The Dancing Girl of Gades/Chapter 12

T APPROACHED high noon. Simon had left an hour ago in a sort of wet-hen flutter of indignant misery, with a threat from the Egyptian in his ear:

"Jew! Balbus owes you money. He would welcome excuse to proscribe you and seize your property! One word from me—"

Thereafter Pkauchios held Tros in conversation, seeking to make sure of him, promising him riches should the night's attempt succeed and more than riches, "power, which is the rightful perquisite of honest men!" Too shrewd to threaten, he nevertheless dropped hints of what might happen if Tros should fail him.

"You are not the first. Man after man I have tested. One fool tried to betray me, and was crucified. My word with Balbus outweighed his! Another thought he could do without me, after I had made all ready for him. Those he would have led to insurrection burned his house and threw him back into the flames as he ran forth in his night clothes. No, no, you are not the first!"

"I am the last!" Tros answered grimly, and Pkauchios' dark eyes took on a look of satisfaction.

Then Tros tried to find out where Chloe was without arousing Pkauchios' suspicion.

"Who was that woman," he asked, "who came out to my ship?"

"Oh, a mischievous Greek slave. A very clever dancer who will perform to-night for Balbus."

"Trustworthy?" Tros suggested.

"No Gades dancing girls are trustworthy. Theirs is a very religion of intrigue."

"Ergastulum?" Tros suggested.

"No. She sleeps to be ready for tonight."

However, there was plainly a mask over Pkauchios' thought. Tros was quite sure he was lying, equally sure he was worried. All sorts of fears presented themselves that Tros was hard put to it to keep from showing on his face. Chloe might have disappeared, turned traitress. He decided he was a fool to have left Horatius Verres at large on the ship. If Chloe loved that spy of Cæsar's—or was he Balbus' spy, pretending to be Cæsar's—then she would quite likely do whatever Verres told her and perhaps betray every one, Pkauchios included.

Yet he decided not to return to the ship until he had spoken alone with Simon. The old Jew was possibly the weakest link in the intrigue. In terror he might run to Balbus and betray the whole plot. Before all else he must reassure Simon.

Pkauchios ordered out the litter with the eunuch in attendance and the eight white-liveried slaves. Tros saw him whisper to the eunuch, but pretended not to see. He had contrived to look entirely confident when the Egyptian walked with him to the garden gate.

"After sunset," said Pkauchios, "there will go a messenger to the gate guards who will bid them admit two hundred and fifty slaves on the excuse that they are needed as torch-bearers for the midnight pageant in Balbus' garden. They will be shown a writing to that effect which the fools will think is genuine. Another messenger will go to the Balearic guards who line the beach. And he will take money with him, a considerable bribe. At sunset a great barge will be rowed alongside your ship. Put your men into that. They shall be led to Simon's warehouse where they may help themselves to weapons. And the same guide will lead them afterward to the quarry outside Balbus' garden. He will lead them by roundabout ways so as not to attract attention."

Tros rolled into the litter and allowed the eunuch to lead as if his first objective were the ship. But he had no intention of being spied on by that eunuch, and when the litter halted at a narrow passage in the street to let three laden mules go by he rolled out of it again.

"Wait for me by the city gate," he commanded.

The eunuch demurred, tried persuasion, offered to carry him anywhere, and at last grew impudent.

"You insult my master's hospitality!"

A crowd began to gather, marveling at Tros' purple cloak and at the broad gold band across his forehead. The eunuch tried to drive them away, fussily indignant, prodding with his staff at those who seemed least likely to retaliate, but the crowd increased. Tros felt a tug at his cloak and, glancing swiftly, caught his breath. He saw Conops slip out of the crowd and go sauntering along the street! His red cap was at a reckless angle and his bandy legs suggested the idle, erratic, goalless meandering of a sailor in a half-familiar port.

