I like my own hearth-fire even if it
is merely a charcoal blaze like this. I prefer to cook my own meals and
know what I feed upon. Drink that broth.”
Steccho obeyed in moody silence. The reaction had set in after his
rebuff at the Dupont. He drank the broth in deep swallows. The peace
and genial atmosphere of the room had begun to seep through his
consciousness as it always did. He felt that here he might lie and
sleep for hours, until the fear that dogged his heels should have lost
the scent. He wondered if the blade had reached the heart. He had
dropped without a cry, the man who desired both rubies and her who
was more precious than rubies. If it had not killed him, then he would
waken and accuse--whom would he accuse? He had seen no assailant in the
darkness. Would he, perhaps, say that Carlota had stabbed him, would
he dare when he knew she had been unconscious in his arms? Besides,
they would discover the rubies were gone; that would prove she was
innocent, that another had dealt the blow and had taken them. He yawned
exhaustedly.
“You could hide me here, if it had to be, yes?”
“Doubtless.” Dmitri set a savory mess of browned lamb on the black oak
table and poured boiled rice into the broth to simmer. “I could hide
you, but you would have to tell me why you were hiding. In these days
we must guard our friends against their own impulses. Whom have you
killed, Ferad?”
The Bulgarian stretched out his palms excitedly.
“And what is that, the death-stroke, nowadays? Life is the cheapest
thing in the world.”
Dmitri poured wine into two tall metal drinking-cups. From the
Metropolitan Tower came the strokes of two. He served the rice in
silence, reserving comment, waiting for the confidence of the other.
And suddenly Steccho rose from the table. He had eaten with a ravening
hunger; now his old air of sullen bravado returned. He turned pocket
after pocket inside out, emptying the jewels on the table before Dmitri
as if he had been a gamin rolling marbles. Dmitri lifted his brows in
relief and amusement as he looked at them, rubies and diamonds, rubies
and pearls, set in old silver and gold.
“So, you play with these, my friend,” he smiled. “I had thought you
were grown to a man’s desire. These are the devil’s toys to catch the
tinkling fancy of women and girls. Did you need money? I would have
given you all I had.”
Steccho laughed, his heavy black hair rumpled over his forehead. He
shook his head impatiently. After his long fast, the wine was stirring
his brain to resentment against Jurka.
“I bring them to you that you may choose for me,” he said. “This is why
I am here. They are the missing crown jewels, the rubies of the queen.”
Dmitri stared at him incredulously. Yet the gems lay there before him.
The boy spoke the truth. These were imperial in their beauty and value.
He lifted the pendant, gazing intently at the Zarathustra ruby, the
second largest in the world.
“The queen?” he repeated incredulously. “She is in Switzerland. She
sent you here?”
“Not I.” Steccho laughed in derision, tightening his belt. “I am Ferad
Steccho, a dog to be kicked and denied, you understand. The queen will
thank Count Jurka, but I--I, Steccho, am the one who got the jewels for
her, and it is you, my Dmitri, who will decide whether we ever give
these to the queen who waits for them. That is why I come to you, not
to hide me, but to tell me what to do.”
Dmitri’s thoughts centered on the name he had spoken, Jurka. The former
court chamberlain, the ex-attaché who had been given the favor and
confidence of the queen herself in the cataclysm of fate that had swept
her throne from under her, the suave, faithful, blond Jurka. He watched
the dark, eager face of the boy, touched with vivid high lights along
point of chin, cheek, and nose by the firelight in the open grate.
“Do you think for one moment a man like Jurka would undertake this
mission out of any loyalty or desire to assist a queen in exile
unless--I did not think you would help to feather the nest of such a
bird as Jurka.”
He checked himself abruptly. Steccho struck his clenched fists upon the
table between them, the jewels unheeded as he poured out his words.
“I did not take them for him or for the queen. It was the price he
demanded of me for the safety of my mother and sister.”
Dmitri glanced to the mantel where the letter lay. He had forgotten it
in the surprise of Steccho’s coming, but now he waited to hear him out
before he gave it to him.
“Jurka sent for me in Sofia. He was working with the relief committee
there, a mask to hide behind merely. He remains an agent of the
royalists. He told me these were part of the crown jewels. They had
been stolen years ago by some Italian woman loved by the crown prince.
He said they had traced them here to New York. What do I care for
them?” He pushed the rubies from him resentfully. “I tell you they are
unlucky. The rubies are for blood, the pearls for tears, always I hear
my mother tell that. Here they were worn by an innocent girl--”
He stopped. Would he tell Dmitri all the truth, of the girl Carlota,
whom his friend had loved, of her peril, and why he had taken the
jewels from the keeping of the man who jeered at love?
“How did you first meet Jurka? How did he know these were here? Whom
have you killed to get them for him?”
