"You go," said Curtis; "I'll wait for you here." He shrank from the ingenuous explanation that Panayota was his betrothed. The very thought made him shudder.
"I can't tell him," he muttered, as he watched Lindbohm forcing his way through the throng. "I must get away from him some way. By Jove, I'll run off and leave him, if I can't do any better. Good God, what an escape I've had!"
"Hi!" shouted Lindbohm, so that every soul in the square turned and looked at him. He was standing on tiptoe and Curtis could see the ruddy face with its red bandanna halo floating on a sea of heads. "Hi!" called the Swede again, waving his stick in air. "Come here, quick! I've found Kostakes."
"Now, what the devil do I want of Kostakes?" muttered Curtis, plunging reluctantly into the press. When he had reached Lindbohm's side, the Swede gripped him by the arm and pointed a long finger at one of the pantomimists in the Punch and Judy booth.
A board hung, suspended from the neck of each, with a name and crime inscribed thereon in Turkish and English. Curtis read:
KOSTAKES EFFENDI.
Captain of Bashi Bazouks,
Murder and Arson.
"It is hard for a soldier to die thus," said the Swede sadly. "But a soldier who disgraces his calling, deserves such a death. Well, my friend," turning to Curtis, "half our work has been done for us, eh? Now the rest will be easy. Is it not so?"
Curtis could not take his eyes from the hooded form before him, nor move from the spot where he stood. As long as he stared at the head, covered with its black cloth, he was impressed with a sense of unreality; so might a row of wax inquisitors be shown in the Eden Musee at New York. And that pitiful, limp tilting of the head was not at all suggestive of Kostakes, who was ever wont to hold his neck stiff and stand upright with a certain jaunty insolence. But when Curtis' eyes traveled downward, the unreality vanished. The long row of buttons, the dark blue trousers tucked into the tops of the highly polished boots, the spurs, the backward bulging of the thick calf of the leg—all these things brought back to him a flood of reminiscences. He remembered the fight at Ambellaki, and the long ride across country. He could see those very legs clasping the side of a horse, and he wondered once more how their owner managed to keep the boots so spotless. Then he saw Panayota again, the most splendid creature he had ever seen, denouncing the Turk for the murder of her father, and he felt once more the old thrill of admiration and chivalrous purpose. Ah! She had touched the Turk, she had made him wince, brave girl, despite those insolent eyes, and that square, protruding under jaw. Any one could see that by the way in which he stopped twirling the end of the little black mustache and began nibbling it. The long chase after Kostakes, with those turbulent Cretans, the night in the square when Curtis had fired point blank at him and missed him—all these things passed through his mind like scenes on a moving panorama, as he gaped at those dark blue breeches and the well-polished boots with their long spurs; but when he raised his eyes again to the black-hooded head, tipped to one side like a man with a stiff neck, the whole incident seemed ended; this life in Crete, became a fantastic dream and took on the unreality of those faceless puppets, hanging all in a row, gently oscillating in the breeze.
"Move on!" said a stern voice, sharply.
"They mean us," said Lindbohm, pulling Curtis away, "it seems they allow no loitering here. Well, the next thing is to see the commandant and make some inquiries about Panayota, eh?"