When he had gone, Giovan said in low voice:
"I say, Pedro, we will divide a thousand ducats out of this."
"How?" exclaimed the two.
"The young officer is brother to the lady at the grand chamberlain's. She will pay heavy ransom if we deliver him instead of—" drawing his finger across his throat. "Of course we should have to leave Byzantium. But Ricardo and I have concluded that it were best to be gone anyhow; for the people here are so poor that our business does not thrive. This purse once held ducats, but when we took it, it had only silver bits. We pocket-bankers need better constituency."
"Yes, we had better get out of this," said Pedro. "General Giustiniani has come to live in Galata.[69] He got his weasel-eyes on me yesterday as I was doing a little business by the old wharf. That man knows too much, he does. But he'll never get me on the galley benches again. I'd crawl like a mud turtle on the bottom of Marmora before I'd go under the hatches a second time. I like freedom and fresh air, I do—" blowing out of his face the thick smoke emitted by the wick floating on the surface of a saucer of oil.
"Right!" said Giovan. "Let's get out of this if we can do so with enough gold to pay our royal travelling expenses. But if we spare the neck of that fellow who is in Signior Alexis' way, where will we keep him that Alexis will not know it?"
"Our mansion here is hardly commodious enough for so distinguished and lively a guest as the young officer will be likely to be," said Ricardo, scraping the spiders' webs from the low ceiling of the room with his cap.
"Try the old water vault," suggested Pedro.
"Good!" said Ricardo, "when the Albanian goes to the walls, as he does every day, he will pass near to the opening."