EASTERN NIGHTS—AND FLIGHTS (continued 4)

I remembered that the food supplies in my pockets might be incriminating evidence. I had, also, a dangerous slip of paper, on which Wilkowsky had drawn a plan of the Galata beerhouse in which I was to meet Titoff's Russian friend. This I disposed of by tearing it into shreds behind my back, and dropping the fragments, a few at a time, as in a paper chase.

The packets of food were rather more difficult to lose. There was a tin of Oxo cubes, which I flung surreptitiously on to a dust-heap. Some sticks of bivouac chocolate I left on a convenient windowsill. The worst problem was a small bag containing a mixture of cocoa and grape-nuts, taken from one of White's parcels from home. I could scarcely throw this away unobserved; and the police station was already in sight.

A woman stood in the doorway, and gazed at us. As we brushed past her on the narrow pavement, I took the bag from my pocket, dumped it into her hand, and moved on without a word or a sign. When, from a few yards ahead, I looked back, she had opened the bag and was staring in wide-eyed surprise at the cocoa—then quite unobtainable in Constantinople—which had fallen as from heaven.

The guards told a rambling tale to the police officer, who took notes of their description of White and sent out three gendarmes to search the streets for him. Afterward I was taken into an inner room and searched. Nothing was found to brand me as a suspect. The pockets were quite empty; and my larger banknotes—one of a hundred Turkish pounds, one of fifty, and one of twenty-five—were undiscovered, being sewn into suspenders and braces.

Finally, as a result of the twelve Turkish pounds' worth of good character given me by the guards, I continued the journey to the military dentist in Stamboul, after a guard had telephoned the news of White's disappearance to Psamatia.

Desperate after my failure in face of White's success, I made an unwise bolt for freedom across the ruins of a recent fire. Before the guards had recovered from their surprise, I reached a half-demolished wall at the far end of an open space. I shinned over the wall, and found myself in a blind alley. Straight ahead was a house; and another building cut off the exit to the right. To the left was a bare wall, too high to be climbed. I turned round, walked back to meet the now furious guards, and handed them another pound note apiece. They gasped; but a sense of humour dissolved their rage into laughter.

We continued to walk toward Stamboul, each of my arms now being held tightly. Several times I heard the guards mention Theodore, so that I was not surprised when they led me into a small café near the quay (the Maritza restaurant being then out of bounds for prisoners), where one of them stayed with me while the other fetched the Greek waiter to act as interpreter.

"First," said Theodore after he had listened to the guards' story, "you must give parole for the rest of the day."

I agreed readily enough; and over pots of beer—I only met one Mohammedan guard whose religious principles prevented him from accepting alcoholic drink in a secluded spot—the party became more amiable. The Turks' object in fetching Theodore was that he might explain to me a story which would saddle them with a minimum of blame for White's escape. If I corroborated this yarn they would agree not to mention my own misdeeds to the commandant at Psamatia. Again I accepted.

We discussed and amended the story, which in its final form was divided into four parts—(1) a train collision; (2) a shock that knocked the four of us over and separated guards from prisoners; (3) the confusion; (4) the discovery that White had disappeared, unknown to the rest of the party.

Through Theodore I now offered the guards fifty Turkish pounds if they would turn their backs and let me walk out alone. They refused regretfully, saying that to lose two prisoners in one day would be as much as their lives were worth. They reminded me of my promise, and we left the café for the dentist's surgery, where I was obliged to allow a perfectly sound tooth to be stopped.

Back at Psamatia I found all the prisoners shut up in their rooms. The Turkish commandant was raving with rage. As we entered the arched doorway he rushed from his office, and boxed the guards' ears. They bore it without a sound, comforted no doubt by the six Turkish pounds which each of them had concealed in his clothing.

We told our separate but corroborative tales, how we had been knocked over by the shock and missed White in the confusion. White was queer in the head, I explained; and it was possible that having been further unbalanced by the collision he wandered away, not knowing where he was going. The commandant, ready to clutch at anything that might save his official knuckles from a rapping, affected to take the suggestion seriously, and embodied it in his report. He affected to hope that White would recover memory and senses, and return of his own free will.

