They crept single-file along the walkway; the light of many windows shone in the water, rippling yellow, and lanterns were shining on the raised terrace overlooking the pool. They reached the archway; they were inside, and oil lamps flickering from niches upon the floor stretched away along a narrow passageway, low-ceilinged and ill-lit by guttering candles, broken up with many doors and stairways. There was a whispering draught like a distant conversation coming into their faces.
They went silently and very fast, as fast as they dared; Tharkay in the lead and Dunne whispering to him about the way, as best he could recall in the darkness. They passed by many small rooms, some still touched with a drifting fragrance, sweet and more fragile than roses, which could only be caught now and again by an accidental breath, and faded into the stronger lingering smell of incense and spice if one tried to draw it in. Throughout, flung upon divans and scattered on the floor, lay the beguilements of the harem’s idle hours, writing-boxes and books and musical instruments, ornaments for the hair, scarves cast aside, the paints and brushes of beauty. Ducking his head through one doorway, Digby gave a startled gasp, and coming to his side they at first reached for their swords and pistols, seeing all around them suddenly a crowd of pale distorted faces: they were looking into a graveyard of old mirrors, cracked and gap-toothed and leaning back against the walls, still in their golden frames.
Now and again Tharkay would halt them, and wave them all into one room or another, to crouch in silence, waiting, until in the distance footfalls died away again; once a few women went by laughing in the hallway, clear high voices ringing with hilarity. Laurence by degrees grew conscious of a heaviness, a moisture in the air, an increase of warmth, and Tharkay looking around caught his eye and nodded, beckoning.
Laurence crept to his side: through a latticework screen they were looking upon a high, well-lit marble hallway. “Yes, that’s where we saw them coming out,” Dunne whispered, pointing at a tall narrow archway; the floor around it was shining and damp.
Tharkay touched a finger to his lips and motioned them back into the darkness; he crept away, vanishing for minutes that seemed endless, then coming back whispered, “I have found the way down; but there are guards.”
Four of the black eunuchs stood in their uniforms at the base of the stairs, idle and drowsy with the late hour, speaking to one another and paying no real attention; but there was no easy way to come towards them without being seen and raising the alarm. Laurence opened his cartridge box and ripped half-a-dozen of the pistol-balls out of their paper twists, scattering the powder upon the ground; they hid to either side of the head of the stairs, and he let the balls go rolling down the stairs, clattering and ringing bright against the smooth marble.
More puzzled than alarmed, the guards came up to investigate and bent low over the black powder; Granby sprang forward, even as Laurence began to give the word, and clubbed one with his pistol-butt; Tharkay another, with a single swift blow to the temple with the pommel of his knife, and lowered him easily to the ground. The third, Laurence caught around the throat with his arm, choking him to silence and then to stillness, but the last, a big man, barrel-chested and thick-necked, managed a strangled shout past Digby’s grasp before Martin struck him down.
They stood all panting, listening, but no reply came, no sound of roused vigilance. They bundled the guards into the dark corner where they themselves had been concealed, and tied and gagged them with their neckcloths.
“We must hurry now,” Laurence said, and they ran down the stairs and the empty vaulted hallway, their boots loud suddenly on the flagstones. The baths were empty, a great room of marble and stone, vaulted far above with delicate pointed arches of warm yellowed stone, great stone basins and golden spigots set in the wall, with dark wooden screens and little dressing alcoves in the many corners, and platforms of stone in the middle of the room, all of it slick with steam and water-beaded. Archways led out of the room all around, and puffs of steam were issuing into the room from vents set high in the walls; a single narrow stairway built of stone led them a winding way up to an iron door, hot to the touch.
They gathered themselves around and thrust it open, Granby and Tharkay jumping through at once, into a chamber almost scorching-hot and lit with a hellish orange-red glow. A squat many-legged furnace nearly filled the room together with a great boiling-cauldron of shining copper, pipes snaking away and vanishing into the walls, a heap of wood lying beside it to feed the roaring maw, and next to it a brazier of freshly laid coals was just beginning to catch and blaze, little open flames licking up to heat a hanging bowl of stones. Two black slaves naked to the waist stood staring; one held a long-handled ladle full of water, which he had been pouring over the hot stones, and the other an iron poker with which he was stirring the coals.
Granby caught the first and with Martin’s help wrestled him to the ground, muffling his sounds; but the second whipped his red-hot poker around and jabbed at Tharkay frantically, opening his mouth to yell; Tharkay gave a queer choked grunt and caught the man’s arm, pushing away the poker, and Laurence sprang to clap his hand over the shout; Digby clubbed him.
“Are you all right?” Laurence asked sharply; Tharkay had smothered the little flame which had caught in his trousers with the tails of his coat, but he was putting no weight on his right leg, and leaning with drawn face against the wall; there was a smell of blackened and roasting flesh.
Tharkay said nothing, jaw locked shut, but waved off concern, pointing; a small barred door of ironwork lattice stood behind the furnace, red rust weeping down the bars, and within the slightly cooler chamber behind, in great nests of silken cloth, lay a dozen dragon eggs. The gate was hot to the touch, but Fellowes took out a few wide pieces of leather, and so shielding their hands, Laurence and Granby lifted aside the bar and swung open the door.
Granby ducked inside and went to the eggs, lifting aside the silk and touching the shells with loving care. “Oh, here’s our beauty,” he said reverently, uncovering one of a dusty reddish hue, speckled lightly with green. “That’s our Kazilik all right; and eight weeks at most by the feel of it, we are none too soon.” He covered it up again, and with great care he and Laurence lifted it off its perch, silken swaddling and all, and carried it out into the furnace-room where Fellowes and Digby began to lash it into the leather straps.
“Only look at them,” Granby said, turning back to survey the rest of the eggs, stroking their shells lightly with the tips of his fingers. “What the Corps would give for the lot. But these are the ones we were promised; an Alaman, that’s one of their light-combat fellows, this one,” he indicated the smallest of the eggs, a pale lemon-yellow half the size of a man’s chest, “and the Akhal-Teke is a middle-weight,” a cream-colored egg spotted with red and orange, nearly twice the size.
They all worked now to get the straps on, putting them over the silk coverings, buckling them tight with hands slipping on the leather; they were all of them pouring sweat, great dark stains coming through the backs of their coats. They had closed the door again to work in concealment, and despite the narrow windows, the room was nearly an oven to bake them in alive.
Abruptly voices came in through the vents: they halted with their hands still on the straps, and then a louder voice came through more clearly, a call in a woman’s voice. “More steam,” Tharkay translated, whispering, and Martin snatched up the ladle and poured some water from the standing basin up and onto the stones; but the clouds of steam did not all go through the vents, and made the room almost impossible to see.