Part 20

Cornelius eagerly seized the pearl. The proof was so convincing that he no longer knew what to believe. The miserable little pearl burned his hand as though it were a red-hot coal--he looked at it instinctively without being able to see it--and yet he could not remove his eyes from this bit of damning evidence! Balthazar took him by the hand, but Cornelius did not appear to notice him. He never removed his eyes from the pearl, yet the sight of it filled him with horror.

"Cornelius!" exclaimed Balthazar, now thoroughly alarmed; but Cornelius pushed him roughly aside, and leaned over so as to obtain a better view of the pearl.

"What's the matter with you, Cornelius?" Balthazar asked again.

"Get out of my way!" and he once more pushed his friend aside as he rushed to the open window.

Balthazar and Tricamp exchanged a knowing glance--while Cornelius, feverish with excitement, rushed into the study.

"He has gone mad!" grumbled M. Tricamp as he followed him with his eyes. "Will you permit me to give a drink of curaçoa to my men? It is daylight now, and the air is somewhat chilly."

"With pleasure. There is the bottle; let the men help themselves."

Tricamp then left the room. As Balthazar turned around, he perceived old Gudule still kneeling in the corner. A moment later he had rejoined Cornelius in the study.

Cornelius was examining the handle of the knife with the greatest attention. This scrutiny lasted several minutes; then, without offering a word of explanation, he mounted a chair and proceeded to examine the piece of broken wire.

"Where is the bell?" he suddenly demanded of Balthazar, who really believed that his friend had taken leave of his senses.

"In the hallway."

Cornelius pulled the wire a number of times, but the bell did not ring.

"Ah! she did not overlook anything; she has removed the tongue!" remarked Balthazar with a sneer.

Cornelius, still as silent as a sphinx, continued his examination of the wire; it passed through a little tin tube about the size of a putty-blower; the wire moved freely in this groove, therefore there was nothing out of gear in that direction.

"Now, look at the bell and tell me if it rings when I pull the wire."

Balthazar went out into the hall and did as directed.

"Does it move?" called out Cornelius.

"Just a little," answered Balthazar, "but it can't ring because the bell is turned upside down, with the tongue in the air."

"Good! We will look into that later. Now, steady the secrétaire while I get up there."

Then, with the assistance of the knife, Cornelius drew himself up painfully to where the paper had been removed, as if he desired to test the practicability of such an ascension.

Just then Gudule set up a frightful howl outside; Balthazar left his friend in mid-air while he ran out to see what was the matter.

"Oh, master," she cried; "she has just escaped!"

"Christina?"

"Yes, Mijnheer, I saw her as she fled through the garden. Make haste and follow her before it is too late!"

"The little serpent!" exclaimed M. Tricamp; "she was playing 'possum then, after all. Now, then, my lads, let me see how soon you will catch her."

All the officers started off, with Tricamp at their head; while Balthazar ran into the young girl's room, to assure himself that she was no longer there.

Instead of Christina, Balthazar was confronted by Cornelius, who had entered the room through the opening in the partition.

"That's right! Look for her, my friend. You must now admit that she is guilty, as she has just run away."

"I tell you that she is innocent," exclaimed Cornelius as his eyes flashed fire; "we alone are guilty--for we have wrongfully accused an innocent person!"

"You must be mad!"

"You will not say so after I have proven to you that I know the name of the thief," continued Cornelius as he smiled sarcastically at the doubts expressed on Balthazar's countenance. "And I am going to tell you how he entered and how he went out! In the first place, he did not come in by this window, nor by that opening; he simply glided down your chimney, and, via the fireplace, reached your study."

"You say that the thief entered my study by the chimney?"

"Certainly! And as he is celebrated for his weakness for metals, his first move was to gather your gold and your silver; then he forced the steel lock of your portfolio and the iron lock of your secrétaire, and gathering together your florins, your ducats, and your jewels, he carried them off, leaving your knife as a memento of his little visit. From the study, he jumped into the room of this unfortunate child, dashing through the woodwork and paper in his mad flight, and dropping the pearl in this drawer as he passed through here.--And if you want to know what has become of your medallion, look!"

He drew aside the curtains of the bed and pointed to the little copper crucifix suspended on the wall, and which was now completely gilded in melted gold.

"This is what he did with your medallion!"

And, plunging his hand into the receptacle for the holy water, he drew out the glass covers of the medallion, which were molded together with the flower in the centre.

"And this is what he did with the rest!"

Balthazar gazed upon his friend with astonishment. He did not know what to expect next.

"And now, if you want to know how he went out," continued Cornelius as he dragged him to the window, "look!"

He pointed to the top pane of the window, which was pierced by a little hole about the size of a cent.