Tros climbed back into the litter promptly as the best means of escaping from the crowd. Conops, faithful little rascal, would never have left the ship without good reason. Clearly he expected to be followed. The eunuch contrived to clear the way and the crowd dispersed about its business, which was mainly to sit in doorway shadows. As the litter began to overtake Conops he increased his pace until, where five streets met, he turned up an alley and turned about to watch. He made no signal.

Making sure that Conops was not following the litter downhill toward the city gate, Tros vaulted to the ground and had made his way to the alley mouth before the eunuch, walking ahead rapidly to clear the way, realized what was happening.

"This way, master—swiftly!"

Conops opened a door ten paces down the alley and Tros followed through it. The door slammed behind him and in stifling gloom he was greeted by a laugh he thought he recognized. It was nearly a minute before definite objects began to evolve out of the shadows. He could hear a rasping cough that seemed familiar, and there were other noises that suggested the presence of armed men, but the sunlight had been dazzling on the whitewashed walls and there were no open windows in the place in which he found himself. It took time for eyesight to readjust itself. The first shape to evolve out of the darkness was a stair-head, leading downward; then, down the stairs a leather curtain of the rich old-golden hue peculiar to Spain. Above the curtain, on a panel of the wall the stairway pierced, was a painted picture of a bull's head; and there was something strange about its eyes. After a moment's stare Tros decided there were human eyes watching him through slits in the painted ones. There was a murmur of voices from behind the curtain and, every moment or two, that sound of labored breathing and a cough that resembled Simon's.

ONOPS was in no haste to explain. He slunk behind Tros in the darkness, and a man stepped between them in response to a thundering on the street door. He opened a peep-hole and spoke through it to Pkauchios' eunuch; Tros could see him clearly as the light through the hole shone on his face—a lean, intelligent, distinguished looking man. He assured the eunuch in good Greek he was mistaken. None had entered the house recently. Perhaps the next house or the next or the one over the way. Finally, he advised the eunuch to wait patiently.

"People who vanish usually reappear unless the guards have seized them. Private business or perhaps a woman, who knows? At any rate, I will trouble you not to disturb a peaceful household. Go away!"

He closed the peep-hole and in the darkness Tros could sense rather than see that he bowed with peculiar dignity.

"Do me the favor to come this way," he murmured, using the Roman language in as gentle a voice as Tros had ever heard.

He led down the dark stairs as if they were not quite familiar to him.

Tros groped for Conops, seized him by the neck and swung him face to face.

"Well?" he demanded.

Conops answered in a hurried whisper:

"That fellow Horatius Verres came out of the hold and said 'if you value your master's freedom, follow me!' Then he jumped overboard and swam. I followed to the beach in a boat. All the way to this place he kept a few paces ahead of me. Then he said 'find your master and bring him here, or he'll be dead by midnight!' I was on my way to Pkauchios' house when—"

"Go ahead of me!" Tros ordered.

He loosed his sword in the scabbard and trod quietly, hoping Conops' heavier step might be mistaken for his own in the event of ambush, so leaving himself free to fight. But the curtain was drawn aside, only to reveal a dim lamp and another curtain. The sound of men's voices increased; there was low laughter and a smell of wine. Beyond the second curtain was a third with figures on it done in blue and white. Some one pulled the third curtain aside and revealed a great square room whose heavy beams were set below the level of the street. The walls were of stone, irregularly dressed. There was a tiled floor covered with goat-hair matting, and a small table near one end of the room, at which a man sat with his back to a closed door. Around the other walls were benches occupied by men in Roman and Greek costume, although none of them apparently were Romans and by no means all were Greeks. There were two Jews, for instance, of whom one was Simon. All except Simon rose as Tros entered. Simon seemed exhausted, and was sweating freely from the heat of the bronze illuminating lamps.

"The noble Tros of Samothrace!" said the man with the gentle voice who had led the way downstairs.

