Greenmantle - John Buchan (free ebook reader for iphone .TXT) 📗

amateur lettering. There was a lamp burning inside, and two or three men smoking at small wooden tables.

We ordered coffee, thick black stuff like treacle, which Peter anathematized. A negro brought it, and I told him in German I wanted to speak to Mr. Kuprasso. He paid no attention, so I shouted louder at him, and the noise brought a man out of the back parts.

He was a fat, oldish fellow with a long nose, very like the Greek traders you see on the Zanzibar coast. I beckoned to him and he waddled forward, smiling oilily. Then I asked him what he would take, and he replied, in very halting German, that he would have a sirop.

“You are Mr. Kuprasso,” I said. “I wanted to show this place to my friend. He has heard of your garden-house and the fun there.”

“The Signor is mistaken. I have no garden-house.”

“Rot,” I said; “I’ve been here before, my boy. I recall your shanty at the back and many merry nights there. What was it you called it? Oh, I remember⁠—the Garden-House of Suliman the Red.”

He put his finger to his lip and looked incredibly sly. “The Signor remembers that. But that was in the old happy days before war came. The place is long since shut. The people here are too poor to dance and sing.”

“All the same I would like to have another look at it,” I said, and I slipped an English sovereign into his hand.

He glanced at it in surprise and his manner changed. “The Signor is a Prince, and I will do his will.” He clapped his hands and the negro appeared, and at his nod took his place behind a little side-counter.

“Follow me,” he said, and led us through a long, noisome passage, which was pitch dark and very unevenly paved. Then he unlocked a door and with a swirl the wind caught it and blew it back on us.

We were looking into a mean little yard, with on one side a high curving wall, evidently of great age, with bushes growing in the cracks of it. Some scraggy myrtles stood in broken pots, and nettles flourished in a corner. At one end was a wooden building like a dissenting chapel, but painted a dingy scarlet. Its windows and skylights were black with dirt, and its door, tied up with rope, flapped in the wind.

“Behold the Pavilion,” Kuprasso said proudly.

“That is the old place,” I observed with feeling. “What times I’ve seen there! Tell me, Mr. Kuprasso, do you ever open it now?”

He put his thick lips to my ear.

“If the Signor will be silent I will tell him. It is sometimes open⁠—not often. Men must amuse themselves even in war. Some of the German officers come here for their pleasure, and but last week we had the ballet of Mademoiselle Cici. The police approve⁠—but not often, for this is no time for too much gaiety. I will tell you a secret. Tomorrow afternoon there will be dancing⁠—wonderful dancing! Only a few of my patrons know. Who, think you, will be here?”

He bent his head closer and said in a whisper⁠—

“The Compagnie des Heures Roses.”

“Oh, indeed,” I said with a proper tone of respect, though I hadn’t a notion what he meant.

“Will the Signor wish to come?”

“Sure,” I said. “Both of us. We’re all for the rosy hours.”

“Then the fourth hour after midday. Walk straight through the café and one will be there to unlock the door. You are newcomers here? Take the advice of Angelo Kuprasso and avoid the streets after nightfall. Stamboul is no safe place nowadays for quiet men.” I asked him to name a hotel, and he rattled off a list from which I chose one that sounded modest and in keeping with our getup. It was not far off, only a hundred yards to the right at the top of the hill.

When we left his door the night had begun to drop. We hadn’t gone twenty yards before Peter drew very near to me and kept turning his head like a hunted stag.

“We are being followed close, Cornelis,” he said calmly.

Another ten yards and we were at a crossroads, where a little place faced a biggish mosque. I could see in the waning light a crowd of people who seemed to be moving towards us. I heard a high-pitched voice cry out a jabber of excited words, and it seemed to me that I had heard the voice before.

XI The Companions of the Rosy Hours

We battled to a corner, where a jut of building stood out into the street. It was our only chance to protect our backs, to stand up with the rib of stone between us. It was only the work of seconds. One instant we were groping our solitary way in the darkness, the next we were pinned against a wall with a throaty mob surging round us.

It took me a moment or two to realize that we were attacked. Every man has one special funk in the back of his head, and mine was to be the quarry of an angry crowd. I hated the thought of it⁠—the mess, the blind struggle, the sense of unleashed passions different from those of any single blackguard. It was a dark world to me, and I don’t like darkness. But in my nightmares I had never imagined anything just like this. The narrow, fetid street, with the icy winds fanning the filth, the unknown tongue, the hoarse savage murmur, and my utter ignorance as to what it might all be about, made me cold in the pit of my stomach.

“We’ve got it in the neck this time, old man,” I said to Peter, who had out the pistol the commandant at Rustchuk had given him. These pistols were our only weapons. The crowd saw them and hung back, but if they chose to rush us it wasn’t much of a barrier two pistols would make.

Rasta’s