第59章

After a while Lexman resumed his story.

"I told you that there was a man at the palazzo named Salvolio.

Salvolio was a man who had been undergoing a life sentence in one of the prisons of southern Italy.In some mysterious fashion he escaped and got across the Adriatic in a small boat.How Kara found him I don't know.Salvolio was a very uncommunicative person.I was never certain whether he was a Greek or an Italian.

All that I am sure about is that he was the most unmitigated villain next to his master that I have ever met.

"He was a quick man with his knife and I have seen him kill one of the guards whom he had thought was favouring me in the matter of diet with less compunction than you would kill a rat.

"It was he who gave me this scar," John Lexman pointed to his cheek."In his master's absence he took upon himself the task of conducting a clumsy imitation of Kara's persecution.He gave me, too, the only glimpse I ever had of the torture poor Grace underwent.She hated dogs, and Kara must have come to know this and in her sleeping room - she was apparently better accommodated than I - he kept four fierce beasts so chained that they could almost reach her.

"Some reference to my wife from this low brute maddened me beyond endurance and I sprang at him.He whipped out his knife and struck at me as I fell and I escaped by a miracle.He evidently had orders not to touch me, for he was in a great panic of mind, as he had reason to be, because on Kara's return he discovered the state of my face, started an enquiry and had Salvolio taken to the courtyard in the true eastern style and bastinadoed until his feet were pulp.

"You may be sure the man hated me with a malignity which almost rivalled his employer's.After Grace's death Kara went away suddenly and I was left to the tender mercy of this man.

Evidently he had been given a fairly free hand.The principal object of Kara's hate being dead, he took little further interest in me, or else wearied of his hobby.Salvolio began his persecutions by reducing my diet.Fortunately I ate very little.

Nevertheless the supplies began to grow less and less, and I was beginning to feel the effects of this starvation system when there happened a thing which changed the whole course of my life and opened to me a way to freedom and to vengeance.

"Salvolio did not imitate the austerity of his master and in Kara's absence was in the habit of having little orgies of his own.He would bring up dancing girls from Durazzo for his amusement and invite prominent men in the neighbourhood to his feasts and entertainments, for he was absolutely lord of the palazzo when Kara was away and could do pretty well as he liked.

On this particular night the festivities had been more than usually prolonged, for as near as I could judge by the day-light which was creeping in through my window it was about four o'clock in the morning when the big steel-sheeted door was opened and Salvolio came in, more than a little drunk.He brought with him, as I judged, one of his dancing girls, who apparently was privileged to see the sights of the palace.

"For a long time he stood in the doorway talking incoherently in a language which I think must have been Turkish, for I caught one or two words.

"Whoever the girl was, she seemed a little frightened, I could see that, because she shrank back from him though his arm was about her shoulders and he was half supporting his weight upon her.

There was fear, not only in the curious little glances she shot at me from time to time, but also in the averted face.Her story Iwas to learn.She was not of the class from whence Salvolio found the dancers who from time to time came up to the palace for his amusement and the amusement of his guests.She was the daughter of a Turkish merchant of Scutari who had been received into the Catholic Church.

"Her father had gone down to Durazzo during the first Balkan war and then Salvolio had seen the girl unknown to her parent, and there had been some rough kind of courtship which ended in her running away on this very day and joining her ill-favoured lover at the palazzo.I tell you this because the fact had some bearing on my own fate.

"As I say, the girl was frightened and made as though to go from the dungeon.She was probably scared both by the unkempt prisoner and by the drunken man at her side.He, however, could not leave without showing to her something of his authority.He came lurching over near where I lay, his long knife balanced in his hand ready for emergencies, and broke into a string of vituperations of the character to which I was quite hardened.

"Then he took a flying kick at me and got home in my ribs, but again I experienced neither a sense of indignity nor any great hurt.Salvolio had treated me like this before and I had survived it.In the midst of the tirade, looking past him, I was a new witness to an extraordinary scene.

"The girl stood in the open doorway, shrinking back against the door, looking with distress and pity at the spectacle which Salvolio's brutality afforded.Then suddenly there appeared beside her a tall Turk.He was grey-bearded and forbidding.She looked round and saw him, and her mouth opened to utter a cry, but with a gesture he silenced her and pointed to the darkness outside.

"Without a word she cringed past him, her sandalled feet making no noise.All this time Salvolio was continuing his stream of abuse, but he must have seen the wonder in my eyes for he stopped and turned.

"The old Turk took one stride forward, encircled his body with his left arm, and there they stood grotesquely like a couple who were going to start to waltz.The Turk was a head taller than Salvolio and, as I could see, a man of immense strength.

"They looked at one another, face to face, Salvolio rapidly recovering his senses...and then the Turk gave him a gentle punch in the ribs.That is what it seemed like to me, but Salvolio coughed horribly, went limp in the other's arms and dropped with a thud to the ground.The Turk leant down soberly and wiped his long knife on the other's jacket before he put it back in the sash at his waist.