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Updated: May 4, 2025
I had selected one room for my bedroom, and the rest were furnished with Oriental simplicity, not to say economy. But Balsamides had sent down a bale of beautiful carpets, which he lent me for the occasion, and which I had hung upon the walls and spread upon the floors and divans.
"I should fancy you had led a very romantic life," said I, lighting a cigarette in the dark, and leaning back against the cushions. "That is what women always say when they want a man to make confidences," laughed Balsamides. "No, I have not led a romantic life.
But you can not. Only Allah is great!" "If the Khanum will permit her servant to approach her and to touch her hand" suggested Balsamides, humbly. "Gelinis, come," muttered Laleli. But she drew the pale green veil that was round her throat a little higher, so as to cover her mouth. "What is this vile body that it should be any longer withheld from the touch of the unbeliever?
There are two Effendilir from Yildiz-Kiöshk in the selamlek!" We sat down to wait. "The porter is a genuine Turk, and not a Circassian. A Circassian would have said 'Effendilir, without the 'm, in the vocative when he spoke to us, as he did when he used it in the nominative to Selim." I reflected that Balsamides had good nerves if he could notice grammatical niceties at such a moment.
Gregorios Balsamides is of middle height, slender and well built, a matchless horseman, and long inured to every kind of hardship, though his pallor and his delicate white hands suggest a constitution anything but hardy.
Balsamides had of course become a friend of the family, after the part he had played in effecting Alexander's escape, and in his own way I think he watched the situation when he got a chance with as much interest as I myself. One evening we were sitting in his rooms, about midnight, talking, as we talked eternally, upon all manner of subjects.
Perhaps nothing but the fear of death could have made him confess, after all, and Balsamides had a way of making death seem very real and near. "I will tell you this, Selim," said Gregorios. "If you will give me Alexander Patoff Effendi to-night, alive, well, and uninjured in any way, you shall go free, and I will engage that you shall not be hurt. You evidently wished to keep the Khanum's secret.
On hearing him enter, the porter appeared, and silently opened the outer door. Balsamides addressed him as we prepared to leave the house. "The Khanum Effendi is dead," he said. "Selim will accompany us to the palace, and will return in the morning." The man's face, deeply marked with the small-pox and weather-beaten in many a campaign, did not change color.
"Yes; I am a free man now. No one can ever accuse me again. But apart from that, I am really and sincerely glad that he is alive. I wish him no ill. It is not his fault that I have been under a cloud for nearly two years. He was as anxious to be found as I was to find him. After all, it was not I. It was Balsamides and Griggs who did it at last.
Balsamides himself hates Russians, having fought against them ten years ago, in the last war." Paul started up in his chair, and stretched out his hand. "Will you really go with me?" he cried in great excitement. "That would be too good of you. Shall we start to-morrow?" "Let me see, we must have an excuse. Could you not telegraph to your chief to recall you at once?
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