win their independence in half a jiffy, but the Turks are deadly wise at the old trick of divide et impera; they keep the Armenians quarreling, and nobody dares stand in with them because sooner—or later—sooner, probably—they'll split among themselves, and leave their friends high and dry. You can't blame 'em. The Turks know enough to play on their religious prejudices and set one sect against another. When the massacres begin scarcely an Armenian will know who is friend and who enemy."
"D'you mean to say," demanded Fred, "that they're going to be shot like bottles off a wall without rhyme or reason?"
"That's how it was before," said the consul. "There's nothing to stop it. The world is mistaken about Armenians. They're a hot-blooded lot on the whole, with a deep sense of national pride, and a hatred of Turkish oppression that rankles. One of these mornings a Turk will choose his Armenian and carefully insult the man's wife or daughter. Perhaps he will crown it by throwing dirt in the fellow's face. The Armenian will kill him or try to, and there you are. Moslem blood shed by a dog of a giaour—the old excuse!"
"Don't the Armenians know what's in store for them?" I asked.
"Some of them know. Some guess. Some are like the villagers on
Mount Vesuvius—much as we English were in '57 in India, I
imagine—asleep—playing games—getting rich on top of a volcano.
The difference is that the Armenians will have no chance."
"Did you ever hear tell of the Eye of Zeitoon?" asked Will, apropos apparently of nothing.
"No," said the consul, staring at him.
Will told him of the individual we had talked with in the khan the night before, describing him rather carefully, not forgetting the gipsies in the black tent, and particularly not the daughter of the dawn who schooled a gray stallion in the courtyard.
The consul shook his head.
"Never saw or heard of any of them."
We were sitting in full view of the roadstead where Anthony and Cleopatra's ships had moored a hundred times. The consul's garden sloped in front of us, and most of the flowers that Europe reckons rare were getting ready to bloom.
"Would you know the man if you saw him again, Will?" I asked.
"Sure I would!"
"Then look!"
I pointed, and seeing himself observed a man stepped out of the shadow of some oleanders. There was something suggestive in his choice of lurking place, for every part of the oleander plant is dangerously poisonous; it was as if he had hidden himself among the hairs of death.
"Him, sure enough!" said Will.
The man came forward uninvited.
"How did you get into the grounds?" the consul demanded, and the man laughed, laying an unafraid hand on the veranda rail.
"My teskere is a better than the Turks give!" he answered in English.
(A teskere is the official permit to travel into the interior.)
"What do you mean?"
"How did sunshine come into the garden? By whose leave came the wind?"
He stood on no formality. Before one of us could interfere (for he might have been plying the assassin's trade) he had vaulted the veranda rail and stood in front of us. As he jumped I heard the rattle of loose cartridges, and the thump of a hidden pistol against the woodwork. I could see the hilt of a dagger, too, just emerging from concealment through the opening in his smock. But he stood in front of us almost meekly, waiting to be spoken to.
"You are without shame!" said the consul.
"Truly! Of what should I be ashamed!"
"What brought you here?"
"Two feet and a great good will! You know me."
The consul shook his head.
"Who sold the horse to the German from Bitlis?"
"Are you that man?"
"Who clipped the wings of a kite, and sold it for ten pounds to a fool for an eagle from Ararat?"
The consul laughed.
"Are you the rascal who did that?"
"Who threw Olim Pasha into the river, and pushed him in and in again for more than an hour with a fishing pole—and then threw in the gendarmes who ran to arrest him—and only ran when the Eenglis consul came?"
"I remember," said the consul.
"Yet you don't look quite like that man."
"I told you you knew me."
"Neither does to-day's wind blow like yesterday's!"
"What is your name?"
"Then it was Ali."
"What is it now?"
"The name God gave me?"
"Yes."
"God knows!"
"What do you want here?"
He spread out his arms toward us four, and grinned.
"Look—see! Four Eenglis sportman! Could a man want more?"
"Your face is hauntingly familiar," said the consul, searching old memories.
"No doubt. Who carried your honor's letter to Adrianople in time of war, and received a bullet, but brought the answer back?"
"What—are you that man—Kagig?"
Instead of replying the man opened his smock, and pulled aside an undershirt until his hairy left breast lay bare down to where the nipple should have been. Why a bullet that drilled that nipple so neatly had not pierced the heart was simply mystery.
"Kagig, by jove! Kagig with a beard! Nobody would know you but for that scar."
"But now you know me surely? Tell these Eenglis sportman, then, that I am good man—good guide! Tell them they come with me to Zeitoon!"
The consul's face darkened swiftly, clouded by some notion that he seemed to try to dismiss, but that refused to leave him.
"How much would you ask for your services?" he demanded.
"Whatever the effendim please."
"Have you a horse?"
He nodded.
"You and your horse, then, two piasters a day, and you feed yourself and the beast."
The man agreed, very bright-eyed. Often it takes a day or two to come to terms
