Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

Turkish Delight by Edward D. Hoch

Unlike other stories in Edward D. Hoch’s Stanton and Ives series, which are all narrated by Stanton, this one is told in the third person. This, the author explains, is because the duo get separated in the course of the story and he wanted to cover both viewpoints. We recently asked readers to write and name their favorite Hoch series and Stanton and Ives, along with Nick Velvet and Dr. Sam Hawthorne, were often mentioned.

“Turkish bath,” Walt Stanton announced as their plane circled for a landing at Istanbul’s airport.

“Turkish towels!” Juliet Ives countered in their attempt to name all things Turkish.

“Turkish rugs.”

“Turkish Delight!”

“Wait a minute,” Stanton protested. “Is that something sexual?”

“Of course not, stupid! They’re flavored candy cubes dusted with sugar.”

“Sort of like Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock?”

“Nothing like that. Brighton Rock is a stick of hard candy.”

“Well, they’re both candies,” Stanton insisted as the plane landed none too gently on the tarmac.

They were seated near the front of the flight from London’s Heathrow, where they’d had to change planes. As they left the plane and made their way up the Jetway, he tried again. “Turkey trot.”

“It has to be Turkish, Stanton. That’s an American dance, named after the bird.”

“But the bird was named after the country, wasn’t it?”

“Only through some confusion. It’s a long story.”

“You can tell me on the way home,” he decided. “Let’s check in at our hotel and go see the client.”

They’d booked a room at the Pierre Loti, a modern luxury hotel whose only drawback was its location in a rather noisy part of the city. But they’d just be there two nights and it seemed they deserved a bit of luxury after their recent journey to rural China.

Stanton & Ives was a worldwide courier service for companies and individuals who needed instant, guaranteed delivery or pickup anywhere on earth. They’d started the company after graduating from Princeton together, and thus far the business had been mildly profitable. They maintained a small office across from the Strand Bookstore on lower Broadway, and employed a secretary to handle business when they were away on assignments, usually together.

When she saw the massive bed in their hotel room, Ives suggested they spend both days in bed and forget about the assignment, but Stanton was more practical. Admiring her long legs as she stretched out on the counterpane, he reminded her they’d be meeting with the client first thing in the morning.

The assignment this time was to pick up a prime example of Ottoman calligraphy and transport it to Berlin, where a wealthy German collector had recently purchased it for just under one million dollars. “Calligraphy?” Ives had questioned at the time. “You mean like handwriting?”

“I suspect it’s more than handwriting,” Stanton told her. “We’ll see.”

As they left the hotel in the morning they were accosted by a street vendor selling bread rings. His grizzled face showed the nicks and scars of a hard life, but not a shy one. “Whatever you need,” he told them in accented English. “Bread rings, fresh fish, spices, and more. I can supply hashish, opium balls—”

“Not interested,” Stanton told him as they tried to move past.

“Perhaps a woman to keep you two company.”

“No,” Ives told him emphatically.

“Do you need a gun, a dagger? My name is Ersu and you can usually find me on this corner, from morning till midnight.”

“I’ll remember that,” Stanton said as they moved on.

“Persistent, isn’t he?” Ives muttered as they hurried on their way.

The seller of the calligraphy was an art dealer named Bruno Tranle. He had a gallery not far from the famed Topkapi Museum, and was an astute gentleman in his sixties who showed them into his private office. His English was perfect and he explained he’d been educated at Cambridge. “Let me get you some tea,” he offered.

Ives demurred, noting the early hour, but Tranle scoffed. “Nonsense! Tea from the Black Sea region is our national drink, served at any hour of the day. Tea-makers even do the rounds of offices in many buildings here.”

“Oh, very well,” she relented, knowing it always pleased Stanton when she was cordial to clients. “I thought people drank Turkish coffee here.”

Tranle shook his head. “Too expensive for most tastes.”

He made the tea with great care and served it with pride, entertaining them with little stories about life in Istanbul. After about twenty minutes he decided to get down to business. He walked to a large safe and twirled the combination dial with the confidence of familiarity, carefully removing a slender canvas tube and unrolling its contents. “This is the item to be transported by courier to Germany.”

Stanton and Ives gazed at the painting, a wall hanging some two feet wide and four feet long on which the graceful Arabic calligraphy had taken on the shape of a person. The body, legs, and arms were a swirl of green, while the face was done in red with a white cap on top. “It’s beautiful,” Ives whispered in awe. “Are these Arabic words?”