Later that evening the commandant, after telephonic communication with the Ministry of War, ordered all the British prisoners to prepare for a journey into Anatolia on the following day. With Fulton and Stone, who returned from their visit to the optician without having had a chance to escape, I conferred on how we could get clear in the short time left to us.

Fulton and Stone planned to leave the prison-house during the night, but I decided to wait until morning. They wanted to leave Constantinople for San Stefano, whereas I wanted to remain in the city; and if I escaped before dawn I should have nowhere to spend the night hours, and so lay myself open to the curiosity of gendarmes. In any case, I was uncertain whether or not my parole, given to the guards, ought to extend till midnight.

The three of us occupied the same bedroom. A small window from the adjoining lavatory opened on to a drainpipe. It was decided that Fulton should climb up this pipe to the roof, until he was firmly established on the gutter. Stone would hand him a rope and their boots, and then himself climb the drainpipe. They would crawl along a succession of roofs, keeping in the shadow, until they reached the top of a house about fifty yards distant, which overlooked a side street outside the camp sentries' range of vision. Having fastened the rope to a chimney or to some other stable object, they could let themselves down to the road when it was conveniently deserted, with the boots slung round their necks. They planned to tramp the fifteen miles to San Stefano during the night, leaving Constantinople via the gate at Yedi-kuli.

That evening the sentries in the yard, stimulated by White's escape, were more alert than usual. Another drawback was the full moon, which for some hours lit up the corner outside the window. Not until just before midnight were conditions, in the form of shadow and an absent guard, suitable for the adventure.

With feet covered only by a pair of thick socks Fulton climbed through the tiny window, gripped a bend of the drainpipe, and made use of a metal joint for foot-hold. Stone, holding the rope and the boots, watched from the window. Fulton gripped the gutter and was beginning to haul himself up when—crunch!—the top of the flimsy drainpipe was severed from the roof by his weight, and he fell.

Instinctively he released his feet from the joint on which they had been resting. He thus managed to land on all fours in the yard, about fifteen feet below.

The noise, however, was startling. Stone and I expected every second that Fulton would be discovered, but with great presence of mind he jumped up and ran into our room, through the near-by door, before anybody had time to investigate.

An upper window opened noisily, and from it a Turkish officer, awakened by the sound of Fulton's fall, yelled to the guards. Within five minutes the yard was full of a disordered commotion. An excited group collected round the portion of the drainpipe which was lying on the ground.

Meanwhile, Fulton and Stone had torn off their outer clothing. When Zikki-Bey paid us a visit of suspicious inspection, the three of us were seemingly asleep. Soon afterward the chattering and clattering in the yard subsided. Fortunately a strong wind was blowing, and we heard afterward that the Turks thought a violent gust must have dislodged the drainpipe.

With nerves on edge and all our faculties keyed up, there was little sleep for the rest of that night. Our only remaining chance was to escape next morning, when we passed through the city on the way to the railway station.

CHAPTER XI

A GREEK WAITRESS, A GERMAN BEERHOUSE, A TURKISH POLICEMAN, AND A RUSSIAN SHIP

At half-past eleven of a scorching morning every Britisher at Psamatia marched away from the prison-house. As a result of the furore that followed White's escape, twenty-four hours earlier, the Turks were sending us into the interior of Anatolia. About fifty Tommies, with a detachment of guards, left first; and we—the fifteen officer prisoners—followed twenty yards behind them. In the rear was the Turkish officer in charge, with a screen of six guards, who showed fixed bayonets, loaded rifles, and smiling ferocity.

Three of us—Fulton, Stone, and myself—had made up our minds to slip away, or if needs be dash away, before the party entrained at Haidar Pasha, on the Asiatic shore of the Sea of Marmora. The Turkish officer rather expected somebody to make an attempt, but knew not whom to suspect in particular. A little deduction might have told him, for, except F., the "do-or-die trio"—as the others had named us—were the only officers wearing civilian clothes, and one would as easily have suspected F. of an ambition to become the Sultan's chief eunuch as of an ambition to escape.

Some of the Tommies were disabled or still sick. As they trudged through the hot streets, oppressed by heavy packages and the relentless heat, their backs bent lower and lower and they began to straggle. Finally one man fainted. While he was being carried into the shade the officers obtained permission to relieve the weakest Tommies of their kits. Yet again, the Turks ought to have discovered the escape party, for the others saw to it that Fulton, Stone, and I should not be burdened with the parcels.

