“I am infinitely indebted to you,” said Cyril, looking up with difficulty as his rescuer reached him.
“Not you, sir,” was the prompt reply. “When I saw those Scythian cusses preparing a new Holy Place for themselves by conducting a Christian martyrdom on this spot, it struck me that Scythia had quite as many Holy Places in this territory as was healthy for her, so I just started in with my six-shooter right away. You bet it went to my heart not to lay out two or three of the fellows, and specially the reverend gentleman that took the rock for a pulpit; but I know the ways of the Roumi authorities, and I didn’t want my business interrupted by a judicial inquiry any more than you would. But I guess there’s a dozen or so that will carry about with ’em for some time a pleasing little souvenir of me, any way.”
While the stranger spoke, he had been helping Cyril gently back to his former seat on the stone, and now began to bind up the wound in his head with a handkerchief.
“Surely I know your voice?” said Cyril faintly. “It seems quite familiar, and yet I can’t recall where I have heard it.”
The rescuer ceased his work, and stepped back for a moment. “The same as ever!” he exclaimed in admiration. “Sir, I have many a time heard you called the first gentleman in Europe, but I never expected you would remember me, when the last deal we did together was over twenty years ago.”
“Mr Hicks of the ‘Crier’?” asked Cyril, with an uncertain smile.
“Sir, you are correct. Elkanah B. Hicks, of the ‘Empire City Crier,’ who would be sitting in the head office of that paper as news editor at this moment if he was not a fool. But he has got the wandering strain in his blood, and threw up his berth to come out here, with the excuse that it needed the best man the paper had got to fathom you, Count.”
“I am flattered. Then it was not Turkish you spoke just now?”
“No, sir. I dispersed that crowd by means of the beautiful language which is the common heritage of your nation and mine. Do you find yourself comfortably fixed now, Count?”
He stepped back again to look critically at his work, just as Mansfield, with blazing eyes and panting breath, charged down upon the ledge, revolver in hand.