“They are indeed. It is a verse from the sacred Koran, rendered in the shape of a man. The verse is painted on calfskin and may date from the sixteenth century. It could even be the work of Sheik Hamdullah, the founder of Ottoman calligraphy, but we cannot be certain.”

“You sold this to a German collector?”

“A businessman, really. Turks are admitted to Germany as guest workers and often decide to remain there. This man, Rudolph Meinz, is purchasing it for display in the reception area of his plant, which employs many Turks. It is a goodwill gesture, and an expensive one.”

“Surely you could hire a courier in this country to transport it to Germany,” Stanton said.

Bruno Tranle sighed and poured them some more tea. “The situation in the Middle East is well known. There are terrorists everywhere, including Istanbul. As you may know, Turkey is mainly made up of Sunni Muslims, with about twenty percent Kurdish in the eastern part of the country. But hiring a courier or a package-delivery company in Turkey is gambling that they side with your beliefs and not with another faction. The Kurds are in open revolt against our government, and terrorists could purchase a great many weapons with the money from this sale. I’ve heard good things about Stanton and Ives, and decided you were my best option.”

“You won’t be sorry,” Ives promised him. “And we’re fully bonded, of course. We have seats on an early flight to Berlin tomorrow morning.”

“As soon as we make delivery we’ll call you,” Stanton assured him.

“All right. Here’s half your fee now, as agreed. The remainder will be wire-transferred to your bank account after a successful delivery to Rudolph Meinz.” He stood up to shake hands with them. “You’ll be spending the night in Istanbul?”

Stanton nodded. “The morning flight is best for us.”

“You should see some of our night life. I can especially recommend Turkish Delight.”

“A candy shop?” Ives asked.

“No,” Tranle replied with a smile. “She’s a belly dancer at the Bosphorus Cafe, the best in the city at this moment.”

“Oh,” Ives replied, glancing at Stanton.

They secured the tube with its calligraphic painting in the hotel’s safe since it was too large for the mini-safe in their room. Then Stanton and Ives spent the afternoon touring the Grand Bazaar, a network of covered arcades containing more than seventeen hundred businesses. Here they found jewelers, shoemakers, tailors, and furniture and rug merchants, along with a variety of eating places. The maze-like marketplace soon sorted itself into some sort of order. Not wanting to buy anything so large it would have to be shipped home, they confined themselves mainly to the jewelry shops and a book market that featured vast quantities of second-hand volumes in virtually every language.

“You’d need a day or two for this place alone,” Ives marveled.

“I wish we could get to Topkapi,” Stanton said, “but I guess there’s no time before dinner.”

Ives gave him one of her famous looks. “You don’t want to miss your belly dancer.”

“How can I resist her with a name like Turkish Delight?”

They found the Bosphorus Cafe without difficulty, taking a yellow taxi that reminded them of New York cabs. The cafe occupied the first floor of an ornate three-story building that may have been a bank in some prior life. There were Gypsy beggars in the street outside, and young men passed by carrying boxes and crates on their backs. The food was passable, and at the end of the meal everyone was served a single piece of unwrapped lokum, the local name for Turkish Delight. A note on the menu explained that lokum became popular in Turkey during the nineteenth century, only becoming known as Turkish Delight after the name was changed by a British company. The confection was said to have been a favorite of Napoleon, Picasso, and Winston Churchill, among many others.

“We’re in good company,” Ives remarked.

Then the lights dimmed and an announcer introduced, in Turkish and English, “The toast of Istanbul, the fabulous Turkish Delight!”

Stanton had never found belly dancers particularly erotic, but he had to admit that Miss Delight was quite good at what she did, appearing in a striking red costume and veils that, naturally, left her midsection exposed. She danced to the beat of the music, moving her body in rolling waves that seemed endless as the tide. “She’s really something,” he told Ives.

“I can see you’re impressed.”

As she danced close to the ringside tables several men reached out with currency to tuck into her skimpy sequined costume. Up close she appeared older than at a distance, perhaps nearing forty, with hair black as midnight and makeup a bit too thick to be convincing. “She has a few tricks,” he admitted.

“Let’s go back to the hotel. I can show you more tricks than that.”

He downed the rest of his drink. “Sounds good to me.”

“Let me stop at the ladies’ room first.”

