THE WHEELER AND WILSON'S OPERATIVE'S
STORY
My father had left the anchorage of Sorrento for a
short voyage, if voyage it may be called.
Life was
young, and this world seemed heaven. The yacht bowled on
under tight-reefed staysails, and all was happy.
Suddenly the corsairs seized us; all were slain in my
defence; but I — this fatal gift of beauty bade them spare
my life!
Why linger on my tale? In the Zenana of the Shah of
Persia I found my home. "How escape his eye?" I said;
and, fortunately, I remembered that in my reticule I
carried one box of F. Kidder's indelible ink. Instantly
I applied the liquid in the large bottle to one cheek.
Soon as it was dry, I applied that in the small bottle,
and sat in the sun one hour. My head ached with the
sunlight, but what of that? I was a fright, and I knew
all would be well.
I was consigned, so soon as my hideous deficiencies
were known, to the sewing-room. Then how I sighed for my
machine! Alas! it was not there; but I constructed an
imitation from a cannon-wheel, a coffee-mill, and two
nut-crackers. And with this I made the underclothing for
the palace and the Zenana.
I also vowed revenge. Nor did I doubt one instant
how; for in my youth I had read Lucretia Borgia's
memoirs, and I had a certain rule for slowly slaying a
tyrant at a distance. I was in charge of the Shah's own
linen. Every week I set back the buttons on his shirt
collars by the width of one thread; or, by arts known to
me, I shrunk the binding of the collar by a like
proportion. Tighter and tighter with each week did the
vice close
around his larynx. Week by week, at the
high religious festivals, I could see his face was
blacker and blacker. At length the hated tyrant died.
The leeches called it apoplexy. I did not undeceive
them. His guards sacked the palace. I bagged the
diamonds, fled with them to Trebizond, and sailed thence
in a caique to South Boston. No more! such memories
oppress me.
