188 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



that he was watched, both by Demetri and myself. 

 George Mauromichalis was now summoned to my 

 councils, for his power and political influence might 

 prove necessary to aid me in my plans. After a care- 

 ful and secret cross-examination of the bath-keeper 

 in the presence of the chief of the police and a 

 distinguished Greek statesman still living, he con- 

 fessed that Alecco was his accomplice that Alecco 

 had planned the whole business and that, the day 

 after my assassination, they were to have sailed to 

 Smyrna together. Xext day George Mauromichalis 

 was compelled to visit Argos on political business. 

 A slight indisposition, and the pain of my wound, 

 kept me in the house. On that very day, the police, 

 urged by some powerful personage, whose name is 

 even now only an object of suspicion to me, hurried 

 over the trial of the criminals. The bath-keeper was 

 condemned to be hanged next morning, and the 

 woman to be strangled in prison at the same hour. 

 I heard nothing of all this until Demetri came in 

 breathless from the coffee-house to which he 

 regularly repaired at daybreak with the news. 

 I hurried to the gate of the town, and reached the 

 glacis between the putrid marsh and the magnificent 

 fortress of Palamedi, just in time to witness the bath- 

 keeper hung up on a low gibbet, composed of a triangle 

 formed by three short beams. I hastened to address 

 the chief of the police ; he told me he had received 