Turkish Delight was just finishing her dance, bowing low to the audience, when Ives left her seat and scampered toward a lighted doorway across the room. Stanton signaled their waiter for the check and put it on his business credit card.

The waiter was back in a few minutes for his signature. He slipped the credit card into his card case and listened to a singer give a passable rendering of a French song popular some decades earlier. He looked around for Ives, but couldn’t see her anywhere. Turkish Delight was nowhere in sight either. He’d expected her to be lingering at the bar as they sometimes did in New York clubs.

After waiting some fifteen minutes, he called a waitress over. “My — my wife has been in the ladies’ room a long time. I wonder if you could check on her, see if she’s ill. Her name is Juliet.”

Happily, the waitress understood English and went off to see about Ives. She returned after a few moments looking blank. “She’s not there. The place is empty right now.”

“Strange. Is there a back way out of here?”

“Just through the kitchen.”

Stanton left the table and wandered up to the bar. “I came in with a young woman, tall, long legs, long blond hair, full lips, a cute nose—” He stopped, realizing the bartender didn’t understand a word he was saying.

He looked around in frustration, seeking out the waitress who understood English. She was nowhere to be seen, but a small boy was approaching his spot at the bar. He was one of the beggars they’d seen outside. The boy muttered something he couldn’t understand and forced a folded note into Stanton’s hand. Then he was gone.

Stanton unfolded the note and read the words he was dreading: Get the calligraphy from the hotel safe and await our call. Otherwise she dies.

Ives awakened as if from a dream. Her head seemed about to burst, but when she tried to soothe it with her hand she realized she could not move her arms.

She opened her eyes and imagined she was in hell. The walls of the room were red and she rested on a red velvet sofa. A single floor lamp lit the room. “What happened?” she asked out loud, but there was no one there to answer her.

Presently, perhaps a quarter-hour later, a Turkish man entered the room. He was a handsome fellow with a dark moustache and deep dark eyes. She guessed his age to be around forty. “I see you are awake,” he said in passable English.

“What happened to me? Where am I? My head hurts.”

“We are sorry such tactics were necessary. You were struck from behind with a cosh, then injected with something to make you sleep. They removed you from the Bosphorus Cafe by way of the kitchen.”

Ives realized for the first time that she could not move because her hands and feet were bound to the sofa. “Why have I been taken here?” she asked. “Where is my partner?”

“He is well, and has been informed of your situation. As soon as he turns over the painting you will be released.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“You need not know that. It is better you don’t, if you expect to leave here alive.” He poured a glass of water from a pitcher and allowed her to drink, lifting her head with a helpful hand to the back of her neck.

“Thank you,” she acknowledged. Then, “Is Stanton doing what you asked?”

“We will know soon. You must rest now.”

“What time is it?”

“After eleven.” He cut a piece of duct tape from a roll on the floor. “I’m going to have to gag you.”

She started to object, but the tape was already over her mouth. He left her alone and closed the door behind him. Glancing around as best she could, she saw no windows, but the red drapes on one wall could easily hide such an exit. There was another red sofa across the room, but there was no sign of her purse there or on the floor. She thought about her cell phone but decided there was little chance she could find it, much less use it to call Stanton. And what would she tell him, anyway? She had no idea where she was, though the place could well have been a room in a harem for all she knew.

She knew Stanton would find her somehow, even if he had to give up the painting. He would do that for her.

Wouldn’t he?

Stanton’s first move was to ask for the owner of the Bosphorus Cafe. He was taken to a second-floor office where a bald man wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses sat at a computer screen. A tray of candy cubes sat on his nearby desk, each encased in a bit of rice paper. He looked up as Stanton entered. “I’m the building manager, Guzine Guler. What is your problem?”

“I wanted the owner.”

“The owner is not on the premises.”

“Very well. My name is Walt Stanton. I arrived here nearly three hours ago with a young American woman, my companion. We had dinner and watched the show. As we were about to leave, she went off to the ladies’ room and never returned. I believe she has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. Unless you want me to call the police, you’d better see that she’s freed right away.”

The bald man held out his empty palms to Stanton. “I know nothing of this. I can assure you no one here had anything to do with this supposed kidnapping.”

“It’s a real kidnapping. I’m not imagining it.” He was tempted to show the note he’d received, but it might have led to questions he wasn’t prepared to answer.

