But Demetri gained no attention. I had made too much impression.
‘Who was the woman, then,’ said I, ‘and where is she?’
Constantine, tricky and resourceful, looked again on the dead Vlacho.
‘I may not tell my friend’s secrets,’ said he, with an admirable assumption of honour. ‘And a foul blow has sealed Vlacho’s lips.’
‘Yes,’ cried I. ‘Vlacho killed the old lord, and Vlacho brought the woman! Indeed Vlacho serves my lord as well dead as when he lived! For now his lips are sealed. Come, then—Vlacho bought the island, and Vlacho slew Spiro, and now Vlacho has slain himself! Neither Constantine nor I have done anything; but it is all Vlacho—the useful Vlacho—Vlacho—Vlacho!’
Constantine’s face was a sight to see, and he looked no pleasanter when my irony wrung smiles from some of the men round him, while others bit their lips to stop smiles that sought to come.
‘Oh faithful servant!’ I cried, apostrophising Vlacho, ‘heavy are thy sins! May’st thou find mercy for them!’
I did not know what cards Constantine held. If he had succeeded in spiriting away his wife, by fair means or foul, he had the better chance; but if she were still free, alive and free, then he played a perilous hand and was liable to be utterly confounded. Yet he was forced to action; I had so moved the people that they looked for more than mere protests from him.
‘The stranger who came to steal our island,’ said he, skilfully prejudicing me by this description, ‘asks me where the woman is. But I ask it of him—where is she? For it stands with him to put her before you that she may tell you whether I, Constantine Stefanopoulos, am lying to you. Yet how long is it since you doubted the words of the Stefanopouloi and believed strangers rather than them?’
His appeal won on them. They met it with murmured applause.