The Lighted Match

The muezzin had called the devout to their prayer-rugs for the third

time that day, when the girl and the two men turned from the Stamboul

end of Galata Bridge into the tawdry confusion of buildings which

cluster about the Mosque Yeni-Djami. They were bound for the bazaars.

Along the twisting ways stretched the booths of native merchants stocked

with the thousand fascinating trifles that the City of the Sultan

markets to the journeying world. Everywhere the crowd surged and

jostled.

On the side street where the shops are a trifle larger than their

neighbors, one Mohammed Abbas keeps his curio bazaar. In such flowery

Orientalism of appeal did he couch his plea for an inspection of his

wares, that Cara was persuaded and turned into the shop. Cut off by

pressure of the crowd, Pagratide, who was following, some paces back,

caught a glimpse of her figure in the door and fought his way to her

side, but Benton, having stopped to price a bracelet of antique silver

set with turquoises, lost sight of them. The girl had become interested

in a quaint, curved dagger thickly studded with semi-precious stones.

Mohammed Abbas urged her to see the rarer and choicer articles which he

kept in an upper room. As they tailed, a half-dozen natives, swarthy and

villainous of face, drifted into the shop to be promptly ordered out by

the proprietor, who used for that purpose a vocabulary of scope and

vividness. The ruffians retreated after a brief conversation in guttural

Arabic, but not by the street door through which they had come. Instead,

they left by a low-arched exit to the rear, concealed from view by the

angle of the screening stairway. Abbas led his customers to an upper

room which they found dark except where he lighted it as he went with

hanging lamps. Its space was generous, broken here and there by piles of

ebony furniture, inlaid with pearl; pieces of Saracenic armor,

Damascened bucklers, and all the gear too large for the narrow confines

below.

Half an hour's searching through the chaos of wares failed to reveal the

choice daggers which Mohammed wished them to see, and with many

apologies for added annoyance he begged Monsieur and Madame to mount

yet another flight, and visit yet another store-room. At the head of

these stairs they encountered absolute darkness and the shopman, with

his ever-ready apologies, paused again to light lamps.

As Pagratide's pupils accustomed themselves to the murk he realized that

this last room was bare except for tapestries hung flat against the

wall, and that at its farther side narrow slits of light showed along

the sills of two doors. Turning, he noted the darker shadow of some

recess in the wall, immediately to his left.