“I would suggest returning to your hotel, Mr. Stanton. Certainly your companion will return, if she isn’t there already. It is not uncommon for young foreign ladies to meet a handsome Turk at the bar and go off with him for a brief dalliance. But they always come back.”

Stanton’s growing panic was fast turning into anger and he knew he had to control himself for Ives’s sake. “I’ll take your advice for now,” he managed to reply.

He started to rise and Guler slid the tray of candies forward. “Here, take a Turkish Delight before you go.”

Stanton left the office and went back downstairs, forcing himself to gaze at the faces along the bar. Ives was not among them, of course. He took a chance and had a taxi deliver him to the art gallery where they’d met with Bruno Tranle earlier in the day. The door was locked but he could see a light in the back office. He rang a bell by the door and waited. When nothing happened he rang again. This time Tranle poked his head out of the office and recognized Stanton.

“What are you doing here?” he asked as he opened the door.

“There’s been a slight problem. We took your advice and ate at the Bosphorus. Somebody grabbed Ives when she went to the restroom. Now they want your calligraphy before they release her.”

The color seemed to drain from Tranle’s face. “I should never have suggested that place. Go back to your hotel and let me handle it.”

“I—”

“Go quickly. I will contact you.”

Stanton could see that his news had devastated the man. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Just wait for my call.”

A taxi returned him to the hotel and Stanton made a point of going to the front desk and requesting the parcel he’d left in the safe. There were only a few people in the lobby, but he felt sure one of them was watching his every move. He took the canvas bag from the desk clerk and went up to his room with it.

The place seemed bare without Ives and he had difficulty remembering the last time they’d been apart. Opening the tube, he verified that the ancient Ottoman calligraphy was still intact. That was when the phone rang. They weren’t wasting any time. He picked it up.

“Hello?”

“You did very well, Mr. Stanton,” a husky male voice told him.

“Let me speak with Ives.”

“That is impossible at the moment. She is being held elsewhere.”

“You don’t get the calligraphy until I know she’s all right.”

Silence. Then, “I will phone you back in thirty minutes’ time. Be ready to make delivery.”

After several minutes of slow and tedious work, Ives had managed to get her left hand free of the knotted cord that held it. Quickly she released her right hand and pulled the tape from her mouth. Then she freed her ankles and got unsteadily to her feet. The redness of the room seemed to engulf her and she made for the door as quickly as possible. Surprisingly, it was unlocked. She held her breath, expecting the Turkish man to come through at any instant, perhaps with gun in hand. When nothing happened she turned the knob slowly, then gradually inched the door open, revealing another red room, a parlor of sorts.

A man was sprawled on the floor. She knelt and turned him over, but it was no one she knew. There was blood on the back of his shirt, and a bloody dagger lay on the red carpet a few feet away, near a canvas bag somewhat similar to the one containing the calligraphy. Ives thought the dagger appeared to be a war souvenir, with a Nazi eagle on the hilt and a German inscription along the blade. She had no doubt the man was dead.

This room had a visible window and she went to it at once. It was dark out and she could see very little. She appeared to be on the third floor of a building, and there was no fire escape visible. She turned to look again at the body. Dead people didn’t frighten her anymore, and she went quickly through his pockets. Wallet, handkerchief, keys, and a wrapped cube of Turkish Delight. Next she opened the canvas bag, revealing a large flat box and a tube of gold dust. She couldn’t imagine what it was for.

The box, larger than a cigar box, intrigued her and she picked it up. For some reason the killer hadn’t taken it, so apparently robbery wasn’t the motive. She started to open it, then noticed a line of holes little larger than pinholes.

Could they be air holes?

She unlatched the lid of the box, opened it, and sprang back. The box was filled with spiders, perhaps two dozen of them, larger than the usual garden variety. They seemed a bit drowsy, but as one of them attempted to exit the box she quickly closed and latched the lid.

Had they brought in the spiders to torture or kill her? She needed to get out of here right away, before the Turk came back and found the body. The apartment door opened onto a corridor with a stairway at one end. She closed the door behind her and moved toward the staircase, drawn by the distant sound of Turkish music. Suddenly a figure all in red appeared at the top of the stairs and in that instant she realized where she was. It was Turkish Delight in her belly-dancing costume.

“What are you doing out here?” the dancer asked.

“I think I’ve just escaped from your apartment,” Ives told her. “I like those red walls. They match your costume.”

