Who could have betrayed the secret of the eggs? they asked themselves. Why, who else but Tepelenti?
Fools! to fancy that they could make a fool of Tepelenti!
Sulaiman fainted when they informed him that the secret of the eggs was discovered. Mukhtar felt that the moment had come of which Ali had said that the lowest slave would not then exchange heads with his two sons, and in that hour of peril he bethought him of the talismanic ring which had been sent to him. Hastily he removed the emerald, believing that at least a quickly operative poison was contained therein, by which he might be saved from a shameful death. There was, however, no poison inside the ring, but these words were engraved thereon, "Ye have fallen into the hands of Ali!"
Mukhtar dropped the ring; he was annihilated.
The hand of Ali, that implacable hand which reached from one end of the world to the other, which clutched at him even out of the tomb—he now felt all its weight upon his head.
Die he must, and his brother also.
The Reis-Effendi examined them, and both of them doggedly denied all knowledge of what was written on the eggs. But there was one thing they could not deny—the five million piastres on the English ship; this was the most damaging piece of evidence against them, and proved to be their ruin.
The Sultan demanded from Morrison the money of the beys, and Morrison himself appeared before the Reis-Effendi to defend his consignment, which he maintained he was only bound to deliver to its lawful owner.
The Reis-Effendi replied that in the Ottoman Empire there was only one lawful owner of every sort of property, and that was the Sultan. The property of every deceased person fell to the Grand Signior, and nobody could make a will without his permission.
Morrison objected, very pertinently, that as the beys were not deceased the Sultan could scarcely be looked upon as their heir.