Tros glared around him, splendid in his purple cloak against the golden leather curtain, and the man at the table bowed. Simon coughed and made movements with his hands, suggesting helplessness. He who had led the way downstairs produced a chair made of wood and whaleskin and with the air of a courtier offered it to Tros to sit on, but he pretended not to notice it.

"Illustrious Tros of Samothrace, we invite you to be seated," said the man at the table.

He looked almost like Balbus, except that his face was harder and not wearied from debauch of the emotions. He had humor in his dark eyes, and every gesture, every curve of him suggested confidence and good breeding.

Tros noticed that Horatius Verres was seated in the darkest corner of the room, that Conops' knife-blade was a good two inches out of the sheath, that his own sword was at the proper angle to be drawn instantly, and that the men nearest to him looked neither murderous nor capable of preventing his escape past the curtain. Then he accepted the proffered chair.

"Illustrious Tros of Samothrace," said the man at the table, "we have learned that you win lend your dagger to the cause of Gades."

"Who are you?" Tros retorted bluntly.

"We are a committee of public safety, self-appointed and here gathered, unknown to our Roman rulers for the purpose of conspiracy in the name of freedom," he at the table answered. "My own name is Quintillian."

Tros heard a noise behind the curtain, was aware of armed men on the stairs. By the half smile on the chairman's face he realized he was in a trap from which there was no chance of escape without a miracle of swordsmanship or else a shift of luck. He stared very hard at Simon, who seemed to avoid his gaze.

"We wish to assure ourselves," said the man who had called himself Quintillian, "that we have not been misinformed."

"There are two who might have told you," Tros answered. "One is Simon, the other Chloe, a Greek slave. I will say nothing unless you tell me which of them betrayed me."

Quintillian smiled. His dark, amused eyes glanced around the room, resting at last on Simon's face.

"Your friend Simon," he said, "has refused to answer questions. We are pleased that your arrival on the scene may save him from that application to his person of inducements to speak, which we had in contemplation."

Tros blew a sigh out of his lungs, half of admiration for his old friend Simon, half of contempt for himself for having trusted Chloe. Then he glared at Horatius Verres over in the corner.

"How came I to trust you?" he wondered aloud.

"I don't know," the Roman answered, smiling. "I myself marveled at it. I am greatly in your debt, illustrious Tros. You gave me opportunity to hold a long conversation with Herod ben Mordecai down in the dark, in the hold of your ship. And you left me free to watch for signals from the shore. You knew that Chloe loves me. I am sure you are much too wise to suppose that a woman in love would neglect to signal to her lover." The voice was mocking, confident, cynical.

ROS stood up and shook himself as if about to speak, staring straight at the man at the table to conceal his intention of charging the stairs and fighting his way to the street. Up anchor and away from Gades—there was nothing else to do! The only thing that made him hesitate was wondering how to rescue Simon.

"You are in no danger at present. Be seated," said Quintillian courteously. "We wish to hear from your lips confirmation of a plot that interests us deeply. We also are conspirators."

"I will be silent," Tros answered, closing his mouth grimly.

He did not sit down, but laid his left hand on the chair-back, intending to use the chair as a shield when he judged the moment ripe for fighting his way to the street.

"Ah, but that is only because you have not understood us properly," said Quintillian. "Trouble yourself to observe that we are not warlike men, nor even armed with anything but daggers. We are students of philosophy, of music, of the sacred sciences. Our purpose is, that Gades shall become a center of the arts, a city dedicated to the Muses. We have heard that Pkauchios the Egyptian plans an uprising which you will lead by slaying Balbus, for whom none of us has any particular admiration. In the interests of Gades we propose to discover in what way we can be of assistance to you."

Tros let a laugh explode in one gruff bark of irony.

"I am no friend of Balbus. I am the enemy of Cæsar and of Rome," he answered. "But if I were so far to forget my manhood as to cut a throat like a common murderer, it would be the throat of Pkauchios! You fools!"

