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Updated: May 18, 2025
In full possession of the house, they decide to stand siege, though scant of provisions and ammunition, and armed only with their own revolvers and a rifle left behind by Constantine. Soon Stefanopoulos dies, and by an old serving-woman they send warning to Constantine that he shall be brought to justice for his crime. Thus passes the night.
The result was a sudden pause in our friends' advance; but they were near enough now for me to distinguish the last comer, and I discerned in him, although he wore the native costume, and had discarded his tweed suit, Constantine Stefanopoulos himself. "Here's an exercise of self-control," I groaned, laying a detaining hand on Denny's shoulder.
From the direction of the village and the harbor came the sound of a horn, blown long and shrill, and echoed back in strange, protracted shrieks and groans from the hillside behind us; and following on the blast, we heard, low in the distance and indistinct, yet rising and falling, and rising again in savage defiance and exultation, the death chant that One-eyed Alexander the Bard had made on the death of Stefan Stefanopoulos two hundred years ago.
"Ay, they'll go, or pay the penalty," said the other voice, and at the sound of it I started. For it was the voice of my neighbor in the restaurant, Constantine Stefanopoulos. "I shall be near at hand, sleeping in the town," said the girl's voice, "and the people will listen to me."
If they understood that intention of mine, they would hardly be so shortsighted as to set me adrift in my shirt like a second Baron d'Ezonville, or so unjust as to kill poor old Stefanopoulos as they had killed his ancestor. Besides, as I comforted myself by repeating, they were a good-hearted race; unsophisticated, of course, but thoroughly good-hearted.
"But he will kill you, if he finds you here." "He? Who?" "Ah, pardon, my lord they will kill you, they the people the men of the island." I gazed at her sternly. She shrank back in confusion. And I spoke at a venture, yet in a well-grounded hazard: "You mean that Constantine Stefanopoulos will kill me?" "Ah, hush!" she cried. "He may be here! He may be anywhere!"
Again and again they hurled forth the defiant words, until they stopped at last opposite the inn, with one final, long-drawn shout of savage triumph. "Well, this is a go!" said Denny, drawing a long breath. "What are the beggars up to?" "What have they been up to?" I asked; for I doubted not that the song we had heard had been chanted over a dead Stefanopoulos two hundred years before.
But if the thing could be done, if it could be so managed that London, Paris, and the Riviera would find nothing strange in the disappearance of one Madame Stefanopoulos and the appearance of another, why, to a certainty, done the thing would be, unless I could warn or save the woman in the cottage. But I did not see how to do either.
She bowed her head in recognition of my indulgence. "But there is one question I should like to ask you," I pursued, "if you'll be so kind as to answer it." "Well, what is it?" "Where was Stefan Stefanopoulos killed, and what became of his body?" As I put my question I flung One-eyed Alexander's book open on the table beside her. She started visibly, crying, "Where did you get that?"
The moan was not repeated. Presently we heard slow steps retreating with a faltering tread across the roof; and we also went into the house in silence and sorrow. For a thing like that gets hold of a man; and when he has heard it, it's hard for him to sit down and be merry till the fellow that caused it has paid his reckoning as I swore then and there that Constantine Stefanopoulos should pay his.
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