fter a stay of two or three minutes. Barndale did not notice him,
but Jimmy met him point-blank at the door, and made way for him to pass.
The two friends crossed over to Stamboul and went to the bazaar with
their dragoman, and there chaffered with a skilled old Turkish artificer
who asked just ten times what he meant to take for the job, and finally
took it at only twice his bottom price. A silver band was all it needed
to restore it, and it was promised that the work should be done and the
pipe ready to be called for at noon on the morrow. It chanced that as
the friends left the bazaar they ran full against their Greek enemy, who
raised his hat with well-dissembled rage, and stalked on. The Greek by
ill hap passed the stall of the man to whom the precious pipe had been
entrusted. Barn-dale had smoked this remarkable pipe that morning in the
Greek's view in the reading-room, and Demetri knew it again at a glance.
It lay there on the open stall in its open case. Now Demetri
Agryopoulo was not a thief, and would have scorned theft under common
circumstances. But, for revenge, and its sweet sake, there was no
baseness to which he would not stoop. The stall's phlegmatic proprietor
drowsed with the glass mouthpiece of his narghilly between his lips.
The opposite shops were empty. Not a soul observed. Demetri Agryopoulo
put forth his hand and seized the pipe. The case closed with a little
snap, the whole thing went like lightning into his breast pocket, and
he sauntered on. He had heard Barndale's lament to Leland Senior: 'I
wouldn't have done it,' said Barndale, 'for a hundred pounds--for five
hundred. It was the most valued souvenir I have.' So Agryopoulo Bey
marched off happy in his revengeful mind. There was quite a whirlwind
of emotion in the old Turk's stall at noon on the following day. The
precious wonderful pipe, souvenir of dead Antoletti, greatest of modern
sculptors, had disappeared, none could say whither. The old Turk was had
up before the British Consul; but his character for honesty, his known
wealth, the benevolence of his character, his own good honest old face,
all pleaded too strongly for him. He was ordered to pay the price set
on the pipe; but Barndale refused to take a price for it, and the old
artificer and tradesman thereupon thanked him with flowing and beautiful
Oriental courtesy. It was settled that the pipe had been stolen from the
stall by some passer-by, but, as a matter of course, no suspicion fe