Robert W. Chambers

The Moonlit Way

Warsaw 2022

Contents

PROLOGUE CLAIRE-DE-LUNE

I. A SHADOW DANCE

II. SUNRISE

III. SUNSET

IV. DUSK

V. IN DRAGON COURT

VI. DULCIE

VII. OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

VIII. DULCIE ANSWERS

IX. HER DAY

X. HER EVENING

XI. HER NIGHT

XII. THE LAST MAIL

XIII. A MIDNIGHT TÊTE-À-TÊTE

XIV. PROBLEMS

XV. BLACKMAIL

XVI. THE WATCHER

XVII. A CONFERENCE

XVIII. THE BABBLER

XIX. A CHANCE ENCOUNTER

XX. GROGAN’S

XXI. THE WHITE BLACKBIRD

XXII. FORELAND FARMS

XXIII. A LION IN THE PATH

XXIV. A SILENT HOUSE

XXV. STARLIGHT

XXVI. ’BE-N EIRINN I!

XXVII. THE MOONLIT WAY

XXVIII. GREEN JACKETS

XXIX. ASTHORE

PROLOGUE. CLAIRE-DE-LUNE

There was a big moon over the Bosphorus; the limpid waters off Seraglio Point glimmered; the Golden Horn was like a sheet of beaten silver inset with topaz and ruby where lanterns on rusting Turkish warships dyed the tarnished argent of the flood. Except for these, and the fixed lights on the foreign guard-ships and on a big American steam yacht, only a pale and nebulous shoreward glow betrayed the monster city.

Over Pera the full moon’s lustre fell, silvering palace, villa, sea and coast; its rays glimmered on bridge and wharf, bastion, tower arsenal, and minarette, transforming those big, sprawling, ramshackle blotches of architecture called Constantinople into that shadowy, magnificent enchantment of the East, which all believe in, but which exists only in a poet’s heart and mind.

Night veiled the squalour of Balat, and its filth, its meanness, its flimsy sham. Moonlight made of Galata a marvel, ennobling every bastard dome, every starved façade, every unlovely and attenuated minarette, and invested with added charm each really lovely ruin, each tower, palace, mosque, garden wall and balcony, and every crenelated battlement, where the bronze bulk of 2 ancient cannon slanted, outlined in silver under the Prophet’s moon.

Tiny moving lights twinkled on the Galata Bridge; pale points of radiance dotted Scutari; but the group of amazing cities called Constantinople lay almost blotted out under the moon.

Darker at night than any capital in the world, its huge, solid and ancient shapes bulking gigantic in the night, its noble ruins cloaked, its cheap filth hidden, its flimsy Coney Island aspect transfigured and the stylographic-pen architecture of a hundred minarettes softened into slender elegance, Constantinople lay dreaming its immemorial dreams under the black shadow of the Prussian eagle.

The German Embassy was lighted up like a Pera café; the drawing-rooms crowded with a brilliant throng where sashes, orders, epaulettes and sabre-tache glittered, and jewels blazed and aigrettes waved under the crystal chandeliers, accenting and isolating sombre civilian evening dress, which seemed mournful, rusty, and out of the picture, even when plastered over with jewelled stars.

Few Turkish officials and officers were present, but the disquieting sight of German officers in Turkish uniforms was not uncommon. And the Count d’Eblis, Senator of France, noted this phenomenon with lively curiosity, and mentioned it to his companion, Ferez Bey.

Ferez Bey, lounging in a corner with Adolf Gerhardt, for whom he had procured an invitation, and flanked by the Count d’Eblis, likewise a guest aboard the rich German-American banker’s yacht, was very much in his element as friend and mentor.

For Ferez Bey knew everybody in the Orient–knew 3 when to cringe, when to be patronising, when to fawn, when to assert himself, when to be servile, when impudent.

He was as impudent to Adolf Gerhardt as he dared be, the banker not knowing the subtler shades and differences; he was on an equality with the French senator, Monsieur le Comte d’Eblis because he knew that d’Eblis dared not resent his familiarity.

Otherwise, in that brilliant company, Ferez Bey was a jackal–and he knew it perfectly–but a valuable jackal; and he also knew that.

So when the German Ambassador spoke pleasantly to him, his attitude was just sufficiently servile, but not overdone; and when Von-der-Hohe Pasha, in the uniform of a Turkish General of Division, graciously exchanged a polite word with him during a moment’s easy gossip with the Count d’Eblis, Ferez Bey writhed moderately under the honour, but did not exactly squirm.

To Conrad von Heimholz he ventured to present his German-American patron, Adolf Gerhardt, and the thin young military attaché condescended in his Prussian way to notice the introduction.

“Saw your yacht in the harbour,” he admitted stiffly. “It is astonishing how you Americans permit no bounds to your somewhat noticeable magnificence.”

“She’s a good boat, the Mirage,” rumbled Gerhardt, in his bushy red beard, “but there are plenty in America finer than mine.”

“Not many, Adolf,” insisted Ferez, in his flat, Eurasian voice–“not ver’ many anyw’ere so fine like your Mirage.”

“I saw none finer at Kiel,” said the attaché, staring at Gerhardt through his monocle, with the habitual insolence and disapproval of the Prussian junker. “To 4 me it exhibits bad taste”–he turned to the Count d’Eblis–“particularly when the Meteoris there.”

“Where?” asked the Count.

“At Kiel. I speak of Kiel and the ostentation of certain foreign yacht owners at the recent regatta.”

Gerhardt, redder than ever, was still German enough to swallow the meaningless insolence. He was not getting on very well at the Embassy of his fellow countrymen. Americans, properly presented, they endured without too open resentment; for German-Americans, even when millionaires, their contempt and bad manners were often undisguised.

“I’m going to get out of this,” growled Gerhardt, who held a good position socially in New York and in the fashionable colony at Northbrook. “I’ve seen enough puffed up Germans and over-embroidered Turks to last me. Come on, d’Eblis–”

Ferez detained them both:

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