They went up to Mannard’s suite on the third floor of the Petra, and he telephoned and ordered the car he’d rented during his stay in Istanbul. Laurie put a scarf over her head. Somehow even that looked good on her, as Coghlan realized depressedly.
Appolonius the Great had blandly assumed an invitation and continued to talk about his political enterprise of bribery. He believed, he said, that there might be some ancient manuscripts turned up when enlightenment swept over the furtive villages of his people. Coghlan gathered that he claimed as many as two or three thousand fellow-countrymen.
The car was reported as ready.
“I shall walk down the stairs!” announced Appolonius, with a wave of his pudgy hand. “I feel somehow grand and dignified, now that someone has given me money for my people. I do not think that anyone can feel dignified in a lift.”
Mannard grunted. They moved toward the wide stairs, Appolonius in the lead.
The lights went out, everywhere. Immediately there was a gasp and a crashing sound. Mannard’s voice swore furiously, halfway down the flight of curving steps. A moment ago he had been at the top landing.
The lights came on again. Mannard came storming up the steps. He glared about him, breathing hard. He was the very opposite of the typical millionaire just then. He looked hardboiled, athletic, spoiling for a fight.
“My dear friend!” gasped Appolonius. “What happened?”
“Somebody tried to throw me downstairs!” growled Mannard balefully. “They grabbed my foot and heaved! If I’d gone the way I was thrown—if I hadn’t handled myself right—I’d have gone over the stair-rail and broken my blasted neck!”
He glared about him. But there were only the four of them in sight. Mannard peered each way along the hotel corridors. He fumed. But there was literally nobody around who could have done it.
“Oh, maybe I slipped,” he said irritably, “but it didn’t feel like that! Dammit— Oh, there’s no harm done!”
He went down the stairs again, scowling. The lights stayed on. The others followed. Laurie said shakily:
“That was odd, wasn’t it?”
“Very,” said Coghlan. “If you remember, I said I’d been told that I’d probably murder him.”
“But you were right by me!” said Laurie quickly.
“Not so close I couldn’t have done it,” said Coghlan. “I sort of wish it hadn’t happened.”
They reached the lower floor of the hotel, Mannard still bristling. Appolonius walked with a waddling, swaying grace. To Coghlan he looked somehow like pictures of the Agha Khan. He beamed as he walked. He was very impressive. And he’d been thinking as Coghlan had thought, for in the lobby he turned and said blandly:
“You said something about a prophecy that you might murder Mr. Mannard. Be careful, Mr. Coghlan! Be careful!”
He twinkled at the two who followed him, and resumed his splendid progress toward the car that waited outside.
It was dark in the back of the car. Laurie settled down beside Coghlan. He was distinctly aware of her nearness. But he frowned uneasily as the car rolled away. His own handwriting in the book from ancient days had said, “Make sure of Mannard. To be killed.” And Mannard had just had a good chance of a serious accident. . . Coghlan felt uncomfortably that something significant had taken place that he should have noticed.
But, he irritably assured himself, it couldn’t be anything but coincidence.
III
Coghlan breakfasted on coffee alone, next morning, and he had the dour outlook and depressed spirit that always followed an evening with Laurie these days. The trouble was, of course, that he wanted to marry her, and resolutely wouldn’t even consider the possibility.
He drank his coffee and stared glumly out into the courtyard below his windows. His apartment was in one of the older houses of the Galata district, slicked up for modem times. The courtyard had probably once been a harem garden. Now it was flag-stoned, with a few spindling shrubs, and the noises of Istanbul were muted when they reached it.
There came brisk footsteps. Lieutenant Ghalil strode crisply across the courtyard. He vanished. A moment later, Coghlan’s doorbell rang. He answered it, scowling.
Ghalil grinned as he said, “Good morning!”
“More mystery?” demanded Coghlan suspiciously.
“A part of it has been cleared up in my mind,” said Ghalil. “I am much more at ease in my thoughts.”
“I’m having coffee,” growled Coghlan. “I’ll get you some.” He got out another cup and poured it. He had an odd feeling that Ghalil was regarding him with a new friendliness.
“I have a letter for you,” said the Turk cheerfully.
He passed it over. It was a neatly typed note, in English, on a letterhead that Coghlan could make out as that of the Ministry of Police—which is officially based in Ankara rather than Istanbul, but unofficially has followed the center of gravity of crime to the older city. The signature was clear. It was that of a cabinet minister, no less. The note said that at the request of the American, Mr. Mannard, Lieutenant Ghalil had been appointed to confer with Mr. Coghlan on a matter which Mr. Coghlan considered serious. The Minister of Police assured Mr. Coghlan that Lieutenant Ghalil had the entire confidence of the Ministry, which was sure that he would be both cooperative and competent.
Coghlan looked up, confused.
“And I thought you the suspicious character!” said Ghalil. “But you surely did the one thing a suspicious character would not do—call in the police at the beginning. Because you thought me suspicious!” He chuckled. “Now, if you still have doubts, I can report that you wish to confer with a person of higher rank. But it will not be easy to get anyone else to take this matter seriously! Or in quite so amicable a manner, orders or no, in view of the implied threat to Mr. Mannard and my comparative assurance that you are innocent so far—” he smiled slightly— “of any responsibility for that threat.”
Coghlan had been thinking about that, too. He growled:
“It’s ridiculous! I’d just barely told Mannard about it last night, when he had an accident and almost got himself killed, and a third party who was along had the nerve to warn me—”
Ghalil tensed. He held up his hand.
“What was that?”
Coghlan impatiently told of Mannard’s tripping on the stairs. “A coincidence, obviously,” he finished. Then, placing the defense before any offense: “What else?”
“What else indeed?” agreed Ghalil. He said abruptly, “What do you think of 80 Hosain? You saw it last night.”
Coghlan shrugged his shoulders. The carload of them—Mannard, Laurie, Appolonius the Great and Coghlan—had driven deep into the Galata quarter and found 80 Hosain. It was a grimy, unbelievably ancient building, empty of all life, on a winding, narrow, noisome alleyway. When the car found it, there were shabby figures gathered around, looking curiously at police outside it. Ghalil himself came to ask what the people in the car wanted. Then the whole party went into the echoing deserted building and up to the empty back room on the second floor.
Coghlan could see and smell that room now. The house itself had been unoccupied for a long time. It was so old that the stone flooring on the ground level had long since worn out and been replaced by wide, cracked planks now worn out themselves. The stone steps leading to the second story were rounded in their centers by the footsteps of past generations. There were smells. There was mustiness. There was squalor and evidences of neglect continued for a millennium. There were cobwebs and dirt and every indication of degradation; yet the door-lintels were carved stone from a time when a workman was an artisan and did the work of an artist.