THE SILHOUETTE OF A CRIME
A genius thoroughly wicked--such was Demedes.
Quick to see the disgust the young men of Constantinople had fallen
into for the disputes their elders were indulging about the Churches,
he proposed that they should discard religion, and reinstate
philosophy; and at their request he formulated the following:
"Nature is the lawgiver; the happiness of man is the primary object of
Nature: hence for youth, Pleasure; for old age, Repentance and Piety,
the life hereafter being a respectable conjecture."
The principles thus tersely stated were eagerly adopted, and going
forward with his scheme, it may be said the Academy was his design, and
its organization his work. In recognition of his superior abilities,
the grateful Academicians elected him their High Priest.
We have seen how the public received the motto of the society.
Patience, Courage, Judgment looked fair and disclosed nothing wrong;
but there was an important reservation to it really the only secret
observed. This was the motto in full, known only to the
initiated--Patience, Courage, Judgment _in the pursuit of Pleasure_.
From the hour of his installation as High Priest, Demedes was consumed
by an ambition to illustrate the motto in its entirety, by doing
something which should develop the three virtues in connection with
unheard of daring and originality.
It is to be added here that to his own fortune, he had now the treasury
of the Academy to draw upon, and it was full. In other words, he had
ample means to carry out any project his _judgment_ might approve.
He pondered the matter long. One day Lael chanced to fall under his
observation. She was beautiful and the town talk. Here, he thought, was
a subject worth studying, and speedily two mysteries presented
themselves to him: Who was the Prince of India? And what was her true
relationship to the Prince?
We pass over his resorts in unravelling the mysteries; they were many
and cunning, and thoroughly tried the first virtue of the Academical
motto; still the sum of his finding with respect to the Prince was a
mere theory--he was a Jew and rich--beyond this Demedes took nothing
for his pains.
He proceeded next to investigate Lael. She too was of Jewish origin,
but unlike other Jewesses, wonderful to say, she had two fathers, the
diamond merchant and the Prince of India.
Nothing better could be asked--so his judgment, the third virtue of the
motto, decreed. In Byzantine opinion, Jews were socially outside decent
regard. In brief, if he should pursue the girl to her ruin, there was
little to fear from an appeal by either of her fathers to the
authorities. Exile might be the extremest penalty of discovery.
He began operations by putting into circulation the calumny, too
infamous for repetition, with which we have seen him attempt to poison
Sergius. Robbing the victim of character would deprive her of sympathy,
and that, in the event of failure, would be a half defence for himself
with the public.
He gave himself next to finding what to do with the little Princess, as
he termed her. All his schemes respecting her fell short in that they
lacked originality. At last the story of the Plague of Crime, stumbled
on in the library of the St. James', furnished a suggestion novel, if
not original, and he accepted it.
Proceeding systematically, he first examined the cistern, paddling
through it in a boat with a flambeau at the bow. He sounded the depth
of the water, counted the pillars, and measured the spaces between
them; he tested the purity of the air; and when the reconnoissance was
through, he laughed at the simplicity of the idea, and embodied his
decision in a saying eminently becoming his philosophic character--the
best of every new thing is that it was once old.
Next he reduced the affair to its elements. He must steal her--such was
the deed in simplest term--and he must have assistants, but prudence
whispered just as few of them as possible. He commenced a list, heading
it with the keeper of the cistern, whom he found poor, necessitous, and
anxious to better his condition. Upon a payment received, that worthy
became warmly interested, and surprised his employer with suggestions
of practical utility.
Coming then to the abduction, he undertook a study of her daily life,
hoping it would disclose something available. A second name was
thereupon entered in his list of accomplices.
One day a beggar with sore eyes and a foot swollen with
elephantiasis--an awful object to sight--set a stool in an angle of the
street a few doors from Uel's house; and thenceforward the girl's every
appearance was communicated to Demedes, who never forgot the great jump
of heart with which he heard of the gorgeous chair presented her by the
Prince, and of the visit she forthwith made to the wall of the Bucoleon.
Soon as he satisfied himself that the Bulgarians were in the Prince's
pay, he sounded them. They too were willing to permit him to make them
comfortable the remainder of their days, especially as, after the
betrayal asked of them, they had only to take boat to the Turkish side
of the Bosphorus, beyond pursuit and demand. His list of assistants was
then increased to four.
