A REHEARSAL
It was two days later.
On the slope of the hill, not a stone's throw from the house where Hermann Wonckhaus was nursing his wounded leg and meditating on carpets, was a modest dwelling, huddled among more pretentious buildings, and so inconspicuous that a passer would hardly have thought it worth while to wonder who lived there. At the rear of this house, hollowed out of the hillside, was a small dark chamber with neither door nor window. Any person who might have been brought there in a state of unconsciousness would have supposed, on waking, that he was sealed up within four walls from which he could not escape.
On this particular day three men were in the room, one elderly, the others young. A small oil lamp placed on a wall bracket gave a dim light, and the air was oppressive with staleness and the flavour of smoke. It was not a place where one would have desired to remain long, but its three occupants had chosen it as the scene of a somewhat important rehearsal.
The elderly man was Isaac Kopri, the astute and capable Armenian contractor to the Turkish army in Erzerum. One of the youths was his son Joseph. The second was to all appearance one of those humble Armenians who are employed in driving caravan horses from the Persian frontier to Erzerum and thence to the Black Sea port of Trebizond. He stood at one end of the room, facing his companions at the wall opposite.
Kopri stepped forward, and, speaking in Turkish, asked sharply:
"Who are you?"
"I am your servant, effendim," replied the young man, "Reuben Donessa, the son of Aaron of the Five Wells."
"Where do you come from?"
"From Bashkala, effendim."