There were such as guests in Ptolemais, but from their lips he learned that Agrippa was black-listed from the Adriatic to the Euphrates; but Marsyas did not return to the house in the suburbs that night. The weight of his obligation was too heavy to endure the added burden which the sight of Agrippa's suspense had become.
He went to the rabbis of Ptolemais; they told him that they were not money-lenders. He applied to the prefect of the city, who laughed at him. Hoping that the name of Agrippa as a bankrupt had not penetrated into the fields he journeyed into the country-side of Syria and tried an oil-merchant, a rustic, rich and unlettered. But the oil-merchant came up to Ptolemais and made inquiry, shrugged his shoulders, glowered at Marsyas and went back to his groves.
An Egyptian seller of purple landed at Ptolemais from Alexandria. The name of the city of hope attracted Marsyas and he met the merchant at the wharves. But the seller of purple had been to Rome and the topmost name on his list of debtors was Herod Agrippa.
At the end of three days, Marsyas returned to the house in the suburbs to assure the prince that he had not deserted and went again on his search.
His invariable failures began to teach him a certain shrewdness. He discovered early that Essenic frankness would not serve his ends. He found that men were approachable through certain channels; that it was better to speak advisedly than frankly; to lay plans, rather than to wait on events; to use devices rather than persuasion. These things admitted, he discovered that he had unconsciously subordinated them to his use. Though momentarily alarmed, he did not hate himself as he should. On the other hand, it was pleasurable to lay siege to men and try them at their own scheming.
At night in a dutiful effort to cleanse himself of the day's accumulation of worldliness, he went to the open proseuchæ, where in the dark of the great out-of-doors, he was least likely to be noticed, to comfort himself with stolen worship, stolen profit from the Law. But the Law was not tender to those who lived as Stephen lived, and died as Stephen died. Not in all that great and holy scroll which the Reader read was there compassion for the blasphemer. Also, he heard of the great plague of persecution which Saul had loosed upon the Nazarenes in Jerusalem and how the Pharisee had become a mighty man before the Council, and an awe and a terror to the congregation. So he came away from the proseuchæ, not only unhelped but harmed, embittered, enraged, alienated from his faith, and hungering for vengeance.
By day, he walked through the commercial districts of Ptolemais and pushed his almost hopeless search with an energy that did not flag at continued failure. He knew that if he obtained the twenty thousand drachmæ, he bound Agrippa the surer to his oath of allegiance to the cause against Saul. Despair, therefore, was a banished and forbidden thing.
His plans, however, had been tried and proved fruitless. Typically a soldier of fortune, he was relying upon the exigencies of chance.
Ptolemais was a normal town, with large interest and pleasures, and the fair day was too fleeting for one to stop and take heed of another. Passers pushed and hurried him when he came upon those more busy than he. Sailors, bronzed as Tatars, were probably the sole loiterers besides the inevitable oriental feature, the sidewalk mendicant.
So it was that on a certain day when Marsyas overtook a lectica in the street, the old man within complained aloud and had no audience, except his plodding bearers, or the attention of a glance, or a slackened step now and again among the citizens.