Tokalji herded us through the atrium and up the stairs into the large chamber with the apse where he, himself, slept.  
"Sit," he ordered roughly, motioning to several stools. "I have something to say."
 
He went to a chest in the corner, and drew from it a bottle of rakia, raw Oriental brandy. I looked about for a cup as he handed it to Nikka, but my comrade, better versed in the customs of the country, deftly wiped the bottle's neck with his coat-sleeve, hoisted it for a long dram, wiped the neck again and passed it to me. I imitated him as well as I could, although a passing acquaintance with Cognac in my days as a student at the Beaux Arts and also in the A.E.F. did not save me from a choking sensation as the fiery liquid burned my gullet. Tokalji regarded me with contempt when I handed it to him, tilted the bottle bottom-up and drained the equivalent of a water-glass, with a smack of gusto.
 
"There," he said, setting the bottle on the floor. "We'll talk better wet than dry—although I will say, Giorgi, your friend is no great hand at the bottle. I hope he's a better thief."
 
"Only try him," said Nikka eagerly.
 
"Humph, I may! But to be frank with you, my lad, I don't want you two for a thieving job. It's something more difficult, and the reward will be in proportion."
 
Nikka permitted his fingers to caress the hilt of his knife.
 
"We should enjoy a good killing," he hinted.
 
"No, no, Giorgi. That will come in time, but whatever else you do, you must keep your knife sheathed in this business. As it happens, the men we are after are worth more to us alive than dead."
 
"Whatever you say, voivode," answered Nikka equably. "But what about your own men? They're a likely-looking lot."
 
"Yes, but not so many of them have the gifts I require in this service," retorted Tokalji, lifting the bottle once more. "They are clever thieves and fighters, but what I require now is men who can follow and spy. My best men at that work have failed to produce anything worth while in two weeks, and moreover, they have become known to our enemies. I must have new men, and abler men."
 
He bent his brows in a ferocious grimace.
 
"If you succeed, you are my friends. You shall have rich pickings. But if you fail you had better leave Stamboul."
 
Nikka dropped his hand again on his knife.
 
"Why threaten?" he asked coolly.
 
Tokalji glared at him with the blankly savage menace of an old gorilla.
 
"Beware how you defy Beran Tokalji in his own den," he snarled. "Well, let it pass. It shows you have spirit, but do not tempt me too far, Giorgi. When I am aroused I must taste blood."
 
Nikka rose.
 
"I am a free man," he answered casually. "So is my comrade, Jakka. We sell our knives and our fingers to the best bidder, and if we don't like the treatment we say so and leave."
 
Tokalji regarded him uneasily.
 
"Here," he said gruffly, offering the bottle, "drink again and think better of it, man. No harm is done by plain talk. That's right. Sit. I get along with those who don't fear me too much. You shall not be sorry you strayed in here—but you must deal honestly with me. I am buying your wits, and I expect something for my money."
 
"So far it is only we who have paid," retorted Nikka. "How much are we to get?"
 
"How much? It depends upon how much we win. There will be hundreds of gold pieces for every man if it goes right."
 
"If what goes right?"
 
Tokalji hitched his stool closer to us, and glanced around.
 
"See you, Giorgi—and you, too, Jakka, if you can understand any of this talk,—the two Franks you robbed live at the hotel in Pera, where all the rich Franks stay."
 
"We saw it this morning," assented Nikka.
 
"These two Franks are an English lord and his servant. They seek something which I also seek and with them in their venture are two others, an Amerikansky, Nash, and one named Zaranko, who, they say, is a fiddler and was one of our people in his youth."
 
"I have heard of that one," said Nikka.
 
"Would you know his face?"
 
"I think I would."
 
"Good! Above everything else we wish to learn what has become of the Americansky and the fiddler and when they are to arrive. Also, they are two more Franks at the hotel, a man named King and his daughter. They, I think, are Amerikansky like Nash. We do not understand how they come to be in this business. If they are really in it, perhaps it would be worth while to kidnap the girl. We might hold her to blackmail her friends."
 