"But what does all this mean!" exclaimed Balthazar, who began to believe that he, too, was taking leave of his senses. "Who did this?"

"Why, you fool! Can't you see that _the house has been struck by lightning_!"

Balthazar might have been struck by lightning, too, for that matter, as he was more dead than alive, when he at last realized how they had all been deceived by the hand of Nature. A loud noise was heard outside. They both rushed to the window and looked out.

A crowd surrounded the house as four officers, carrying a stretcher, on which Christina was lying, entered the front door!

X

The poor child, in her despair, had thrown herself into the Amstel, but Petersen the night-watchman, like the brave lad that he was, had sprung into the water and pulled her out.

After she had been put to bed, and had received a visit from a physician, who prescribed plenty of rest and quiet, M. Tricamp approached the young men.

"As the young girl is not in a condition to be removed to-day, my men and I will retire."

"Why, hasn't Cornelius told you? Christina is innocent and we know the thief."

"The thief!" exclaimed M. Tricamp, "and who is it?"

"Why, the lightning, of course!" laughingly replied Balthazar.

M. Tricamp opened his eyes in amazement, as he repeated:

"The lightning?"

"Why, naturally!" replied Cornelius. "You apply the study of psychology in your criminal researches, while I employ my knowledge of meteorology--that's the only difference in our methods."

"And you pretend to say that all this was caused by lightning?" demanded M. Tricamp, who was losing his temper.

"Why, all this is as nothing when compared with some of the capers lightning has been known to cut. How about the tack it tears up from the carpet and drives through a mirror without cracking the glass; and the key it takes out of the lock and conceals in the ice-box; and the package of cigarettes it delicately removes from the bronze ash-receiver which it has ignited; and the silver it volatilizes through the silken meshes of a purse without damaging the latter; and the needles it magnetizes so thoroughly that they run after a hammer; and the pretty little hole it made in Christina's window; and the wallpaper it so deftly disarranged to furnish you with your wonderful clue; and this medallion, the glass of which it melted without injuring in the least the flower it contained, thus forming the most beautiful specimen of enamel I have ever seen, and making a finer wedding gift than the most skilled artist could have turned out; and finally, the gold of the medallion which gilded Christina's crucifix!"

"Humbug!" protested M. Tricamp, "it is impossible! And how about the package! The package she was seen to hand a man from out the window?"

"The man is here to answer that question himself!"--and a perfect colossus entered the room.

"Petersen!"

"At your service. And the package contained some old dresses for my little children."

"Old clothes, that's excellent!" replied Tricamp, who was fairly boiling over with rage. "But how about the gold, and the silver, the ducats and the florins, and the other jewels; where are they?"

"Zounds!" exclaimed Cornelius, striking his forehead; "that reminds me--"

He sprang on the table, and reaching up to the overturned bell, he suddenly exclaimed:

"Here they are!"

A huge ingot of gold, silver, and jewels fell on the floor from the bell, together with the tongue of the bell, which had been detached, the whole being melted solidly together.

M. Tricamp picked up the ingot and examined it carefully.

"But tell me," he asked, "what put you on the track?"

Cornelius smiled as he replied:

"This black pearl, Mijnheer, which you handed to me, defying me to prove Christina's innocence in the face of such evidence."

"The black pearl!"

"Exactly, Mijnheer! Do you see this little white speck? Well, that was caused by electricity! And, thanks to this little speck, I have succeeded in saving the honor of a fellow-being."

"You must accept my congratulations," said he, bowing humbly; "the man of science is more far-sighted than the police, and in future I intend to add the study of natural philosophy and meteorology to my other acquirements. Were it not for this undoubted proof I might have committed a still more serious error. I actually began to suspect that you were her accomplice."

And then M. Tricamp withdrew, in order not to show his embarrassment, and Gudule rushed in to say that Christina was better and had heard everything through the partition.

"My little Christina," said Balthazar as he knelt by her bedstead a little later, "if you do not want to make me unhappy pray do not refuse to accept this little token of my esteem."

And he placed the ingot of melted gold and jewels on the bed.

Christina hesitated.

"Oh, you must take it, for you need a dower--" exclaimed Balthazar as he pressed her hand.

"That is, if you will accept me for a husband?" added Cornelius.

Christina did not reply, but she gave the man who had saved her honor a look which certainly did not mean--No.

