“If we are not to be left in peace in the winter, things are coming to a pretty pass,” said Nilischeff sympathetically. “You are in the cave, I suppose?”
The question was asked with renewed sharpness, for it was not etiquette for any other band to imperil one of Nilischeff’s villages by seeking shelter in it, but Terminoff was able to give a satisfactory answer. The cave was common property, and there were few nights in the year when a sufficiently energetic force of Roumis might not have made a valuable capture by visiting it, but the forests and defiles through which it was approached were a country notoriously ill-suited to Roumis who had any care for their health. Every now and then a murmured greeting to Terminoff showed the presence of a scout in ambush, and when the forest was left behind, the rest of the ascent was commanded, every foot of it, by the rough breastwork at the cave’s mouth. The two leaders climbed the almost invisible path, and wriggled into the cave between the great stones heaped before it. A fire was burning behind a sheltering rock, casting a fitful glimmer into the dark recesses at the back, where the only other light came from a candle flickering before a sacred picture fixed crookedly on the wall. On a couch of rugs and greatcoats, spread upon a foundation of dead beech leaves brought from the forest below, lay a very tall man with strongly marked features and a pointed white beard. He held out his hand feebly to Nilischeff.
“They’ve got me at last, you see, though not by a bullet,” he said, speaking with difficulty. “A lifetime spent in the West Indies is a bad preparation for the Balkans in mid-winter, and it’s rough on a sick man to have to turn out of bed and tramp all night through the snow. But now about that little bit of business I want you to do for me. You have brought writing materials, of course?”
He lay back and gasped while Nilischeff brought out a fountain-pen and a writing-pad, but there was a cynical smile on his drawn face.
“It’s not my will,” he murmured, with obvious enjoyment of the two men’s discomfiture. “That was made and left in safe keeping before I started. This is merely a codicil that I wish to add.”
The words came slowly and painfully from him in French, and as he spoke his thumb moved rapidly backwards and forwards over his forefinger, in the familiar Eastern gesture denoting the telling of money. They watched him as if fascinated.
“I have never concealed from you my object in taking part in your operations,” he went on. “You, gentlemen, are solely actuated, as I know, by the high and noble desire of freeing Emathia from the Roumi yoke. I confess without shame that my aim is the grovelling one of restoring my family to its ancient position. My fortune is left in trust for my cousin Maurice Teffany, head of the house of Theophanis, his wife Eirene, representative of the younger line of the Imperial house, and their children, to be used in regaining for them the throne of the Eastern Empire, and maintaining the dignity when they achieve it.” He watched narrowly with his sunken eyes the gloomy looks of Terminoff, and the protesting face of Nilischeff, and spoke with hoarse passion,—“But in acting for the good of my family, I am doing the best thing for you, and you know it. I am giving you a head, a master, who will weld you into a nation with or without your consent. Why, if the Roumis left Emathia to-morrow, you and the Greeks would be at each other’s throats before night, with Thracia and Mœsia, and perhaps Dardania and Dacia, mobilising in feverish haste to seize whatever they could, until Scythia and Pannonia stepped in and divided the country between them! This is your one chance.”
“As well hand ourselves over to Panagiotis and his Greeks at once,” muttered Nilischeff. “The old time-server will come over to your cousin’s side again as soon as he hears of your legacy. They say that Prince Christodoridi refuses to contribute one single drachma towards the Greek propaganda, though it is to put himself on the throne.”
“Then he is penny wise and pound foolish,” said the sick man; “and you are worse, if you don’t welcome Panagiotis and the Greeks, whatever brings them over to your side. Europe will never see Emathia annexed to Thracia, but she will allow you to build up an autonomous state if you can only keep your hands off your knives. And meanwhile, you shall each have a thousand pounds, which will provide your bands with cartridges and dynamite until Maurice Theophanis is ready to move. So call two of your men as witnesses.”
Two members of the band who were not on guard were summoned, and Nilischeff prepared to write. The cynical smile was again on the invalid’s face.