l trembling to his knees. "Your filthy shop shall be pulled down
about your ears. You make it a trap--your feet shall be _bastinadoed_
until you are a cripple for life!" Then his rage choked him, and,
wheeling, he walked over to Benton, contemptuously kicking the prostrate
body of Martin _Effendi_ as he went.

From every pore Abdul Said _Bey_ exuded sympathy and commiseration.
Scenting liberal _backshish_, he promised absolute secrecy for the
affair, coupled with soothing assurances of private vengeance upon the
surviving miscreants. Also, he bewailed the disgrace which had fallen
upon the Empire by reason of such infamy. He presumed that the foreign
gentlemen preferred secret punishment of the malefactors to a public
sensation. It should be so.

In his anxiety for Cara, Benton left Von Ritz to adjust matters with the
Turk, who with profound courtesy and amazing promptness had closed
carriages at a rear door, and caused his _kavasses_ to clear the
alley-way of prying eyes.

When the American reached the room where Cara had been left it was
deserted by the assassin's guards. With a sudden stopping of his heart,
he saw her lying apparently lifeless on a stacked-up pile of rugs. In a
terror that he scarcely dared to investigate, he laid his ear hesitantly
to her breast, then, reassured, he gave thanks for the anesthetic of
unconsciousness with which nature had blinded her to the tragedy beyond
the closed door.

Two curtained carriages drove across Galata Bridge and in the mysterious
quiet of Stamboul there was no ripple on the surface of affairs as other
tourists haggled over a few _piastres_ in the curio shops of the
bazaar.

CHAPTER XXVII

BENTON SAYS GOOD-BY

Louis Delgado awaited Jusseret in an agony of doubt and fear.

The Frenchman was late. A dispatch from the frontier had announced his
coming, but to the anxiety of Delgado delays seemed numberless and
interminable.

At last an aide ushered him into the apartment where the new Monarch
waited, his inevitable glass of Pernod and anisette twisting in his
fingers. Jusseret bowed.

"Where is Martin?" inquired the King.

"Dead," said the newcomer briefly. The Pretender paled palpably.
Evidently the plan had gone awry. Fear always stood near the fore, ready
to rush out upon Delgado's timid spirit.

"And being dead," resumed the Frenchman, "he is much safer."

Louis gave a half-shuddering sigh of relief. He had none of that
righteous horror of crim