We were quite out of earshot from the road, and it would be hard to
imagine a more desolate place than it appeared, between two and three
o'clock on that March night, the bare twigs of the birch-trees wriggling
in the bleak wind, the faint light of the decrescent moon, that seemed
to be upside down in the sky, falling on the white rocks, and on the
whitened branches torn down by the winter's storms, lying like bleached
bones upon the ground before us.

"Now," said Balsamides to the negro, "no one can hear us. You have one
chance of life. Tell us at once where we can find the Russian Effendi
whose property you stole and sold to Marchetto in the bazaar."

In the dim gloom I almost fancied that the black man changed color as
Gregorios put this question, but he answered coolly enough.

"You cannot find him," he said. "You need not have brought me here to
ask me about him. I would have told you what you wanted to know at Yeni
Koej, willingly enough."

"Why can he not be found?"

"Because he has been dead nearly two years, and his body was thrown into
the Bosphorus," answered the Lala defiantly.

"You killed him, I suppose?" Balsamides tightened his grip upon the
man's arm. But Selim was ready with his reply.

"You need not tear me in pieces. He killed himself."

The news was so unexpected that Balsamides and I both started and looked
at each other. The Lala spoke with the greatest decision.

"How did he kill himself?" asked Gregorios sternly.

"I will tell you, as far as I know. The Bekji of Agia Sophia, the same
who admitted the Effendi, took me up by the other staircase. Franks are
never allowed to pass that way, as you know. When we were halfway up,
holding the tapers before us, we stumbled over the body of a man lying
at the foot of one of the flights, with his hand against the wall. We
stooped down and examined him. He was quite dead. 'Selim,' said the
Bekji, who knows me very well, 'the Effendi has fallen down the stairs
in the dark, and has broken his neck.' 'If we give the alarm,' said I,
'we shall be held responsible for his death.' 'Leave it to me,' answered
the Bekji. 'Behold, the man is dead. It is his fate. He has no further
use for valuables.' So the Bekji took a ring, and a tobacco-box, and the
watch and chain, and some money which was in the man's pockets. Then he
said we should leave the corpse where it was. And when the prayers in
the mosque were over, before it was day, he got a vegetable-seller