The belly dancer grunted and leapt at Ives with outstretched fingers, as if to scratch out her eyes. Ives ducked aside but Delight’s hip caught her off balance and knocked her to the floor.

Thirty minutes passed and Stanton had heard nothing. He’d left the room briefly but now he was back by the phone, tense with fear, his gaze frequently returning to the slender canvas tube at his feet. Then, some fifteen minutes late, the telephone rang. His throat was dry when he picked it up and said, “Yes?”

“Bring the painting to the courtyard in front of the Blue Mosque,” the same familiar voice demanded. “Your friend will be released then.”

“Not unless I have proof that she’s alive. Put her on the phone.”

There was a moment’s pause and then a whispered female voice said, “Walt? It’s Juliet. I’m in big trouble. You gotta bring the painting or they’ll kill me.”

“I’ll be there,” he promised and hung up. Of course the whispered voice wasn’t Ives. They never called each other by their first names. His only question now was whether she was still alive.

It was well after midnight when he took a cab to the courtyard of the Blue Mosque, clutching the canvas bag under one arm. The streets in this part of the city were all but deserted now, and only a few lonely beggars loitered on the corners. Stanton paid off the driver and walked toward the mosque with its six distinctive minarets outlined against the night sky. The courtyard was surrounded by a wall, but there were large gateways on each of its three sides. He chose the nearest one and walked through it, hoping he’d arrived before the others.

He hadn’t.

Two men with handguns had been waiting near the sadirvan, a handsome octagonal building at the center of the courtyard. Stanton knew it contained an ablution fountain, one of many in the city, but right now he was more interested in the thugs with guns. “Give us the tube,” the closest one demanded.

“Not until I see Juliet Ives.”

From across the courtyard came a woman’s voice, cut off in mid-scream. Stanton could see her, a long veil obscuring her face and body. A tall man held her tightly by the arm. “Take it from him,” he ordered the gunmen.

“Hold on,” Stanton told them, unzipping the canvas tube and reaching inside. “I’ll give it to you.”

The blast from his sawed-off shotgun caught both men, knocking them over like tenpins. Then he was running across the courtyard toward the veiled woman and her captor.

“Stop!” the man shouted, trying to use the woman as a shield.

“I’ve got another barrel here. You’ll get the same as your goons.”

“You wouldn’t shoot Miss Juliet.”

“That’s not her.” As if to verify his statement, he reached out and grabbed a corner of the veil, ripping it away.

He was right. It wasn’t Ives. It was Turkish Delight.

When she went down on the carpet of the upstairs hallway, Ives managed to kick out at Delight’s ankle, bringing her down too. She wasn’t up to wrestling the woman, but she was nearly twenty years younger and was on her feet before Delight recovered herself. “Don’t try anything,” Ives warned, showing her fist, “or you’ll be dancing your next set with a very bloody nose.”

“What do you want?” Delight asked, not looking for a fight.

“What do I want? I was in the ladies’ room, minding my own business, and I wake up tied to a sofa in your apartment, with a dead man in the next room!”

“Dead man? Who is dead?” The words brought fear to Delight’s face.

“You tell me,” Ives replied. “Go look, but be careful of the spiders.”

That seemed to trigger something in Delight. “Prattos! What did that fool do?” She hurried to unlock the apartment door, then gasped when she saw the body and the bloody dagger.

“Who was he?” Ives asked.

“He was a merchant. He was delivering spiders and gold dust.”

“Did he have a key to this apartment?”

“No, of course not. He was bringing these things for my wedding.”

“Wedding?”

Delight smiled. “I’m to be married day after tomorrow, to Wesley Fazzis.” For a moment they were no longer enemies, just women talking.

“But why did you kidnap me?”

“To retrieve the calligraphy Bruno was selling to that German. It belongs to me. I want it at my wedding.”

“If it’s yours, what was Bruno Tranle doing with it?”

Delight took a deep breath. “Bruno is my father.”

“Your father!”

“He just phoned me and warned me not to injure you. We had no intention of doing harm.”

The man who’d been with Ives when she recovered consciousness appeared at the top of the stairs. “What’s happening here?” he asked, seeing them in the apartment doorway.

Delight smiled. “This is Wesley, my husband-to-be.”

Ives grimaced. “We’ve met. I was tied to a sofa at the time.”