"Not so foolish, possibly, as weak!" Quintillian answered with a suave smile. "But as the poet Homer says, 'The strength even of weak men when united avails much!'"

The mention of the poet Homer mollified Tros instantly. He began to feel a sort of friendly condescension. These were harmless, poet-loving people after all. They might be saved from indiscretion.

"Fools, I said! But I, too, have been foolish. I thought to pluck my own advantage from the whirlpool of this city's frenzy! Murder never overthrew a tyranny. Ye are like dogs who bite the stick that whips them instead of fighting foot and fang against the tyranny itself! Slay Balbus, and a tyrant ten times worse will take advantage of the crime to chain a new yoke on your necks!"

There was a murmur of surprize. Quintillian raised his eyebrows and, leaning both elbows on the table, answered—

"But we know for a fact you have agreed with Pkauchios to stab Balbus in his house at the supper—tonight."

"Chloe told you. Well, I, too, was fool enough to trust her, but not altogether," Tros said, grimly. "I would not trust Pkauchios if I had him tied and gagged! My plan was nothing but to rescue Balbus, to protect him, and so win his gratitude! I seek a favor from him. Bah! Do you think I would lend my men for a purpose that would bring disaster on a city against which I have no grudge, and myself for an act of cowardice? Phaugh! Murder your own despots, if you will, but count me out of it! Look you—"

He drew his sword and shook the cloak back from his shoulder. Behind him he heard the click of Conops' knife emerging from the sheath.

"I go!" He took a stride toward the door, but as none moved to prevent him he paused and faced Quintillian again. He decided to test them to the utmost. If he had to fight his way out he proposed to know it. "Simon may come if he will. I have two words of advice for you: Kill me if you can before I gut your men who guard the stairs, because I go to Balbus! I will warn him, for the sake of Gades! Fools! If you must murder some one, make it Pkauchios! If that dark trickster has his way, all Spain and Gaul will run blood! You have let the Romans in and now you must endure the Romans! Make no worse evil for yourselves than is imposed already!"

He beckoned to Simon, but Quintillian rose and bowed with such dignity and obvious good will that Tros paused again.

"Illustrious Tros," Quintillian said, "if you could favor us with any sort of guarantee that those are your genuine sentiments, we would even let you go to Balbus! It is just Balbus' death that we hope to prevent!"

Smiling, his dark eyes alight with amusement and with something strong and generous behind that, he struck the table sharply with the flat of his hand. There was a sudden sound behind Tros' back; the inner curtain had been drawn; in the opening stood two men armed with javelins, and there was a third behind them with a bow and arrows.

"You may live and we will turn you loose if you will convince us," remarked Quintillian. "Time presses. Won't you do us the favor to resume your seat?"

But Tros refused to sit.

"It is you who must convince me!" he retorted.

With his cloak, his sword, the whaleskin chair and Conops to create diversions, he knew himself able to defeat javelins and bow and arrow, but he was interested to discover whether there were any more armed men in hiding. Quintillian, however, gave him no enlightenment on that point beyond continuing to smile with utmost confidence.

"You see," he said, "none of us can go to Balbus, who is altogether too suspicious. He would have us crucified for knowing anything about conspiracies. Yet we have suffered so much in pocket and peace and dignity from former abortive risings that we ventured to take liberties with you in order to nip this one in the bud, or rather, to prevent its budding. Balbus and his troops would nip!"

"Then his troops aren't mutinous?" Tros asked.

Quintillian smiled.

"They are always mutinous. Just now they talk of marching to join Cæsar in Gaul. But a chance to loot the city would restore them to sweet reasonableness, as Balbus perfectly understands. Illustrious Tros, we might not exercise ourselves if we liked Pkauchios or if we thought the city were united. We, believe ourselves sufficiently intelligent to take advantage of the disaffection in the Roman camp. The moment might be ripe for insurrection but for one important fact: We have learned that Julius Cæsar is coming!"

He glanced at Horatius Verres, who smiled at Tros and nodded with the same air of amused confidence that he had displayed from the beginning.