THE PRISONER OF ASSIOUT

BY GRANT ALLEN

_Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen (born 1848, died 1899) was a Canadian of Irish descent. Beginning as a writer of popular scientific and historical works, he gradually entered the field of fiction, publishing a number of notable novels, among which may be mentioned: "Philistia"; "The Devil's Die"; "The Woman Who Did"; and "A Bride from the Desert." The present tale, so Oriental in its feeling, is a convincing illustration of the versatility of the author's genius._

THE PRISONER OF ASSIOUT

By GRANT ALLEN

It was a sultry December day at Medinet Habu. Gray haze spread dim over the rocks in the desert. The arid red mountains twinkled and winked through the heated air. I was weary with climbing the great dry ridge from the Tombs of the Kings. I sat on the broken arm of a shattered granite Rameses. My legs dangled over the side of that colossal fragment. In front of me vast colonnades stood out clear and distinct against the hot, white sky. Beyond lay bare hills; in the distance, to the left, the muddy Nile, amid green fields, gleamed like a thin silver thread in the sunlight.

A native, in a single dirty garment, sat sunning himself on a headless sphinx hard by. He was carving a watermelon with his knife--thick, red, ripe, juicy. I eyed it hard. With a gesture of Oriental politeness, he offered me a slice. It was too tempting to refuse, that baking hot day, in that rainless land, though I knew acceptance meant ten times its worth in the end in bakshish.

"Arabi?" I asked inquiringly of my Egyptian friend, which is, being interpreted, "Are you a Mussulman?"

He shook his head firmly, and pointed with many nods to the tiny blue cross tattooed on his left wrist. "Nusráni," he answered, with a look of some pride. I smiled my acquiescence. He was a Nazarene, a Christian.

In a few minutes' time we had fallen into close talk of Egypt, past and present; the bad old days; the British occupation; the effect of strong government on the condition of fellahin. To the Christian population of the Nile valley, of course, the advent of the English has been a social revolution. For ages downtrodden, oppressed, despised, these Coptic schismatics at last find themselves suddenly, in the ends of the earth, co-religionists with the new ruling class in the country, and able to boast themselves in many ways over their old Moslem masters.

I speak but little colloquial Arabic myself, though I understand it with ease when it is spoken, so the conversation between us was necessarily somewhat one-sided. But my Egyptian friend soon grew voluble enough for two, and the sight of the piastres laid in his dusky palm loosed the strings of his tongue to such an alarming extent that I began to wonder before long whether I should ever get back again to the Luxor Hotel in time for dinner.

"Ah, yes, excellency," my Copt said slowly, when I asked him at last about the administration of justice under Ismail's rule, "things were different then, before the English came, as Allah willed it. It was stick, stick, stick every month of the year. No prayers availed; we were beaten for everything. If a fellah didn't pay his taxes when crops were bad, he was lashed till he found them; if he was a Christian, and offended the least Moslem official, he was stripped to the skin, and ruthlessly bastinadoed. And then, for any insubordination, it was death outright--hanging or beheading, slash, so, with a simitar." And my companion brought his hand round in a whirl with swishing force, as if he were decapitating some unseen criminal on the bare sand before him.

"The innocent must often have been punished with the guilty," I remarked, in my best Arabic, looking vaguely across at him.

"Ah, yes," he assented, smiling. "So Allah ordained. But sometimes, even then, the saints were kind; we got off unexpectedly. I could tell you a strange story that once happened to myself." His eyes twinkled hard. "It was a curious adventure," he went on; "the effendi might like, perhaps, to hear it. I was condemned to death, and all but executed. It shows the wonderful ways of Allah."

These Coptic Christians, indeed, speaking Arabic as they do, and living so constantly among a Mussulman population, have imbibed many Mahomedan traits of thought, besides the mere accident of language, such as speaking of the Christian God as Allah. Fatalism has taken as strong a hold of their minds as of Islam itself. "Say on," I answered lightly, drawing a cigarette from my case. "A story is always of interest to me, my friend. It brings grist to the mill. I am a man of the pen. I write down in books all the strange things that are told me."

My Egyptian smiled again. "Then this tale of mine," he said, showing all his white teeth, and brushing away the flies from his sore eye as he spoke, "should be worth you money, for it's as strange as any of the Thousand and One Nights men tell for hire at Cairo. It happened to me near Assiout, in Ismail's days. I was a bold young man then--too bold for Egypt. My father had a piece of ground by the river side that was afterward taken from us by Ismail for the Daira.

"In our village lived a Sheikh, a very hard man; a Mussulman, an Arab, a descendant of the Prophet. He was the greatest Sheik for miles and miles around. He had a large white house, with green blinds to the windows, while all the rest of us in his government lived in mud-built huts, round and low like beehives. He had date palms, very many, and doums, and doura patches. Camels were his, and buffaloes, and asses, and cows; 'twas a very rich man; oh, so rich and powerful. When he went forth to town he rode on a great white mule. And he had a harem, too; three wives of his own, who were beautiful as the day--so girls who had seen them said, for as for us, we saw them not--plump women every one of them, as the Khedive's at Cairo, with eyes like a gazelle's, marked round with kohl, and their nails stained red every day with henna. All the world said the Sheikh was a happy man, for he had the finest dates of the country to eat, and servants and camels in plenty to do his bidding.

