"On this condition." Razumovsky brushed at his mustaches again. His glove buttons had diamonds in them that twinkled like tiny stars. "Something tells me I do not need to tell this to you, but I will anyway. Do not investigate anything alone. Not anything. Call on me for help at whatever hour. Is there a telephone where you're staying?" She shook her head. "Then send a page. Do you understand? If I can't come, I'll send a servant. You don't need to tell me or him or anyone where you're going, but don't go alone.
"Sir Burnwell and the embassy staff are good men, but they haven't been here as long as I. Moreover, they are perceived as being on the side of the C.U.P., and against the old powers. In any case the German businessmen who've advanced money to both sides hold more power here than either my embassy or yours. When you go about the city, take someone with you- someone besides that silly girl of yours, I mean- and don't assume that you can get away with anything safely. This isn't England. There," he said, and led her back toward the lights, the smokers, the door with its tall guards in their billowy pantaloons and turbans of orange and red. Not until they were inside and he had fetched her champagne and a cracker of sour cream and Russian caviar did he excuse himself, and two minutes later she saw him-or at any rate someone his height with a gold beard and a uniform of hunter- green-deep in conversation with Enver Bey himself.
Chapter Fourteen
The room was more crowded than before. During her conversation with the prince, Lydia had been dimly aware of lights passing among the trees and hedges as servants conducted newcomers along the paths from the enormous outer court. Scanning backs, Lydia identified the asymmetrical mauve volutes of her patroness' gown in the midst of a dark cluster of male suiting. As she approached, she heard the guttural babble of German and made out references to track miles, rolling stock, gauge widths, and Krupps that told her that Lady Clapham had fallen among the businessmen, but in any case Lady Clapham held out her hand to her with the air of a somewhat long-toothed Andromeda greeting a schoolgirl Perseus in ecru lace and pink ribbons.
"My dear Mrs. Asher," she cried. "May I present to you Herr Franz Hindi? Herr Hindi, Mrs. Asher. Now if you'll please excuse us, Herr Hindi, I promised to introduce Mrs. Asher to Herr Dettmars... You're a godsend, my dear!" she added in a low voice as the stout, fair-haired gentleman who had shaken Lydia's hand was left behind with considerable celerity. "Such a bore." She steered her into one of the smaller rear chambers of the pavilion, just as crowded and if possible more airless than the long front room. "Do I have the appearance of a woman who will perish if she does not receive accurate information concerning the differences between soft-coal hummer furnaces and hard-coal base burners?" Lydia paused to study her with mock gravity. "Turn 'round," she instructed, and with a straight face the attache's wife did so.
"Only a little in the back," Lydia replied after due consideration.
"I'll wear a shawl over it, then," promised Lady Clapham. "I am suffocating. Was Prince Razumovsky able to give you any information about your husband, dear?" Lydia nodded slowly. "He told me my husband was doing some kind of research, talking to storytellers in the markets. Did he-Dr. Asher, I mean-mention this to you?"
"That isn't what brought him to Constantinople, surely?"
"No," Lydia said. "But he does research in such things wherever he is. He's a folklorist as well as a linguist."
Lady Clapham sighed resignedly and poked at her untidy, graying coiffure. "Well, better than one of those lunatics like my brother, who goes about taking rubbings off tombs. Not even in heathen parts but in places like Wensley Parva and Bath Cathedral. And in hunting season!" She shook her head wonderingly and picked a cracker of caviar from a servant's tray as if the man had been a table.
"Yes, he did ask about storytellers. Burnie told him about the old fellow who sits in the street of the brass sellers in the Great Bazaar. Did His Highness offer you his help? I thought so. Just make sure you have Miss Potton with you at all times and you should be quite all right.