"Speak to him," said Quintillian. So Horatius Verres stood up, arms folded, and in a very pleasant voice explained how he came to be there.

"Illustrious Tros," he said, "I am in worse predicament than you, I being Cæsar's man, and you your own. I obey Cæsar, because I love him. While I live, I serve him at my own risk, whereas you are free to follow inclination. I discovered a plot to murder Cæsar. It was launched in Gades, and I sent him warning as soon as I knew.

"I received a reply that he will come here. But though he is Cæsar, he cannot be here for several days, whether he come by land or water. I cannot warn Balbus, who is touchy about being spied on and would have my head cut off to keep me from telling Cæsar things I know. But it is not Cæsar's desire that Balbus should meet death, there being virtues of a sort which Balbus imitates that might serve Cæsar's ends to great advantage.

"From Herod, the Jew, in the darkness of the hold of your ship, I learned of these distinguished Gadeans, who call themselves a committee of public safety. So I risked my life by coming to them, and I risked yours equally, by persuading your man Conops to summon you, believing you to be a man who would see humor in" the situation and take the right way out of it."

E SAT down again.

"May the gods behold your impudence!" said Tros. But he could not help liking the man.

"We know," said Quintillian, "that Pkauchios has ruffians ready to attack Balbus' house at midnight. We also know that he has bribed some of the body-guard, and we suppose he will make some of the others drunk with drugged wine. We imagine he has offered you inducements to bring a few hundred men ashore—"

"You had that from Chloe," said Tros, but Quintillian took no notice of the interruption.

"—to give backbone, as it were, to the mob that might otherwise flinch. And we know there are weapons in Simon's warehouse, some of which we presume are to be supplied to your men. We ourselves might kill Pkauchios, but Balbus has a great regard for him and, strange though it may appear, though public-spirited, we prefer not to be tortured and we object to having our possessions confiscated. Nevertheless, we will not permit Balbus to be slain, and if you are willing to protect him for the sake of Gades—"

He paused and Tros waited, almost breathlessly. In his mind he made a bargain, named the terms of it by which he would abide for good or ill—a final test of these men's honesty.

"We will offer you our silent gratitude," Quintillian went on, "and we will take a pledge from you not to reveal my name or our identity to Balbus."

It was a tactful way of saying they would not murder him if he succeeded and provided he should keep his mouth shut. Tros laughed.

"If you had offered me a price," he said, "I would have spat my scorn."

"As it is, are you willing to betray Pkauchios to Balbus?" Quintillian asked. "You could do it without the risk that any of us would run."

Tros snorted.

"No!"

Quintillian smiled with a peculiar, alert, attractive wrinkling of his face and glanced around the room. Men nodded to him, one by one.

"Had you agreed to betray Pkauchios, we would have known you would betray us!" he said. "Illustrious Tros, what help can we afford you? We are nineteen men."

"See that Cæsar doesn't catch me when he comes!" Tros announced. "Keep me informed of the news of his movements." He looked hard at Horatius Verres. "You," he said, "will you keep me informed? Your Cæsar is my enemy, but I befriended you."

"I know no more than I have told you," Verres answered.

Once again Tros hesitated. Impulse, sense of danger urged him to escape while it was possible. It would be easy to make these men believe he would go forward with the plan, then to return to the ship ostensibly to instruct his own men for the night's adventure. Orwic was on board. He could sail away and leave Gades to stew in its own intrigues.

But obstinacy urged the other way. He hated to withdraw from anything he had set his hand to before the goal was reached. And again he remembered the Lord Druid's admonition, "Out of the midst of danger thou shalt snatch the keys of safety!"

While he hesitated, the door behind Quintillian opened. He recognized the hand before the woman came through, knew it was Chloe without looking at her, looked, and knew she held the keys of the whole situation. There was triumph in her eyes, although she drooped them modestly and stood beside Quintillian's table with hands clasped in an attitude of reverence for the august assembly.