"But what do they seek that you also seek?" asked Nikka.
 
"If you breathe it to a soul, I will cut out your heart with my own knife, I, Beran Tokalji," replied the Gypsy chief by way of preface. "They have the secret to a treasure."
 
"What?" exclaimed Nikka with great pretense of astonishment. "Here in Stamboul?"
 
"Close by, my lad, close by. They know its location, but if we are smart we should be able to take it from them as soon as they reveal their knowledge. It is for us to find out their secret or wring it from them, by torture, if necessary."
 
"This is a job worth doing," cried Nikka, jumping up. "Jakka and I will be diligent. We will start now to trail the Franks."
 
But Tokalji barred the door to him.
 
"Not so fast, not so fast," he answered with his gargoyle laughter. "The job has waited for you some time. It can wait a few hours longer. I prefer to keep you under my wing for the night, until we become better acquainted. You look like the right sort of fellow, Giorgi, and your friend is not so poor a man for a Frank; but after all, as I said to you, you came in to me from the street this afternoon, and all I know about you is that you are a good thief.
 
"It is not enough. I must know more. And for another thing, it will help you to await the return of the two I have out watching these Franks in Pera. They have not found much, but they can tell you something of what the Franks do and how they spend their time. So make yourselves comfortable. You shall eat heartily, and this evening Kara will dance in the courtyard as she promised you. That is worth waiting for, Giorgi. If I were a young fellow, I would rather do that than lurk the corners of Pera. Heh-heh!"
 
He stepped aside, and waved us permission to go; and we walked through the courtyard to the crumbling wall which rimmed the Bosphorus at one point, its base a rubble-heap, its battlements in fragments, its platform overgrown with weeds. From its top we could look down on the margin of beach, loaded with bowlders, and the ruins of what had been a jetty enclosing a little harbor for the Imperial pleasure galleys.
 
"It would not be difficult to climb up here," I said idly, pointing to the gaps between the stones, and the sloping piles of bowlders. "Does he suspect us, Nikka?"
 
"No, that is only his Gypsy caution. He thinks we are too good to be true. He needed what we seem to be—and behold, we arrive! He has waited long. He feels he can wait a little longer."
 
"I'm afraid he may wait a little too long for us," I answered.
 
"There's a chance," Nikka admitted after a moment's reflection. "But we've got to risk it. In the meantime you must let me do all the talking. I'll tell everybody you are a sulky devil, a killer whose deeds haunt him. They'll leave you alone. Gypsies respect temperamental criminals. But come along, we mustn't stay by ourselves. We'll be suspected of considering ourselves too highly or else having something to conceal. We can't afford any suspicions or even a dislike."
 
So we strolled over to the young men's quarters, and while I wrapped myself in a gloomy atmosphere that I considered was typical of a temperamental killer, Nikka swapped anecdotes of crime with the others who drifted in and out. I looked for Kara, but she was nowhere in view. After Nikka had once established my character, the Gypsies gave me a wide berth, and I had nothing to do but smoke and appear murderous. And I must say I got sick of the part. I was the first man up when Mother Kathene swung the stew-pot out of the chimney and old Zitzi and Lilli began to distribute tin plates and cups in an irregular circle on the floor. It was poor food, but plenty, and anyway, it broke the monotony of being an abandoned criminal.
 
With the passing of the twilight the young men moved to the courtyard. In the middle of the open space was a black smirch on the paving, and here they built a fire of driftwood collected from the beach under the wall. It was a tribute to the immemorial habits of their race. Even here in the crowded city they must close the day with a discussion of its events around a tribal blaze, exactly as they would have done upon the road, exactly as thousands of other Gypsy tribes were doing at that very moment on the slopes of the Caucasus, in the recesses of the Kilo Dagh, in the pine forests of the C............