CHAPTER I
THE WONDER-BOX

As long as she could remember she had been permitted to play with the contents of the late Herr Conrad Wilner’s wonder-box. The programme on such occasions varied little; the child was permitted to rummage among the treasures in the box until she had satisfied her perennial curiosity; conversation with her absent-minded father ensued, which ultimately included a personal narrative, dragged out piecemeal from the reticent, dreamy invalid. Then always a few pages of the diary kept by the late Herr Wilner were read as a bedtime story. And bath and bed and dreamland followed. That was the invariable routine, now once more in full swing.

Her father lay on his invalid’s chair, reading; his rubber-shod crutches rested against the wall, within easy reach. By him, beside the kerosene lamp, her mother sat, mending her child’s stockings and underwear.

Outside the circle of lamplight the incandescent eyes of the stove glowed steadily through the semi-dusk; and the child, always fascinated by anything that aroused her imagination, lifted her gaze furtively from time to time to convince herself that it really was the big, familiar stove which glared redly back at her, and not a dragon into which her creative fancy had so often transformed it.

Reassured, she continued to explore the contents of the wonder-box – a toy she preferred to her doll, but not to her beloved set of water-colours and crayon pencils.

Some centuries ago Pandora’s box let loose a world of troubles; Herr Wilner’s box apparently contained only pleasure for a little child whose pleasures were mostly of her own invention.

It was a curious old box, made of olive wood and bound with bands of some lacquered silvery metal to make it strong – rupee silver, perhaps – strangely wrought with Arabic characters engraved and in shallow relief. It had handles on either side, like a sea-chest; a silver-lacquered lock and hasp which retained traces of violent usage; and six heavy strap hinges of the same lacquered metal.

Within it the little child knew that a most fascinating collection of articles was to be discovered, taken out one by one with greatest care, played with discreetly, and, at her mother’s command, returned to their several places in Herr Wilner’s box.

There were, in this box, two rather murderous-looking Kurdish daggers in sheaths of fretted silver – never to be unsheathed, it was solemnly understood, except by the child’s father.

There was a pair of German army revolvers of the pattern of 1900, the unexploded cartridges of which had long since been extracted and cautiously thrown into the mill pond by the child’s mother, much to the surprise, no doubt, of the pickerel and sunfish.

There were writing materials of sandalwood, a few sea shells, a dozen books in German with many steel plate engravings; also a red Turkish fez with a dark blue tassel; two pairs of gold-rimmed spectacles; several tobacco pipes of Dresden porcelain, a case full of instruments for mechanical drawing, a thick blank book bound in calf and containing the diary of the late Herr Wilner down to within a few minutes before his death.

Also there was a figure in bronze, encrusted with tarnished gold and faded traces of polychrome decoration.

Erlik, the Yellow Devil, as Herr Wilner called it, seemed too heavy to be a hollow casting, and yet, when shaken, something within rattled faintly, as though when the molten metal was cooling a fissure formed inside, into which a few loose fragments of bronze had fallen.

It apparently had not been made to represent any benign Chinese god; the aspect of the yellow figure was anything but benevolent. The features were terrific; scowls infested its grotesque countenance; threatening brows bent inward; angry eyes rolled in apparent fury; its double gesture with sword and javelin was violent and almost humorously menacing. And Ruhannah adored it.

For a little while the child played her usual game of frightening her doll with the Yellow Devil and then rescuing her by the aid of a fairy prince which she herself had designed, smeared with water-colours, and cut out with scissors from a piece of cardboard.

After a time she turned to the remaining treasures in the wonder-box. These consisted of several volumes containing photographs, others full of sketches in pencil and water-colour, and a thick roll of glazed linen scrolls covered with designs in India ink.

The photographs were of all sorts – landscapes, rivers, ships in dock, dry dock, and at sea; lighthouses, forts, horses carrying soldiers armed with lances and wearing the red fez; artillery on the march, infantry, groups of officers, all wearing the same sort of fez which lay there in Herr Wilner’s box of olive wood.

There were drawings, too – sketches of cannon, of rifles, of swords; drawings of soldiers in various gay uniforms, all carefully coloured by hand. There were pictures of ships, from the sterns of which the crescent flag floated lazily; sketches of great, ugly-looking objects which her father explained were Turkish ironclads. The name “ironclad” always sounded menacing and formidable to the child, and the forbidding pictures fascinated her.

Then there were scores and scores of scrolls made out of slippery white linen, on which had been drawn all sorts of most amazing geometrical designs in ink.

“Plans,” her father explained vaguely. And, when pressed by reiterated questions: “Plans for military works, I believe – forts, docks, barracks, fortified cuts and bridges. You are not yet quite old enough to understand, Ruhannah.”

“Who did draw them, daddy?”

“A German friend of mine, Herr Conrad Wilner.”

“What for?”

“I think his master sent him to Turkey to make those pictures.”

“For the Sultan?”

“No; for his Emperor.”

“Why?”

“I don’t exactly know, Rue.”

At this stage of the conversation her father usually laid aside his book and composed himself for the inevitable narrative soon to be demanded of him.

Then, although having heard the story many times from her crippled father’s lips, but never weary of the repetition, the child’s eyes would grow round and very solemn in preparation for her next and inevitable question:

“And did Herr Wilner die, daddy?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Tell me!”

“Well, it was when I was a missionary in the Trebizond district, and your mother and I went–”

“And me, daddy? And me, too!”

“Yes; you were a little baby in arms. And we all went to Gallipoli to attend the opening of a beautiful new school which was built for little Mohammedan converts to Christianity–”

“Did I see those little Christian children, daddy?”

“Yes, you saw them. But you are too young to remember.”

“Tell me. Don’t stop!”

