"Varna!" he echoed. "So madame desires Varna! That is strange, since, being in quarantine, we shall not be allowed to stop at Constantinople. We must go on straight to Varna, where the disease already is."
"Of the troops I know little," he said, "but the townsfolk have suffered terribly. It is semi-starvation. Hein!" lie interrupted himself hastily, and slapped his baggy trousers, "there is an old man there--a cripple--one of the old school of medicine that knows nothing. He has a sort of hospital where folk die decently. If I were to tell him the use you were, and that you had your own stores of Europe medicines"--for Marrion had spent a considerable sum in fitting herself out for the part she hoped to play--"he might like your help. You have plenty of money?"
His little sharp eyes were alight with interest.
"I have plenty of money," replied Marrion promptly, "and I mean to spend it."
"Then you may consider it settled," said the surgeon. "Old Achmet is a sort of relation of mine. I come of a physician family; but I warn you the presence of an English lady in Varna will not pass unnoticed."
"I shall dress as a Turkish lady," remarked Marrion, with a smile. "I had thought of that. The _yashmak_ is very convenient."
The little Turk laughed in high good humour.
"The dress will become madame. She will have many admirers; but I will be the first."
So it was settled lightly, but, as the little steamer puffed and panted over the blue Archipelago where the blue islands lay scattered like so many shadows, Marrion Paul felt somehow as if the net of Fate were closing in on her. There was the scent of Death in the air.
She felt it almost overwhelmingly when, on the first night of her arrival at Varna, she stood on the ricketty wooden verandah of the half-ruined house which had been found for her, looking out over the long line of inland lakes that in the past month had gained from the intruders whose white tents showed everywhere the dismal name of "Lake of Death." A white miasma rose from it, hiding the level green fields which in the sunset had glowed purple-red with the meadow saffron. Everything had gone smoothly. The old _hakim_ Achmet had gripped on the hope of money, and Marrion Paul, who had remained on board the steamer until all negotiations had been made, had simply stepped into the dinghy in her Turkish dress and been carried with due privacy to the house chosen for her. Mercifully, the ship's surgeon--who was delighted at his importance as entrepreneur--had been impressed by Marrion's appearance, and, arguing therefrom the length of her purse, had fixed on a villa which had once belonged to a pasha of some sort. It stood high among cypresses on the Devna road, but, by a steep descent, was close to the worse slums of the town.