Dmitri strove to speak calmly. Behind the boy’s story lay some
conspiracy of Jurka’s, another undercurrent to reckon with in the great
crimson tidal wave.
“I was suspected of being a revolutionist and ordered shot.” Steccho
spoke jerkily, between his teeth, his head back as he smoked. “My
father was head gamekeeper, before the war, on the Count’s estate north
of Rigl where our home was. You know the place? On the mountain road
from Moritza there is a castle of yellow rock standing high above the
town.” He drew long inhaled puffs from his cigarette. The castle in
the sun glow! The strange, numb, unsteadiness swept over him again as
it had back there on the fire escape when he had watched the man seize
Carlota. Lust and youth, even as Jurka had ravished the sweetness and
laughter and pure joyousness of Katinka.
Dmitri and the room slipped out of his vision, submerged in a gray
ocean of restfulness beyond which gleamed the castle of his dreams.
How it had stood as an eternal symbol to his boyhood of the pomp
and majesty of kings! Then had come the schooling at Sofia, and the
smouldering fires of revolution that crept through the dry rotting
underbrush and mould of oppression, unnoted by those who saw only the
bravery of waving green boughs in the sunlight.
He had met Dmitri Kavec there, a teacher of political economy and
sociology, tutoring younger men to pay his way, writing for certain
Continental papers, talking always of the day when freedom should
dawn. He was a Czech, with a mingling of Romany blood in his veins.
It showed in his mastery of the violin, in his dark skin, not swarthy
like Steccho’s, but clear and pale as yellow wine with the underlay of
red. The boy’s eyes were furtive, restless, Dmitri’s like those of some
captive eagle that sits motionless, watching passing crowds, alert and
fearless. He, Steccho, had felt proud when he had been asked to join
the group of men who assembled nightly in Dmitri’s quarters above the
old coffee-house in the lower square. He had sat and listened to them,
learning much of the underground wiring of secret diplomacy, much of
the patience of the thinkers and workers.
Then had come dissension and a break in the university club ranks.
Dmitri was called a dreamer, one of those who believed the end might
be reached by brotherhood and teaching of the people. Even Steccho had
chafed at such doctrine. Rather he liked the fighting, the carrying of
blazing flambeaux in the race, the song of the torch, as Dmitri called
their propaganda. After the outbreak of war he had become a spy for
the Internationals. It had ended with that winter day when the royalist
troops had caught him hiding in Rigl. A troop occupied the town on its
way up to the mountain passes above Moritza. Personages of importance
sat in conference with Jurka in the old smoke-stained room at the inn,
and Steccho had found a way of listening, half-wedged down the side
flue of an old rock chimney.
He had overheard much, gossip mostly from Jurka, of the vacillating,
ambitious king who craved the title of Czar, of his wife, the
sour-visaged queen, whom he had never loved, the stool pigeon of
William. They had chatted of these, speculating on who would head the
royalist cause if some day Ferdinand chanced to oversleep, found like
his old friend Abdul Hamid with a five-inch blade parting his ribs.
Steccho had listened eagerly. There was a trickle of truth here and
there through the talk. They placed more confidence in Sophia than
in the king. The soldiers were grumbling for back pay. Some officers
had been shot in the back by their own men. They had been caught
fraternizing with the enemy, exchanging food and tobacco under the very
noses of the nobles. Stores of supplies for the officers’ mess had been
broken open and scattered to the wounded by their comrades.
Straws in the wind, Jurka said, his back to the fireplace, but signs
to the wise. The people wearied of oppression. They must be taught
to dance to a new tune. With victory Bulgaria would swallow up her
enemies, she would sit like a brooding lioness, her cubs about her,
renegade Greece, recreant Roumania, Servia crawling, the Slovacs
whipped to heel. And eager to hear more, Steccho had leaned like a fool
too far forward to catch the low-spoken words, and a rumble of loosened
bricks had startled the soldiers into action.
He had been forced down by a dozen pricking, reaching sword-points as
if he had been a porcupine in a hole, and had been condemned to be shot
at once against the stable wall in the courtyard below.
He had heard the scream of his mother as the old women held her back,
and had tried to reach her. The soldiers had beaten and kicked him as
he lay in the snow, and Maryna, the little sister, had burst through
the line, and by some miracle of grace he had been granted his life
at her plea. Jurka had said with grave gallantry, as he smoothed back
her heavy silken flaxen hair, that Saint Ginevra herself had surely
intervened in his behalf.
“So you became a royalist, a serf--rather than join the gray marchers
to the shades?” Dmitri smiled at the boy. “Better to have remained up
the chimney and wakened singing in a chorus of victory. See how your
hand shakes. You have bad nerves, my boy. You rush down here in a fit
of pique like an emotional girl because Jurka desires to sleep and not
be disturbed. If he refused to see you to-morrow, you might throw the
playthings into the river and become revolutionist again. That way lies
madness.”