Now indeed the game seemed secure, and he prepared for the hour which
was to bring the Jewess to him.
The keeper of the cistern was the solitary occupant of a house built
round a small court from which a flight of stone steps admitted to the
darkened water. He had a felicitous turn for mechanics, and undertook
the building of a raft with commodious rooms on it. Demedes went with
him to select a place of anchorage, and afterward planned the structure
to fit between four of the pillars in form thus:
[Illustration]
Seeing the design on paper, Demedes smiled--it was so like a cross; the
part in lines being the landing, and the rest a room divisible at
pleasure into three rooms. A boat was provided for communication, and
to keep it hid from visitors, a cord was fixed to a pillar off in the
darkness beyond ken, helped though it might be by torches; so standing
on the stone steps, one could draw the vessel to and fro, exactly as a
flag is hoisted or lowered on a staff.
The work took a long time, but was at last finished. The High Priest of
the Epicureans came meantime to have something akin to tender feeling
for his intended victim. He indulged many florid dreams of when she
should grace his bower in the Imperial Cistern; and as the time of her
detention might peradventure extend into months, he vowed to enrich the
bower until the most wilful spirit would settle into contentment.
Neither the money nor the time spent in this part of the preparation
was begrudged; on the contrary, Demedes took delight in the occupation;
it was exercise for ingenuity, taste, and judgment, always a pleasure
to such as possess the qualities. In fact, the whole way through he
likened himself to a bird building a nest for its mate.
After all, however, the part of the project most troublesome of
arrangement by the schemer, was getting the Princess into the cistern
keeper's house--that is, without noise, scuffle, witnesses, or a clew
left behind. To this he gave more hours of reflection than to the rest
altogether. The method we have seen executed was decided upon when he
arrived at two conclusions; that the attempt was most likely to succeed
in the garden of the Bucoleon, and that the Princess must be lured from
her chair into another less conspicuous and not so well known. Greatly
to his regret, but of necessity, he then saw himself compelled to
increase his list of accessories to six. Yet he derived peace
remembering none of them, with exception of the keeper, knew aught of
the affair beyond their immediate connection with it. The porters, for
instance, who dropped the unfortunate and fled, leaving her in the
sedan to intents dead, had not the slightest idea of what was to become
of her afterwards.
The conjunctions needful to success in the enterprise were numerous;
yet the Greek accepted the waiting they put him to as a trial of the
Patience to which the motto pledged him. He believed in being ready.
When the house was built and furnished, he drilled the Bulgarians with
such particularity that the scene in the garden may be said to have
been literally to order. Probably the nearest approach to the mythical
sixth sense is the power of casting one's mind forward to a coming
event, and arranging its occurrence; and whether some have it a gift of
nature, while others derive it from cultivation, this much is
certain--without it, no man will ever create anything originally.
Now, if the reader pleases, Demedes was too liberally endowed with the
faculty, trait or sense of which we have just spoken to permit the
sedan to be broken; such an accident would have been very inconvenient
at the critical moment succeeding the exchange of chairs. The prompter
ever at the elbow of a bad man instructed him that, aside from what the
Prince of India could not do, it was in his power to arouse the city,
and set it going hue and cry; and then the carriage, rich, glittering,
and known to so many, would draw pursuit, like a flaming torch at
night. So it occurred to Demedes, the main object being to conceal the
going to the cistern keeper's, why not use the sedan to deceive the
pursuers? He scored the idea with an exultant laugh.
Returning now to the narrative of the enactment, directly the strange
porters moved out of the copse with their unsuspecting passenger, the
Bulgarians slung the poles to their shoulders, and followed up the
zigzag to the Y of the fourth terrace; there they turned, and retraced
their steps to the promenade; whence, after reaching Point Serail, they
doubled on their track, descended the wall, traversed the garden, and,
passing the gate by which they came, paraded their empty burden around
the Hippodrome and down a thronged street. And again doubling, they
returned to the wall, and finding it forsaken, and the night having
fallen, they abandoned the chair at a spot where the water on the
seaward side was deep and favorable for whatever violence theory might
require. In the course of this progress they were met by numberless
people, many of whom stopped to observe the gay turnout, doubting not
that the little Princess was within directing its movements. Finally,
their task thoroughly done, the Bulgarians hurried to where a boat was
in readiness, and crossing to Scutari, lost themselves in the growing
dominions of their rightful Lord, the Sultan.
