“Maurice Smith.
“Zoe Smith.
“Eirene Smith.”
This was written on the upper half of a sheet from Zoe’s large note-book, and at the foot appeared the following, which could be torn off before the recipient made the first portion public:—
“For goodness’ sake, Wylie, drop it. Your intentions are excellent, but they don’t seem to come off. The girls are half-dead with exhaustion after the way you have been hunting us about, and we are at present cheerfully accommodated underground, with only the faintest glimmer of light. I couldn’t tell you where we are if I would, and I wouldn’t if I could. For some reason or other the brigands have taken a dislike to you, and if you persist in staying up here, I am given to understand that you will find yourself confronted with our dead bodies in various uncomfortable attitudes. Cut away to Therma and hurry up that ransom. This is the kindest thing you can do for us.”
On his return from the vain pursuit of the brigands which followed the meeting with the routed detachment, Wylie discovered this letter pinned with a dagger to the doorpost of the house where he had taken up his quarters. None of the villagers had seen who brought it, and no one could offer any suggestion on the subject, but whether the universal ignorance was real, or the result of a secret understanding with the brigands, did not appear. The letter had the desired effect, sending Wylie back to Therma in something more nearly approaching panic than he had ever known. He was not as reckless of the lives of his friends as he had appeared, but he had undoubtedly brought them into imminent peril, though his course had been adopted in utter desperation. His first appearance at Therma, bearing the story of what had happened and the demand for a ransom, had been the signal for the commencement of a wild tragi-comedy of irresponsibility. The Roumi authorities declared flatly that there were no brigands in Emathia, so that it was obviously impossible that the travellers could have been carried off by brigands. The British representatives, to whom Wylie appealed at the same time, cherished grave doubts as to the wisdom of paying a ransom, since no British traveller in Emathia would be safe after such a precedent had been set. Professor Panagiotis, torn by conflicting emotions, proved almost equally unsatisfactory. He had found himself of late subjected to a disquieting espionage, which filled him with fear lest his plans had in some way been divined. In such a case, it seemed to him that his only chance was to grip his important secret more tightly than ever. Lest Wylie should make use of it to bring pressure on any of the Governments concerned, he kept it even from him, pooh-poohing his reminder of the explanations Maurice had promised him, and showing an uneasy curiosity on the subject of Eirene, for whose existence he could not account. He volunteered, indeed, to write to Maurice’s bankers, asking them to advance the money for the ransom, with the natural result that they demanded either a cheque signed by Maurice or an interview with Wylie and a sight of his authority, and Wylie could not bring himself to leave Emathia while his friends’ fate hung in the balance. The Professor’s sole useful contribution to the debate was the conviction that the outrage had been perpetrated by a band of Thracian marauders, with which the newspapers in his interest made Europe ring. The Thracian Government, approached on the subject, replied with virtuous indignation that its attitude was perfectly correct. It had always studiously discouraged—in the most official manner—the formation of such bands, and refused them permission to cross the frontier into Emathia. If the reprehensible activity of private persons had managed to organise a band, the authorities viewed it with entire detachment, and the Roumi Government was welcome to do as it liked with the members, when it caught them.
This acknowledgment that there might be foreign, though not native, brigands on the sacred soil of Emathia stirred the Roumi officials to a pitch of activity positively dangerous. Urged on by Professor Panagiotis and his adherents, they sent troops into the hills, and loudly proclaimed their intention of sweeping the miscreants from the face of the earth, and rescuing the captives without fee or reward. Into the vortex of this expedition Wylie was whirled, partly by the demand of the authorities that he should accompany the troops and behold the vengeance exacted, partly by his own hope that he might be able to make the measures taken effectual. His friend Palmer, smarting under the loss of the faithful Haji Ahmad, had willingly joined him in a bold journey through the heart of the brigands’ country, in the hope that the luggage so lavishly displayed would prove a bait sufficient to ensure their being carried off also, when the best trackers in the country, provided by Professor Panagiotis, would follow them up, and thus discover the brigands’ stronghold. Demo’s recognition of Wylie in his disguise had prevented this, but the journey had its fruit in the discovery of the boot-tracks of the captives, and thus enabled Wylie to lay his plans for a systematic search. As Maurice had conjectured, it was the torrent-bed, the use of which as a path he had not suspected, which had thrown him out when he felt certain that he had the brigands safe in one particular group of hills, and the carelessness of the detachment which had been sent on to hold the pass enabled his prey to slip through his fingers. Thus baffled, he had no alternative but to hurry back to Therma, in compliance with Maurice’s earnest request, only to find fresh discouragements awaiting him. Before leaving for the hills, he had written a full account of the capture to Maurice’s bankers, enclosing a certified copy of the first letter signed by the three captives, in the hope that they might be induced to depart from their attitude of severe correctness. Their answer had now arrived, making it evident that the worthy country gentlemen, who had known Maurice and Zoe all their lives, and their parents and grandparents before them, regarded the intrusion of Eirene into the letter as evidence of a not very cleverly constructed plot, concocted, it was to be presumed, by Wylie and Professor Panagiotis, for the purpose of extorting money. Whether they imagined the Professor and Wylie were holding the captives in durance, or doubted their being in durance at all, or what they thought Eirene had to do with the matter, they did not say, but they wound up a lengthy refusal to do anything without seeing Wylie, with the coldly sarcastic remark that the Roumi Government was obviously the proper channel from which to obtain the ransom.
“Why can’t the old idiots see that it’s a matter of life and death?” mused Wylie bitterly, as he read the letter on the terrace of his hotel. “I’m not going cap in hand to them to be treated like a pickpocket and sent off with a flea in my ear, while the Smiths are being massacred. I’d rather pay the money myself. I wonder if I could manage to raise it in the time? I don’t see where it’s to come from. Or is there any one else I could worry into taking action?”
He thought over the long list of people to whom he had written urgent letters—every one he had ever heard of who was likely to have influence with the press or with any of the Governments interested in Emathia—and realised wrathfully that, though his journalistic appeals had produced a good deal of frothy rhetoric and bloodthirsty declamation in the columns of newspapers of the baser sort, the practical effect appeared to be nil. True, an artist on the staff of the ‘Plastic,’ who happened to be in the neighbourhood—as distances go in Eastern Europe—had been ordered to the scene of the capture, which was now, on the well-established principle of the steed and the stable-door, kept constantly patrolled by police, and had made many sketches of the localities concerned, but without stirring the placid blood of the public to any extraordinary heat. He had moved on to Therma now, and was staying at the hotel, and as Wylie halted irresolutely in his anger and perplexity outside the window of the smoking-room, he came out and joined him.
“I say, you don’t mind my speaking to you, do you?” he asked, in a pleasant, boyish voice. “I know you’re the man who was captured with the Smiths, and I want to find out something about them. I’m sick of sketching a set of rotten roadsides—might as well be a camera at once—and there’s not a sensation in the whole lot. What I’m thinking of is a full-page drawing of the outrage itself—call it a fancy picture if you like, but that’s the sort of thing that tells. Besides, if I work up the figures from your description, it’s not a fancy picture. Do you mind?”
“I don’t mind what I do that’s likely to give the slightest help in rescuing them,” said Wylie emphatically.
“I know. Horribly rough on them and you too—all this red tape. Let’s go ahead, then. What sort of a chap is Smith?”