"Now, there was a girl in our village, a Nusráni like me, a beautiful young girl; and her name was Laila. Her eyes were like those of that child there--Zanobi--who carries the effendi's water-gourd on her head, and her cheeks were round and soft as a grape after the inundation. I meant to wed her; and she liked me well. In the evening we sat and talked together under the whispering palm-trees. But when the time drew near for me to marry her, and I had arranged with her parents, there came a message from the Sheikh. He had seen the girl by the river as she went down to draw water with her face unveiled, and though she was a Nusráni, she fired his soul, and he wished to take her away from me to put her into his harem.

"When I heard that word I tore my clothes in my rage, and, all Christian that I was, and of no account with the Moslems, I went up to the Sheikh's house in a very white anger, and I fell on my face and asked leave to see him.

"The Sheikh sat in his courtyard, inside his house, and gave audience to all men, after the fashion of Islam. I entered and spoke to him. 'Oh, Sheikh,' I said boldly, 'Allah and the Khedive have prospered you with exceeding great prosperity. You have oxen and asses, buffaloes and camels, men-servants and maid-servants, much millet and cotton and corn and sugar-cane; you drink Frank wine every day of your life, and eat the fat of the land; and your harem is full of beautiful women. Now in the village where I live is a Nusráni girl, whose name is Laila. Her eyes are bright toward mine, and I love her as the thirsty land loves water. Yet, hear, O Sheikh; word is brought me now that you wish to take this girl, who is mine; and I come to plead with you to-day as Nathan the Prophet pleaded with David, the King of the Beni Israel. If you take away from me my Laila, my one ewe lamb--'

"But, at the word, the Sheikh rose up, and clenched his fist, and was very angry. 'Who is this dog,' he asked, 'that he should dare to dictate to me?' He called to his slaves that waited on his nod. 'Take this fellow,' he cried in his anger, 'and tie him hand and foot, and flog him as I bid on his naked back, that he may know, being a Christian, an infidel dog, not to meddle with the domestic affairs of Moslems. It were well he were made acquainted with his own vileness by the instrumentality of a hundred lashes. And go to-morrow and bring Laila to me, and take care that this Copt shall never again set eyes on her!'

"Well, effendi, at the words, three strong Arabs seized me--fierce sons of the desert--and bound me hand and foot, and beat me with a hundred lashes of the kurbash till my soul was sick and faint within me. I swooned with the disgrace and with the severity of the blows. And I was young in those days. And I was very angry.

"That night I went home to my own mud hut, with black blood in my heart, and took counsel with my brother Sirgeh how I should avenge this insult. But first I sent word by my brother to Laila's hut that Laila's father should bring her to meet us in the dusk, in very great secrecy, by the bank of the river. In the gray twilight she came down. A dahabiah was passing, and in it was a foreigner, a very great prince, an American prince of great wealth and wisdom. I remember his name even. Perhaps the effendi knows him. He was Cyrus P. Quackenboss, and he came from Cincinnati."

"I have not the honor," I answered, smiling at this very unexpected Western intrusion.

"Well, anyhow," my Copt continued, unheeding my smile, "we hailed the dahabiah, and made the American prince understand how the matter stood. He was very kind. We were brother Christians. He took Laila on board, and promised to deliver her safe to her aunt at Karnak, so that the Sheikh might not know where the girl was gone, nor send to fetch her. And the counsel I took next with my brother was this: In the dead of night I rose up from my hut, and put a mask of white linen over the whole of my face to conceal my features, and stole out alone, with a thick stick in my hands, and went to the Sheikh's house, down by the bank of the river. As I went, the jackals prowled around the village for food, and the owls from the tombs flitted high in the moonlight.

"I broke into the Sheikh's room by the flat-roofed outhouse that led to his window, and I locked the door; and there, before the Sheikh could rouse his household, I beat him, blow for blow, within an inch of his life, in revenge for my own beating, and because of his injustice in trying to take my Laila from me. The Sheikh was a powerful man, with muscles like iron, and he grappled me hard, and tried to wrench the stick from me, and bruised me about the body by flinging me on the ground; and I was weak with my beating, and very sore all over. But still, being by nature a strong young man, very fierce with anger, I fought him hard, and got him under in the end, and thwacked him till he was as black and blue as I myself was, one mass of bruises from head to foot with my cudgeling. Then, just as his people succeeded in forcing the door, I jumped out of the window upon the flat-roofed outhouse, and leaped lightly to the ground, and darted like a jackal across the open cotton-fields and between the plots of doura to my own little hut on the outskirts of the village. I reached there panting, and I knew the Sheikh would kill me for my daring.