One casually reading this silhouette of a crime in act is likely to
rest here, thinking there was nothing more possible of doing either to
forward the deed or facilitate the escape of those engaged in it; yet
Demedes was not content. There were who had heard him talk of the
girl--who knew she had been much in his thought--to whom he had
furnished ground for suspecting him of following her with evil
intent--Sergius amongst others. In a word, he saw a necessity for
averting attention from himself in the connection. Here also his wit
was willing and helpful. The moment the myrmidon dropped from the
portico with news that the Princess was out in her chair unattended, he
decided she was proceeding to the wall.
"The gods are mindful of me!" he said, his blood leaping quick. "Now is
the time ripe, and the opportunity come!"
Looking at the sun, he fixed the hour, and reflected:
"Five o'clock--she is on the wall. Six o'clock--she is still there.
Half after six--making up her mind to go home. Oh, but the air will be
sweet, and the sea lovely! Seven o'clock--she gives order, and the
Bulgarians signal my men on the fourth terrace. Pray Heaven the Russian
keep to his prayers or stay hearkening for my father's bell!... Here am
I seen of these thousands. Later on--about the time she forsakes the
wall--my presence shall be notorious along the streets from the Temple
to Blacherne. Then what if the monk talks? May the fiend pave his path
with stumbling-blocks and breaknecks! The city will not discredit its
own eyes."
The Epicureans, returning from the Hippodrome, reached their Temple
about half after five o'clock. The dispersal occupied another hour;
shortly after, the regalia having been put away, and the tripods and
banners stored, Demedes called to his mounted assistants:
"My brothers, we have worked hard, but the sowing has been bounteous
and well done. Philosophy in flowers, religion in sackcloth--that is
the comparison we have given the city. There will be no end to our
harvest. To-morrow our doors open to stay open. To-day I have one
further service for you. To your horses and ride with me to the gate of
Blacherne. We may meet the Emperor."
They answered him shouting: "Live the Emperor!"
"Yes," cried Demedes, when the cheering was over, "by this time he
should be tired of the priests; and what is that but the change of
heart needful to an Epicurean?"
Laughing and joking, they mounted, eight of them, in flowers as when in
the Hippodrome. The sun was going down, but the streets were yet bright
with day. It was the hour when balconies overhanging the narrow
thoroughfares were crowded with women and children, and the doors beset
with servants--the hour Byzantine gossips were abroad filling and
unfilling their budgets. How the wooden houses trembled while the
cavalcade went galloping by! What thousands of bright eyes peered down
upon the cavaliers, attracted by the shouting and laughter! Now and
then some person would be a little late in attempting to cross before
him; then with what grace Demedes would spur after him, his bow and
bowstring for whip! And how the spectators shrieked with delight when
he overtook the culprit, and wore the flowers out flogging him! And
when a balcony was low, and illuminated with a face fairer than common,
how the gallant young riders plucked roses from their helms and
shields, and tossed them in shouting:
"Largesse, Lady--largesse of thy smiles!"
"Look again! Another rose for another look!"
"From the brave to the fair!"
Thus to the gate of Blacherne. There they drew up, and saluted the
officer of the guard, and cheered: "Live Constantine! To the good
Emperor, long life!"
All the way Demedes rode with lifted visor. Returning through the
twilight, earlier in the close streets than in the open, he led his
company by the houses of Uel and the Prince of India. Something might
be learned of what was going on with the little Princess by what was
going on there; and the many persons he saw in the street signified
alarm and commotion.
"Ho, here!" he shouted, drawing rein. "What does this mean? Somebody
dead or dying?"
"Uel, the master of the house, is afraid for his child. She should have
been home before sundown. He is sending friends out to look for her."
There was a whole story in the answer, and the conspirator repressed a
cry of triumph, and rode on.