“I am sorry about that,” he told her. “I tried not to make the ropes too tight, but perhaps that is how you got free.”

“It helped,” she admitted. “Now where is Stanton?”

“Your partner? He has the calligraphy. We are meeting him in the courtyard of the Blue Mosque.”

“If you harm me, he will kill you both,” Ives told them, somehow doubting it was true.

“I will bring two of the Gypsies with weapons. He will surrender the calligraphy without a struggle. But you’d better come along too, just in case.”

“You’ll stay in the car,” Delight told her. “I’ll be you until we get the calligraphy.”

“How do you intend to do that?”

“These veils can hide a great deal.”

When the veil fell away, revealing Delight’s frosty face, Stanton cried out in frustration. “Ives!” he shouted.

Surprisingly, a reply came back through the darkness. “Over here, Stanton!”

He saw the black sedan parked on the street and ran toward it. Ives was already out the rear door, hampered only by a handcuff holding her wrist to the car’s interior. “Thank God you’re safe!”

“Did I see you just blow those two Gypsies away?”

“A sawed-off shotgun full of birdshot. I bought it from that street vendor, Ersu. It put them out of action but they shouldn’t have any lasting injuries.”

Ives told him about finding the murdered man and the spiders. Delight had followed him to the car while Wesley dealt with the wounded Gypsies. “I must have that calligraphy for my wedding,” she insisted.

“Are the spiders for your wedding, too?” Stanton asked.

“Of course! It is an American custom, no?”

“I don’t think so. What about the man who brought them? Who killed him?”

“Prattos? I have no idea. I don’t even know how he gained entry to my apartment. Wesley locked the door when he left your friend here.”

Ives interrupted then, telling Stanton, “Tranle, the man who’s paying us, is her father.”

Stanton sighed and shook his head. “Unlock her handcuffs, Delight. It’s time we all sat down and figured this out.”

They returned to the Bosphorus Cafe and her upstairs apartment. Wesley Fazzis joined them soon thereafter. “Did you have to shoot them?” he grumbled to Stanton.

“They had guns and I expected they’d use them. You should be thankful I didn’t use buckshot or they might be dead.”

“All right,” he said, sitting down. “What’s there to talk about?”

“We were hired to transport a valuable example of sixteenth-century calligraphy to a buyer in Germany. Your bride claims it should be hers.”

“Her father is a bastard,” Fazzis told them. “He promised that to her on her wedding day. Now he is selling it just before her wedding because he doesn’t approve of me. What’s he ever done for her?”

“He recommended that we see her dance,” Ives said.

“I don’t even want that painting to keep,” Delight informed them. “I just want it for my wedding day.”

Stanton thought about it. “Why do you need spiders?”

It was Delight who answered. “Our wedding is to duplicate a Turkish wedding from a hundred years ago, with traditional costumes and a chariot for the bride’s arrival. It will be at Wesley’s country estate, where there are many trees. I read in a book that in your pre-Civil War South plantation slaves would be sent out to distribute large spiders on the trees. The webs they wove would then be covered with gold dust for weddings.”

Ives looked doubtful. “I never heard of such a thing.”

“I suppose it might be true,” Stanton allowed.

“That’s what the spiders are for. We will take them out to Wesley’s place in the morning and hope they are in a spinning mood.”

“Let’s first visit your father and hope he is in a forgiving mood.”

Bruno Tranle was anything but forgiving. He sat behind his desk glaring at Stanton and Ives. “I expected you to be in Germany by this time, delivering the calligraphy to Meinz.”

“You promised it for my wedding,” Delight reminded him.

“That was before you became a belly dancer, my dear.”

Ives spoke up then. “That can’t upset you too much. You recommended Turkish Delight to Stanton and me.”

“I can appreciate her art without identifying her as my daughter.”

“Can’t we have a compromise here?” Stanton suggested. “You allow her to display the calligraphy at her wedding ceremony tomorrow and we’ll fly it to Germany the next day.”

“What if someone tries to steal or damage it during the wedding?” he asked.

“Ives and I will guarantee its safety,” Stanton promised, avoiding his partner’s icy stare as he spoke.

Bruno Tranle glanced at his daughter. “Is that agreeable with you, Sophie?”

“Sophie?” Ives repeated.

The dancer snorted. “Did you think I was born with the name Turkish Delight?” Then, to her father, she nodded. “It is agreeable with me. I only want the painting for my wedding day.”