"Speak!" Quintillian commanded, and she looked at Tros, her eyes alight with impudence.

"Lord Tros," she said, "would you have come here of your own accord? Would you have come, had I invited you? Would you not have sailed away, if you had known these noblemen would kill you rather than permit you to kill Balbus? And do you think I propose to lose those pearls you promised me, or my freedom?"

She nodded and smiled.

"Do you think I intend to be tortured?"

There was a long pause, during which everybody in the room, Quintillian included, looked uncomfortable. Then she answered the thought that was making Tros' amber eyes look puzzled:

"These noblemen don't kill me because they know there are others who know where I am, who would go straight to Balbus and name names. It would deeply interest Balbus to learn of a committee of nineteen who propose to direct the destiny of Gades unbeknown to him! It was not I who told those nobles of your plot with Pkauchios. There is one of this committee—illustrious Quintillian, shall I name him?"

Quintillian shook his head.

"There is one in this room who pretends to be Pkauchios' friend and whom Pkauchios trusts. It was he who told. To save your life I signalled to the ship, and when Horatius Verres hurried through the streets I whispered to him so that he knew where to come."

"Who told him to persuade Conops to come?" Tros demanded, not more than half believing her. But Verres himself answered that question:

"Cæsar does not select agents who are wholly without wits," he remarked in his amused voice. "Chloe signalled, which she would not have done if all went well. Suspecting that you might be causing her trouble I proposed to myself to bring a hostage with me, whose danger might bring you to reason. I had observed that you value your man Conops. So I hinted to him that your life was in danger, and of course he followed me, being a good faithful dog. Chloe reached this place ahead of us, and when she whispered to me again through the hole in the door, I sent Conops to find you. Is the mystery explained?"

"You are a very shrewd man," Tros answered. "But why did you tell these noblemen that Cæsar is on the way?"

"To confirm them in their resolution not to let Balbus be slain. It might not suit Cæsar to find Gades in rebellion. You see, this is not his province and it is not certain what the troops would do. If he should assume command here, it might stir Pompey to go before the Senate and demand Cæsar's indictment and recall to Rome."

All the while Verres was speaking Chloe whispered to Quintillian. Her hand was on his arm and she was urging him. Suddenly Quintillian sat upright and rapped with his hand on the table.

"Time presses," he said. "Comrades, we must come to a decision. Shall we trust the illustrious Tros and take a pledge from him?"

There was a murmur of assent.

"A pledge?" said Tros. "From me?"

"Why, yes!" said Chloe. "We think you are an honorable man, but at a word from you to Balbus we might all be crucified!"

The men in the doorway behind Tros rattled their weapons.

"We all risk our lives if we give you liberty," Quintillian remarked. "You are a stranger to us."

Tros began to turn over in his mind what pledge he could deposit with them. There was no alternative except to fight his way out to the street, and he suspected now that there were many more than three men on the stairs. Quintillian enlightened him:

"You would have seven men to fight, besides ourselves. But why fight? Why not leave your faithful follower with us?"

Conops drew breath sharply. Tros turned his head to glance at him.

"Little man," he said, "shall we fight?"

"Nay, they are too many," Conops answered.

For a fraction of a second Conops' face wore the reproachful look of a deserted dog's. But he saw Tros' eyes and recognized the resolution in them. Never, in all their long experience together, had Tros looked like that at him and failed.

"You are not such a fool as you look!" he sneered, staring straight at Quintillian. "My master would lose his own life rather than desert a faithful servant. Harm me if you dare, and see what happens!"

At a sign from Quintillian everybody in the room rose, making a rutching of feet and a squeal of moved benches. Only Tros heard Conops' whisper:

"Now they will trust you! It was I who led you into this trap. Leave me and sail away. The worst they'll do is kill me."

For answer Tros grinned at him, grinned and nodded, clapped him on the back.