Spice and the Devil's Cave Read Online Free PDF Page A

eyes were pleased.
    â€œLet me see it,” he said. “All I want is a place to sleep in. I’m sure of good food here at any rate”
    Eventually it was agreed that he should move in at once. The room was small, but it was clean and sunny and had a tolerable bed.
    â€œI’ll have my box brought here,” Nicolo concluded, “shall I, Pedro?”
    Pedro nodded. “If you’re satisfied.” Then, “Are you staying in Lisbon for long?” he inquired.
    â€œFor always, I hope!” Nicolo told him, good hu-mouredly.
    â€œSo! Then you have friends here?”
    â€œOnly one, so far – the young fellow I was talking to, downstairs. But presently I expect there’ll be more. There’s a banker here that I mean to look up, a Master Abel Zakuto. You don’t happen to know him, do you?”
    â€œOf course! Who, in Lisbon, doesn’t? A kind of a sailor-fellow on land, he is; always pottering with navigation instruments, and hobnobbing with anyone who’s either been to sea or is going.”
    â€œOh, that isn’t the Zakuto whom I’ve heard about at Home,” Nicolo broke in. “My man is a banker, a Jewish banker.”
    Pedro nodded. “He’s that, too, a Jewish banker; same person. Yes, I can show you where he lives.”
    Directed by a graphic finger, Nicolo’s eyes finally made out, high on the hillside, a certain house at the head of a long stairway. Along the front a row of windows were bright gold in the afternoon sun. It struck Nicolo’s fancy-perched up there with an air of satisfaction at having out-climbed all those other climbing houses! He would go there some day soon and make acquaintance with this banker that he’d heard of in Venice – Abel Zakuto.
    1 Old Lisbon’s Cathedral.

CHAPTER 3
    Abel Zakuto’s Workshop
    A BEL quietly let himself through his gate, and crossed the court to the workshop. A little breathless from the last few stairs, he sat down and reviewed this morning’s work.
    It had been just another fruitless search for some clue to the Girl. He could think of nothing more to do, and he had to own himself completely baffled. Presently Ruth would come in to inquire if he had any news. He could hear her moving about in the further end of the house. Whatever she was doing, he knew she was near the Girl, for from the first she had watched over her with a fierce tenderness that amazed, while it touched, Abel. Later, perhaps, Ferdinand would drop in, with some light on the mystery.
    Meanwhile – the whole of a golden afternoon with his tools and his instruments, and the blossoming court lovingly watching him through the open door!
    He looked about the room like a boy who has successfully manoeuvred an afternoon for play – triumphant, but a little guilty; for, after his morning’s search, he had deliberately come home instead of going to business. A feeling of happy seclusion and security stole over him. It was like a fortress, this room of his, high above streets and noise, and the wide outlook from its windows gave him a sense of command. Beneath him lay Lisbon’s hills, and, in the blue bowl of a harbour that the widening Tagus had made at their feet, he could even distinguish the flags of the crowded shipping. He could, too, look directly down on Manoel’s palace; on the massive wings and the huge colonnaded quadrangle open on the south to the river front.
    He never gazed through his windows without recalling his friends’ comments and Ruth’s protests at his choice of large panes of clear glass in face of the fashion for mullions. He had let them talk. But he had gone on fitting those panes into casements that ran the width of the workshop – for one of Abel Zakuto’s necessities was a view.
    They’d laughed a little, too, when he’d made such a huge lamp to hang over the table. But when he’d got it done – a sturdy column of wrought iron and