Part 21 (1/2)

The beys were seized the same night in the midst of their joys, and dragged from the paradise of their hopes to be thrown into a dungeon.

Who could have betrayed the secret of the eggs? they asked themselves.

Why, who else but Tepelenti?

Fools! to fancy that they could make a fool of Tepelenti!

Sulaiman fainted when they informed him that the secret of the eggs was discovered. Mukhtar felt that the moment had come of which Ali had said that the lowest slave would not then exchange heads with his two sons, and in that hour of peril he bethought him of the talismanic ring which had been sent to him. Hastily he removed the emerald, believing that at least a quickly operative poison was contained therein, by which he might be saved from a shameful death. There was, however, no poison inside the ring, but these words were engraved thereon, ”Ye have fallen into the hands of Ali!”

Mukhtar dropped the ring; he was annihilated.

The hand of Ali, that implacable hand which reached from one end of the world to the other, which clutched at him even out of the tomb--he now felt all its weight upon his head.

Die he must, and his brother also.

The Reis-Effendi examined them, and both of them doggedly denied all knowledge of what was written on the eggs. But there was one thing they could not deny--the five million piastres on the English s.h.i.+p; this was the most damaging piece of evidence against them, and proved to be their ruin.

The Sultan demanded from Morrison the money of the beys, and Morrison himself appeared before the Reis-Effendi to defend his consignment, which he maintained he was only bound to deliver to its lawful owner.

The Reis-Effendi replied that in the Ottoman Empire there was only one lawful owner of every sort of property, and that was the Sultan. The property of every deceased person fell to the Grand Signior, and n.o.body could make a will without his permission.

Morrison objected, very pertinently, that as the beys were not deceased the Sultan could scarcely be looked upon as their heir.

Instead of making any answer, the Reis-Effendi sent out his officers with a little piece of parchment which he had previously subscribed, and a few moments later the severed heads of the beys stood in front of Morrison on a silver trencher.

”If their not being dead was the sole impediment,” remarked the Minister of Foreign Affairs, ”you perceive that it has now been removed.”

Morrison thereupon handed over all the gold and silver in his possession as rapidly as possible, and quitted Constantinople that very hour; he had no great love of a place where every word cost the life of a man.

But the heads of the beys were stuck on the gates of the Seraglio for three days and three nights in the sight of all the people, and mounted heralds proclaimed, at intervals of an hour, ”Behold the heads of the sons of the rebellious Ali Tepelenti, who would have devastated Stambul!”

And the people loaded the heads with curses each time the proclamation was made.

A few days later the news reached Janina that Sulaiman Bey and Mukhtar Bey had been beheaded at Stambul.

Ali Pasha thrice bowed his face to the ground and gave thanks to Allah for His mercies. And he caused to be proclaimed on the ramparts, amidst a flourish of trumpets, that his sons, the treacherous beys, had been decapitated at Stambul. Such is the reward of traitors!

After that, for three days and three nights--just as long a time as the heads of the beys had been exposed on the gates of the Seraglio--a banquet, with music and dancing, was given in the fortress of Janina, and every morning a hundred and one volleys were fired from the bastions--the usual ceremony after great triumphs.

And when in the evening Ali took a promenade in his garden, and walked up and down among his flowers, he would now and then trample the earth beneath his feet. It was the grave of Zaid that he was trampling upon.

There stood an old dahlia, the sole survivor of its extirpated family, and, levelling it to the ground with his foot, he trod it into the grave, murmuring to himself, ”No longer art thou alone--no longer alone!”

CHAPTER XI

THE FLOWERS OF THE GARDEN OF BEGTASH

At the end of the fifteenth century, when the Turkish crescent had won an abiding-place among the constellations of Europe, there dwelt in the Turkish dominions a worthy dervish, Haji Begtash by name.