Fazzis, who’d remained silent in the corner until now, stepped forward to shake his future father-in-law’s hand. “You have my promise that Sophie will have a good life.”

“Let us hope so.”

Once they were alone, Ives berated her partner. “We’re guaranteeing the safety of that thing worth nearly a million dollars?”

“Otherwise he never would have agreed. It won’t be difficult. Prattos was killed because someone saw him arrive with that canvas bag and thought it contained the calligraphy. Another attempt will probably be made tomorrow, the last chance before it flies off to Germany. We’ll catch the killer in the act and save the painting.”

“How will we know who it is?”

“I already know,” Stanton told her. “All we have to do is keep our thief from getting it.”

The wedding day was bright with sunshine without being uncomfortably warm. That afternoon, arriving at the Fazzis estate with its palatial house on the Bosphorus, they seemed to enter another dimension of time. There were Arabs in turbans and Turks in traditional red fezzes that hadn’t been worn since the government outlawed them after the First World War. Everything was as it might have been a hundred years earlier, and among the trees they could see the spider webs with their golden dust.

Wesley Fazzis, dressed in the formal wedding clothes of the last century, greeted his guests as they arrived. Stanton recognized some of the employees from the Bosphorus Cafe, including Guzine Guler, the manager, and one of the other dancers. Some wore modern dress, but many had gone along with the theme of the past.

Glancing out at the road, Ives asked, “Isn’t that Ersu, the vendor who sold you that shotgun?”

“It looks like him,” Stanton agreed. “I wonder what he’s selling at a fancy wedding.”

Bruno Tranle accompanied his daughter in the bride’s chariot, dressed as some nobleman from a past time. Delight herself was all but unrecognizable in a traditional Turkish bridal gown. Stanton and Ives saw the prized calligraphy displayed amidst floral arrangements on the wide porch of the house, where the wedding would take place. “It is a thing of beauty,” Ives agreed. “I can understand why Delight would want it at her wedding.”

“And why someone would murder to get it.”

After the brief nonreligious ceremony, guests were ushered into a large ballroom for the wedding dinner. They congratulated the bride and groom, but Stanton was more interested in watching the calligraphy on the porch. “You’d better cover the side yard,” he told Ives. “Just in case.”

They could hear music from the ballroom, and Stanton stepped behind one of the large floral displays to be out of sight. They had reached the crucial moment when the thief must act. The door of the house opened, but it was only the bride’s father checking on his valued possession. “I’ll have it removed shortly,” he told Stanton.

“Fine. We have our morning flight to Germany.”

It was ten minutes later when the restaurant manager, Guzine Guler, appeared and began removing the calligraphy from its stand and rolling it into a cylinder. That was when Stanton made his move. “Hold it, there!”

Guler turned, unfazed. “I was asked to remove it for safekeeping,” he explained.

“Is that what you told Prattos when you stabbed him?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You thought he had the calligraphy, but it was only a box of spiders.”

“There’s no evidence against me.”

“Perhaps not for a court of law, but there’s enough to convince me. Ives said the dead man had a cube of Turkish Delight in his pocket.”

“Everyone who dines at the restaurant gets one.”

“But not wrapped in rice paper like the ones in your office. Prattos came to you when he couldn’t find Delight or Wesley Fazzis. You obligingly took him up to her apartment, unlocked the door, and stabbed him to get the painting he didn’t possess. As the building manager you would have had keys to all the apartments and offices. And Delight must have mentioned the valuable calligraphy to you when she was discussing her wedding, perhaps even hinting she was going to steal it from her father.”

“Delight and Fazzis had keys, too.”

“But Delight was downstairs dancing and Fazzis would have known Prattos was delivering spiders.”

Guler muttered an obscenity and started running, still clutching the calligraphy. “Stop him, Ives!” Stanton shouted.

But he was off the porch before she could grab him. He stiff-armed her and kept on running across the lawn.

“You all right?” Stanton asked, helping her to her feet.

“He’s getting away!”

And he was. They took off after him, but he was a fast runner with a sizable lead. He headed through the trees, running toward one of the big gold-dusted cobwebs. Then suddenly he was on the ground, tangled in wire, and they had him.

“The spiders weren’t spinning,” the bridegroom explained later. “We had to construct the webs ourselves out of wire.”

© 2008 by Edward D. Hoch