Steccho picked up the necklace, staring at the rubies with dreamy eyes.
The warmth of the fire and the good meal with wine filled him with a
glow of relaxed nerves and a sense of well-being and safety.
“I am no revolutionist. I hate to kill. I hate strife and turmoil and
change. Yet I hate Jurka, too, and his kind. I was his bondman because
he swore to protect my mother and Maryna. Do you know what they did
after the uprising in Poltenza, twelve miles from us? They shot the
villagers down against the gray wall of the market-place, two hundred
of them, and the girls were given first to the officers, then to the
soldiery, and we found their bodies piled in the wells, a trick from
the Turks. It serves two purposes. We have been patient, Dmitri. See, I
ask you. Shall we sell these and give the money to those who work for
freedom? How much could I get for them, two hundred thousand, three,
five?”
“More,” replied Dmitri gently, “and your throat slit. Listen, my boy.
Revolution is a mad dog. Who will thrust a lighted torch into the hands
of a maniac or idiot? I do not think the hour has struck when men are
content with the creed of violence. They weary of bloodshed. They ask,
Is this all, bodies, bodies, more bodies until the whole horizon is
filled with them, and one may not find the sky?”
“Ah, you talk,” Steccho muttered drowsily. “Jurka says you are a spy of
the Internationals.”
Dmitri smiled, slowly stirring the charcoal embers beneath the brazier
into a glow.
“I am no spy,” he said. “I am a watcher on the outer walls, my Ferad.
I am an opportunist, not aristocrat nor socialist nor even democrat. I
do not like a beaten path, but I love the ideals of tradition. I love
opportunity. That is why America fascinates me. Life is a game, and
all games lose their zest if one plays with a cheat, he who ignores
the rules and sets up his own. One objects to the stacked deck and
loaded dice. Also, each man should have a chance to deal. The trouble
with your Jurkas, your aristocrat, he deals all the hands and gives
himself the best. The trouble with you revolutionists, you would deal
everybody the same kind of a hand, and that makes the game stupid and
uninteresting. There is no law of chance, no thrill to your game. You
fatalists believe that man deals, but Fate shuffles the cards. Have
more to eat.”
“No one can play a fair game with such as Jurka.”
Steccho ignored the proffered food, his face on his hands.
“Then use his own tricks against him. Look you, my friend, the gambling
instinct is the keenest in all men, for we have learned that, after
all, life is a great gamble. The only thing you are sure of is that you
are sure of nothing. If I took up this sport, this gambling with human
lives, I would do so for the pure thrill of it. I like the plunger, the
good loser always. But your Jurka type, he who plays the game doggedly,
who merely wants something for nothing, you will find him a bad loser.
He plays to win only; the other type of man plays for the thrill of
achievement. Your anarchist, too, he takes a hand. If he loses, he will
say the game is crooked, and demand a new deal. If he wins, he plays
safe and stops, taking all the winnings. He is like your aristocrat,
after all; he will amuse himself with solitaire forever if you give him
the chance.”
Steccho rose moodily, walking up and down the floor.
“You have stolen to please the lust of empire,” Dmitri resumed, smoking
leisurely. “You are like the man who is afraid to play the game, to
take a chance himself, so he turns the wheel for others. If he fares
well from the man who wins, he likes him; if not, then he is for the
man who loses. He listens to what this man says, Let us break up this
house and do away with gambling forever. We will all play safe, then,
eh? But it is not possible, Ferad. All philosophy fails to reconcile
human nature. We are all gamblers. The trouble is that your Jurkas give
the game a bad odor, and then the losers cry out that the whole game
is not worth while. We are too selfish. We forget that we all lay up
riches but for the heirs of to-morrow. I would make the way easy. I
would strive to clear away the barriers that all might reach the goal
of opportunity. Yet I would not hobble the swift that the slow may keep
pace with them. Will you sleep here to-night?” He laid his arm around
the boy’s shoulders. “Do not think me unsympathetic. It is dangerous to
play the game here, and the weak go under. There are some that cheat. I
think Jurka is a cheat. We did not fight to make the world safe; that
would be a bore. We fought to make it livable.”
“I do not care for anything but to see my mother and sister again,”
said Steccho.
Dmitri’s brow cleared. “Ah, and I am forgetting all the good news for
you!” he cried, seizing the letter from the mantel. “Here is word from
home. We will pour more wine and plan to send you back free from the
talons of the black eagle.”
Steccho’s face softened in a glow of tenderness as he caught the
letter. There came the noise from without of a footfall on the steps,
hesitant, doubtful. As the boy swept the jewels from the table, a
tapping sounded on the outer door. Dmitri flung back the drapery before
the door of his bedroom.
“There is the window,” he whispered. “Watch out before you drop from
it.”
The knock came again, this time louder. He lowered the light and went
to answer it.