The houses of Balak are seldom over two storeys high; an occasional
earthquake is the reason for this architectural economy. Pobloff's
sleeping apartment opened out upon a broad balcony just above the
principal entrance. As he lay upon his couch his thoughts revolved like
a coruscating wheel of fire. What! How! Where! And Luga, was she lost to
him in that no-man's land of a fourth dimension? He closed his weary
wet eyes. Then pricked by a sudden thought he sat up in jealous rage.
No-man's land? Yes, but the entire orchestra of fifty-two men were with
her--and he hated the horn-player, for had he not intercepted poisonous
glances between Luga and that impertinent jackanapes? In his torture
Pobloff groaned aloud and wondered how he had reached his home: he could
remember nothing after the ebon music had devoured his band. How did it
come about? Why was he not drawn within the fatal whirlpool of sound? Or
was he outside the fringe of the vortex? As these questions thronged the
chambers of his brain the consciousness of what he had discovered,
accomplished, flashed over him in a superior hot wave of exultation. "I
am greater than Pythagoras, Kepler, Newton!" he raved, only stopping for
breath. Too well had he calculated his trap for the detection of a third
dimension in Time, a fourth one in Space, only to catch the wrong game;
for he had counted upon studying, if but for a few rapt moments, the
vision of a land west of the sun, east of the moon--a novel territory,
perhaps a vast playground for souls emancipated from the gyves of
existence. But this!--he shuddered at the catastrophe: a very Pompeian
calamity depriving him at a stroke of his wife, his orchestra--all, all
had been engulfed. Forgetting his newly won crown, forgetting the
tremendous import of his discovery to mankind, Pobloff began howling,
"Luga, Luga, _Akh_! Wife of my bosom, my tender little violet of a
harpist!"
His voice floated into the street, and it seemed to him to be echoed by
a shrill chorus. Soprano voices reached him and he heard his name
mentioned in a foreboding way.
"Where is the pig? Pobloff! Pobloff! Why don't you show your ugly face?
Be a man! Where are our husbands?" He recognized a voice--it was the
wife of the horn-player who thus insulted him. She was a tall, ugly
woman and, as gossip averred, she beat her man if he did not return home
sober with all his wages. Pobloff rushed out upon the balcony; it was
not many feet above the level of the street. In the rays of a sinking
sun he was received with jeers, groans, and imprecations. Balakian women
have warm blood in their veins and are not given to measuring their
words over-nicely. He stared about him in sheer wonderment. A mob of
women gazed up at him and its one expression was unconcealed wrath.
Children and men hung about the circle of vengeful amazons laughing,
shouting and urging violence. Pobloff, in his dressing-gown, was a fair
target. "Where are our husbands? Brute, beast, in what prison have you
locked them up? Where is your good woman, Luga? Have you hidden her, you
old tyrant?" "No!" shrieked the horn-player's wife, "he's jealous of
her." "And she's run away with your man," snapped the wife of the crazy
oboist. The two women struggled to get at each other, their fingers
curved for hairplucking, but others interfered--it would not be right to
promote a street fight, when the cause of the trouble was almost in
their clutches. A disappointed yell arose. Pobloff had sneaked away,
overjoyed at the chance, and, as his front door succumbed to angry
feminine pressure, he was safely hidden in the opera house which he
reached by running along back alleys in the twilight. There he learned
from one of the stage hands that the real secret was his and his alone.
Alarmed by the absence of their husbands, the musicians' wives hung
around the building pestering the officials. Pobloff has been found,
they were informed, in a solitary fit, on the floor of the auditorium.
The stage was in the greatest confusion--chairs and music stands being
piled about as if a tornado had visited the place. Not a musician was
there, and with the missing was Luga, the harp-player. A thousand wild
rumors prevailed. The men, tired of tyrannical treatment, brutal
rehearsals and continual abuse, had risen in a body and thrashed their
leader; then fearing arrest, fled to the suburbs carrying off Luga with
them as dangerous witness. But the summer-garden, where they usually
foregathered, had not seen them since the Sunday previous--Luga not for
weeks. This had been ascertained by interested scouts. The fact that
Luga was with the rebels gave rise to disconcerting gossip. Possibly her
husband had discovered a certain flirtation--heads shook knowingly. At
five o'clock the news spread that Pobloff had by means of a trap in the
stage, dropped the entire orchestra into the cellar, where they lay
entombed in a half-dying condition. No one could trace this tale to its
source, thought it was believed to have emanated from the oboe-player's
wife. Half a hundred women rushed to the opera house and fell upon their
hands and knees, scratching at the iron cellar gratings, and calling
loudly through the little windows whose thick panes of glass were grimed
with age. Finding nothing, hearing nothing, the dissatisfied crew only
needed an angry explosion of bitterness from the lips of the
horn-player's spouse to hatch hatred in their bosoms and to set them
upon Pobloff at his home.
Now knowing that he was safe for the moment behind the thick walls of
the opera house, he consoled himself with some bread and wine which his
servant fetched him. And then he fell to thinking hard.
No, not a soul suspected the real reason for the disappearance of the
band--that secret was his forever. By the light of a lamp in the
property room he danced with joy at his escape from danger; and the
tension being relaxed, he burst out sobbing: "Luga! Luga! Oh, where are
you, my little harpist! I have not forgotten you, my violet. Let me go
to you!" Pobloff rolled over the carpetless floor in an ecstasy of
grief, the lamp barely casting enough light to cover his burly figure,
his cheeks trilling with tears.