The sailors brought coffee. Coghlan drank his while the speechmaking went on. Mannard talked absorbedly to the lawyer, and to the owner of the land. The children’s camp seemed to be practically assured. That, to Coghlan, was one bright spot in a thumping bleak day.
He saw Mannard start to drink his coffee, then feel the cup with his hands and give it to a sailor to be taken back to the yacht to be replaced with hot coffee. It had gotten cold.
Laurie chatted brightly with Appolonius. He beamed at her. A sailor came back with Mannard’s cup. He felt it, as he always did. He lifted it toward his lips.
There was a violent cracking sound. Echoes rang all about. Voices stopped.
Mannard was staring in stupefaction at the coffee-cup in his hand. It was broken. It had been smashed by a bullet. Coffee was spilled everywhere, and Mannard absurdly held the handle of the cup from which he had been about to drink.
Coghlan was in motion even as he saw in his mind’s eye the phrase in his own handwriting on a yellowed sheepskin page:
“Make sure of Mannard. To be killed.”
IV
It was preposterous. Mannard stood up abruptly, raging, with the smashed handle of the coffee-cup in his hand. He did not seem to realize that by rising he became an even better target. There was an instant’s stunned immobility, on the part of everyone but Coghlan. He plunged forward, toppling the flimsy table in a confusion of smashed china and scrambled silverware.
“Get down!” snapped Coghlan.
He pushed Laurie’s father back into his seat. All about was absolute tranquillity save for the white-faced men who picked themselves up with stiff, frightened movements after Coghlan’s rush had toppled them. The hillsides were green and silent save for the minor cries of insects. The water was undisturbed. Some sailors began to run ashore from the yacht.
“Everybody gather round here!” commanded Coghlan angrily. “The shot was at Mannard! Get close!”
Laurie was the only one who seemed to obey. She was white-faced as the rest, but she said:
“I’m here, Tommy. What do we do?”
“Not you, damn it! Somebody shot at your father! If we get around him and get him to the yacht, they can’t see him to shoot again. You get in the center here too!”
He commanded the Turkish-speaking sailors with violent gestures, and they obeyed his authoritative manner. He and Laurie and the sailors fairly forced the sputtering, angry Mannard off the wharf and onto the craft moored at its end. The other members of the picnic-party were milling into action. The lawyer scuttled aboard. The owner of the land was even before him. Only Appolonius sat where his chair had toppled, his face gray and filled with an astounded expression of shock. The professor from the American College went on board and disappeared entirely. Coghlan went back and dragged at Appolonius. The fat man scrambled to his feet and went stiffly out the wharf and on board.
“Somebody who can talk Turkish,” snapped Coghlan, “tell the sailors to help me hunt for whoever fired that shot! He’s had a chance to get away, but we can look for him, anyhow!”
A voice, chattering, said unintelligible things. Sailors went ashore, Coghlan in the lead. They obeyed Coghlan’s gestured commands and tramped about with him in the brushwood, hunting industriously and without visible timidity. But Coghlan fumed. He could not give detailed commands. He couldn’t be sure they were watching for footprints or a tiny ejected shell which would tell at least where the would-be murderer had been.
There were shouts from the yacht. Coghlan ignored them, searching angrily but with an increasing sensation of futility. Then Laurie came running ashore.
“Tommy! It’s useless! He’s gone! The thing to do is to get back to Istanbul and tell the police!”
Coghlan nodded angrily, wondering again if the marksman who had missed Mannard might not settle for Laurie. He stood between her and the shore, and shouted and beckoned to the sailors. He led them back to the yacht, in a tight circle around Laurie.
The yacht cast off with unseemly haste. It sped out from the shore and headed back for Istanbul. Mannard sat angrily in a deck-chair, his eyes hard. He nodded to Coghlan.
“I didn’t see the point of protecting me,” he admitted grimly, “not at the time. But that crazy business you were telling me last night did hint at this.” Then he said with explosive irritation: “Dammit, either they meant to kill me without asking for money, or they don’t care much whether they kill me or not!”
Coghlan nodded. “They might figure on being reckless with you,” he said coldly, “so if you get killed that’ll be all the more reason for Laurie to pay up if something happens. Or—they might figure that if they’re reckless enough with you, you’ll pay up the more quickly if they threaten Laurie.”
“What’s that?” demanded Mannard sharply.
“I don’t know what the scheme is,” Coghlan told him. “It looks crazy! But though the threat seems directed against you, the danger may be even greater for Laurie.”
Mannard said grimly:
“Yes. That’s something to watch out for. Thanks.”
The yacht ploughed through the water back toward Istanbul. The sun shone brightly on the narrow blue sea. The hills on either side seemed to shimmer in the heat. But the atmosphere on the yacht was far from relaxed. The sailors bore high interest beneath a mask of discretion, most of them managing to occupy themselves near the Turkish guests, who huddled together and talked excitedly.
Laurie put her arm in Coghlan’s.
“There’s such a thing as courage, Tommy,” she said, “and such a thing as recklessness. You took chances, searching on shore. I wouldn’t like you to be killed.”
“It could be,” he said harshly, “that the whole idea is to scare one or the other of you so completely—even if one of you had to be killed—that you’ll be ready to pay hugely at the first demand for money.”
“But how—”
He said fiercely: “If you were kidnapped, for instance! Be careful—hear me? Don’t go anywhere in response to a note of any kind.”
He went impatiently away and paced up and down, alone, until the yacht docked once more.
Then there was more confusion. Mannard was intent upon an immediate conference with police. Coghlan and Laurie went with him to headquarters, in a cab.
Presently, there was some embarrassment. Mannard could not bring himself to tell so incredible a tale as that a book seven hundred years old had had a seven-hundred-year-old message in it which said he was to be killed, and that the shot which had so narrowly missed him today seemed to be connected with it.
He doggedly told only the facts of the event itself. No, he had no enemies that he knew of. No, he had not received any message, himself, that he could consider a threat. He could not guess what was behind the attempt on his life.
The police were polite and deeply concerned. They assured him that Lieutenant Ghalil would be notified immediately. He had been assigned to a matter Mr. Mannard had mentioned before. As soon as it was possible to reach him.
That affair, inconclusive as it was, took nearly an hour of time. Mannard fumed, in the cab on the way back to the hotel.
“Ghalil’s mixed up in this all the way through!” he said darkly. “It could be on orders, or it could be something else.”
“I know he has orders,” said Coghlan briefly. “And I think I know where he’ll be. I’ll hunt him up. Now.”
The cab stopped before the Hotel Petra. Mannard and Laurie got out. Coghlan stayed in. Laurie said:
“Take care of yourself, Tommy. Please!”
The cab pulled out into traffic and bounded for 80 Hosain with the mad, glad disregard for all safety rules which is the lifeblood of Istanbul taxicabs.