Arslan sighed gustily."We suppose you have a dinner-engagement, monsieur?"
"No, sir."
"Good." The sultan clapped his hands and roared his order. The meal consisted of a gigantic lamb stew eaten with the fingers.
Arslan belched and commented: "That was a good game, de Nêche. More and more we see that you are just the man for our service. It is hard to find a player who is neither so weak as to bore us nor so strong as to humiliate us. You no doubt heard what befell Thomas Alekhin Saito, who was so tactless as to mate us in seven moves? Ts, ts, a sorry thing. But he brought it on himself by insulting us to boot."
"What did he do?" asked Nash, wondering how to learn the location of and access to the harem.
"Asked after the health of our womenfolk," said Arslan, licking his fingers."We expect our guests to refrain even from thinking about such things, let alone coming right out and mentioning them. We hope you like our yoghurt."
This was a junketlike pudding. Nash did not like it at all, but choked it down with a glassy smile. Afterward he pulled on the spare mouthpiece of the sultan's nargileh. He learned that this contraption had to be smoked with deep diaphragmatic gasps; the first one drew smoke into sections of his lungs theretofore unsullied, and sent him into a coughing spasm. The sultan laughed and pounded him on the back, and took a draft from the nargileh that made the apparatus quiver with the violence of its bubbling.
"More chess? Good!" This time Nash knew better what to expect; but Arslan likewise adapted his attack to Nash's defense. The game lasted till nine, with much the same result as before.
Sultan Asian Bey yawned, rose, and kicked aside the taboret on which the board rested, knocking half the pieces to the floor."That," he said, "is that. We will assign a couple of stout fellows to ride home with you."
Nash was panicky; if he was kicked out now he would have no chance to rescue Alicia, and besides another of the guards might recognize him as Eleanor Berry's protector.
"Your magnificence, I don't need—"
"Nonsense; we insist. Some thief of a giaur might steal your copy of our agreement else."
"To tell the truth," explained Nash, "I haven't any home right now." And he told of Judge O'Hara's closing of the Dumas Club.
Arslan's heart, if he had one, was not melted by this pathetic tale. He merely gruff ed: "Pick your own hostelry, then," and whistled for his new usher.
Nash swore mentally, and contemplated harebrained schemes for killing Arslan the minute his rapier was handed to him. For the sultan was quite evidently determined to send him packing before retiring to the quarters of wife No. 307; and Arslan's palace was so overrun with servitors and retainers that Nash despaired of ever getting an unsupervised minute. Right now the room contained two guards and two slaves, all alert and ready to pounce if he made a false move.
After the usher came a boy with Nash's hat, cloak, and sword. The youth stopped at such a distance from the sultan that Nash had to move well away from the despot to take his things; the guards quietly closed in to flank their lord. It was all done very smoothly, and Nash reflected that his host was a pretty shrewd rascal as well as a hearty one.
In a minute, now, he'd be out in the cold. The loan agreement in his money belt would be all very nice, but it was no recompense for:—
Wham! The slam of a rifle swept into the audience room; then another, and another, and swift crackle of reports.
"Allah!" shouted Arslan."What is this?"
As if in answer, a guard hurled himself into the chamber."Master! We are being attacked by Romans and Arvans!"
Chapter IX.
Arslan Bey's immediate reaction was to curse himself purple in English, French, Osmanli, and Persian."Perfidious infidel swine!" he screamed."We keep strict neutrality; we even lend the dogs money—but hold, this is not forwarding our defense. Come with me, de Nêche!"
For the next half-hour Nash clumped about the palace in the wake of the bellowing sultan. The sound of gunfire beat in on them, now strong, now faint. Once Nash heard women's voices and knew they were passing an entrance to the harem. But, fearing that in his present fury the sultan would as lief take off his guest's head as not, Nash kept his eyes averted.
At length they came out on the top of a tower, cluttered with a bronze armillary sphere, an astrolabe, an equatorial, and a six-foot telescope. The domes and spikes of the palace rose around them, and skirting these was the wall, now fully manned and spitting bullets through the embrasures. Answering shots came from neighboring houses and vacant lots. The wall hid those of the enemy who were close to it, but in the streets that stretched away into the darkness Nash caught glimpses of moving soldiery.
On another tower an oil-burning searchlight sputtered into flame. Its crew swept the beam across the neighboring houses, and halted as it caught a group of figures on a roof. There were a couple of furry Aryans in horned casques, and several men in kilts and legionary cuirasses and helmets, incongruously hefting rifles; a man in an ornate gilded breastplate; a man in a spiked helmet, dark-blue frock coat, Hessian boots, and an enormous cavalry saber. Nash could just make out his great handlebar mustache. Arslan, eye to the telescope, muttered: "Gaio Germanico Ricci, and Roon Bismarck von Schmidt! They must mean business." He raised his voice to a shout: "Over there! Pick them off!"
The group scattered and disappeared. The searchlight moved no more, either its crew or its mechanism having been put out of action. A bullet clanged against one of the astronomical instruments and screeched away; Nash ducked, and Arslan laughed.
"You're as bad as the Romans!" he said."Who would have thought they would have dragged themselves away from their baths long enough to help their so-called allies? There has been bad feeling since—OUCH!"
The sultan jumped, staggered, and cursed. When Nash offered to see what was wrong, Arslan waved him away."A mere bullet burn. We'll burn those blasphemous bischos!" He shook a fist."It is all the fault of those cowardly west-side assembly districts, thinking they could avoid the war by milk-toast declarations of neutrality. Any fool could see... yes, Kerbogha? How goes it?"
"By your leave, not well, my lord," said the wazir, who had just dragged himself up the spiral staircase."We have lost four guardsmen, and the enemy are piling fardels into the moat at three points."
"Well, shoot them down, fool!"
"We do, master, but they keep coming. I doubt we can hold the wall till morn."
Arslan pulled his little beard agitatedly."We could escape by way of Minetta Brook," he growled, "but without our treasure we should be but the leader of a band of poor freebooters. And we could not fight a rear guard action encumbered by our harem and chattels—"
"Hey," said Nash, "is Minetta Brook that underground river that wanders around lower Manhattan?"
"Yes. Do not pester us with questions at a time—"
"Well, suppose I try to convoy your stuff on ahead?"
"The very thing! We do not know why we trust you, monsieur; it must be that curious feeling we have of having known you elsewhere— But come, there is no time to be lost!"
Down they went, down dank stone steps to the landing stage. The astral Minetta Brook was bigger than its mundane counterpart; almost a real river, sliding out of darkness into torchlight and back into darkness under a rough rock roof. Slaves were hauling up to the dock three of six boats tied to its downstream end: low beamy decked barges built for canal-crawling rather than for fast or open-water sailing. Each had oars and poles piled on its deck.