Urged on by the impetus of the old operator’s boot, Wayne flies through the passage, bawling like a calf, but the dulcet sounds of the wedding procession music still swell through the narrow street, and no one would be apt to pay any attention to such a small outburst of anguish and fright as the discharged valet gives vent to while he runs.
There remains only the Turk.
Having exhausted his fit of passion, and finding he cannot break away from the strong arms that pinion him, Scutari stands there and glares into the face of his foe.
“What shall be done with this pretty thing?” says that inveterate cuckoo, Wycherley. “I think he can be locked up for five or ten years at hard labor.”
The pasha hears; at first he looks defiant, but at the mention of work he wilts like a blighted flower. Such a fate would scare the average Turk half to death.
“Anything but that! take my life if you will, but to work like a slave, Allah deliver me! I swear to you on the Koran that if you allow me to depart, I will return to Stamboul and never again remember that you live!” he cries eagerly.
Samson Cereal hesitates, but from an unexpected quarter help comes for the Turk.
“You can believe him. What a pasha swears on the Koran, that he will do.”
It is Marda who speaks, and the speculator makes up his mind.
“Pasha, you have played a bold game and you have lost. Make up your mind to accept the inevitable. As your people so philosophically say, 'Kismet—it is fate.’ Go then to your home, to your wives, on the Bosphorous. Forget that we live. May our lives never again cross.”