“Then listen attentively without interrupting, Rue: Your mother and you and I went to Gallipoli; and my friend, Herr Wilner, who had been staying with us at a town called Tchardak, came along with us to attend the opening of the American school.

“And the night we arrived there was trouble. The Turkish people, urged on by some bad officials in the Sanjak, came with guns and swords and spears and set fire to the mission school.

“They did not offer to harm us. We had already collected our converts and our personal baggage. Our caravan was starting. The mob might not have done anything worse than burn the school if Herr Wilner had not lost his temper and threatened them with a dog whip. Then they killed him with stones, there in the walled yard.”

At this point in the tragedy, the eagerly awaited and ardently desired shivers passed up and down the child’s back.

“O – oh! Did they kill him dead?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Was he a martyr?”

“In a way he was a martyr to his duty, I suppose. At least I gather so from his diary and from what he once told me of his life.”

“And then what happened? Tell me, daddy.”

“A Greek steamer took us and our baggage to Trebizond.”

“And what then?”

“And then, a year later, the terrible massacre at our Trebizond mission occurred–”

That was what the child was waiting for.

“I know!” she interrupted eagerly. “The wicked Turks and the cruel Kurds did come galloping and shouting ‘Allah!’ And all the poor, converted people became martyrs. And God loves martyrs, doesn’t He?”

“Yes, dear–”

“And then they did kill all the poor little Christian children!” exclaimed the child excitedly. “And they did cut you with swords and guns! And then the kind sailors with the American flag took you and mamma and me to a ship and saved us by the grace of our Lord Jesus!”

“Yes, dear–”

“Tell me!”

“That is all–”

“No; you walk on two crutches, and you cannot be a missionary any more because you are sick all the time! Tell me, daddy!”

“Yes. And that is all, Rue–”

“Oh, no! Please! Tell me!.. And then, don’t you remember how the brave British sailors and our brave American sailors pointed their cannon at the I-ronclads, and they said, ‘Do not shoot or we shall shoot you to pieces.’ And then the brave American sailors went on shore and brought back some poor little wounded converted children, and your baggage and the magic box of Herr Wilner!”

“Yes, dear. And now that is enough tonight–”

“Oh, daddy, you must first read in the di-a-ry which Herr Wilner made!”

“Bring me the book, Rue.”

With an interest forever new, the Carew family prepared to listen to the words written by a strange man who had died only a few moments after he had made the last entry in the book – before even the ink was entirely dry on the pages.

The child, sitting cross-legged on the floor, clasped her little hands tightly; her mother laid aside her sewing, folded it, and placed it in her lap; her father searched through the pencilled translation which he had written in between the lines of German script, found where he had left off the time before, then continued the diary of Herr Conrad Wilner, deceased:

March 3. My original plans have been sent to the Yildiz Palace. My duplicates are to go to Berlin when a messenger from our Embassy arrives. Murad Bey knows this. I am sorry he knows it. But nobody except myself is aware that I have a third set of plans carefully hidden.

March 4. All day with Murad’s men setting wire entanglements under water; two Turkish destroyers patrolling the entrance to the bay, and cavalry patrols on the heights to warn away the curious.

March 6. Forts Alamout and Shah Abbas are being reconstructed from the new plans. Wired areas under water and along the coves and shoals are being plotted. Murad Bey is unusually polite and effusive, conversing with me in German and French. A spidery man and very dangerous.

March 7. A strange and tragic affair last night. The heat being severe, I left my tent about midnight and went down to the dock where my little sailboat lay, with the object of cooling myself on the water. There was a hot land breeze; I sailed out into the bay and cruised north along the coves which I have wired. As I rounded a little rocky point I was surprised to see in the moonlight, very near, a steam yacht at anchor, carrying no lights. The longer I looked at her the more certain I became that I was gazing at the Imperial yacht. I had no idea what the yacht might be doing here; I ran my sailboat close under the overhanging rocks and anchored. Then I saw a small boat in the moonlight, pulling from the yacht toward shore, where the crescent cove had already been thoroughly staked and the bottom closely covered with barbed wire as far as the edge of the deep channel which curves in here like a scimitar.

It must have been that the people in the boat miscalculated the location of the channel, for they were well over the sunken barbed wire when they lifted and threw overboard what they had come there to get rid of – two dark bulks that splashed.

I watched the boat pull back to the Imperial yacht. A little later the yacht weighed anchor and steamed northward, burning no lights. Only the red reflection tingeing the smoke from her stacks was visible. I watched her until she was lost in the moonlight, thinking all the while of those weighted sacks so often dropped overboard along the Bosporus and off Seraglio Point from that same Imperial yacht.

When the steamer had disappeared, I got out my sweeps and rowed for the place where the dark objects had been dropped overboard. I knew that they must be resting somewhere on the closely criss-crossed mesh of wires just below the surface of the water; but I probed for an hour before I located anything. Another hour passed in trying to hook into the object with the little three-fluked grapnel which I used as an anchor. I got hold of something finally; a heavy chest of olive wood bound with metal; but I had to rig a tackle before I could hoist it aboard.

Then I cast out again; and very soon my grapnel hooked into what I expected – a canvas sack, weighted with a round shot. When I got it aboard, I hesitated a long while before opening it. Finally I made a long slit in the canvas with my knife…

She was very young – not over sixteen, I think, and she was really beautiful, even under her wet, dark hair. She seemed to be a Caucasian girl – maybe a Georgian. She wore a small gold cross which hung from a gold cord around her neck. There was another, and tighter, cord around her neck, too. I cut the silk bowstring and closed and bound her eyes with my handkerchief before I rowed out a little farther and lowered her into the deep channel which cuts eastward here like the scimitar of that true believer, Abdul Hamid.

Then I hoisted sail and beat up slowly toward my little dock under a moon which had become ghastly under the pallid aura of a gathering storm–