Meanwhile, the mid-day heat grew more intense, and the Tommies more exhausted. It became necessary, every half mile or so, to rest for a few minutes on the shady side of the street.

The "do-or-die trio" looked to these halts for their opportunity; but always the guards hemmed us in too closely for any chance of a break-away. A combined effort seemed impossible, so that the three of us accepted the maxim of each man for himself. Even to talk with each other on the march was imprudent, for earnest conversation, like earnest looks, must have attracted attention.

The first move was made by Fulton. We had halted on a narrow pavement, in the suburb of Yeni-Kapou. There followed a short interval of lounging repose, during which we sipped at water-bottles, while the Turkish officer did his best to fraternize. Turning round casually, in a search for possible opportunities, I saw Fulton sliding into a little booth of a shop, and then, with head bent over the counter, looking at postcards. As far as I could gather none of the guards had noticed him. He killed time by calling for more and ever more postcards.

Five minutes later the order to continue was given. We rose and arranged our packs, while Ms. stood in front of the shop window, so as to hide Fulton. But a Turkish sergeant counted us, and finding our number short by one, became excited and aggressive as he wandered around and checked his figures. Fulton's discovery was then inevitable. He made the best of things, when observed through the window, by choosing and paying for several postcards and leaving the shop indifferently, as if he had entered it with no ulterior purpose. The Turkish officer looked his suspicion, but made no comments.

Stone's turn came next. At Koum-kapou we rested below the wall of an old palace. When, as he thought, nobody was looking, Stone slipped through a side-entrance and sat down against a doorway in the left-hand corner of the courtyard. A guard darted after him, and dragged him back to us. The Turkish officer saw the commotion and wanted explanations; whereupon Stone complained that although he went into the courtyard merely to find shelter from the sun the guard had hustled him rudely. The watchful guard was reprimanded for want of politeness.

We passed from Koum-kapou to Stamboul, where crowds of befezzed men and veiled women gathered at every crossing to gaze their dull-eyed curiosity. Here, in the mazed streets of the Turkish quarter, I again petitioned Providence for some sort of a diversion, under cover of which we might run. But nothing happened. The guards surrounded us as if we had been wayward pigs being driven to the slaughter-house, and handled their bayonets suggestively.

At one point we could see the Maritza, down a side turning. We moved along the tram-lines toward the big bridge. Then, after a moment's delay at the toll-gate, we passed over the Golden Horn.

Three-quarters of the way across the bridge the Turkish sergeant leading us switched the column-head to some steps descending to the ferry stage for the Haidar Pasha steamboats. The Tommies were placed at one end of the wooden stage, with a separate group of guards, while the Turkish officer, who since the beginning of the journey had shown a desire to make himself pleasant, took the officer-prisoners into a little café for cooling drinks. We talked idly to the Greek waitress who served us; but at the moment I was too preoccupied to notice anything about her, except that she was plump and obliging.

Later we were grouped some distance to the left of the café, in a corner of the ferry stage opposite that occupied by the Tommies. There we remained for nearly an hour in the broiling sun, while waiting for the steamer which was to take us from Europe to Asia. People surged on and off the ferryboats that moored opposite us from time to time; but never once did the guards relax enough to allow anybody to fade into the crowd. The chances were made even more desperate by some German soldiers, who leaned over the bridge-rails above us and watched the changing scene.

"Our ship comes," announced the Turkish officer at last, pointing out to sea in the direction of Prinkipo Island. In five minutes' time, I knew, the party would be on board that steamer; and once aboard it I should have left behind all hope of escape from captivity in Turkey. Only five minutes! Had the gods left no loop-hole?

I searched among the crowd in every direction, ready to take advantage of the wildest and slimmest scheme that might suggest itself.

I heard Pappas Effendi and Fulton asking the Turkish officer if they might return to fetch some kit, which had been left in the café. The Turk nodded, and sent them away, escorted by his sergeant. I also had left some kit, I claimed on the spur of the moment, just as Pappas Effendi and Fulton were leaving us.

"All right," said the Turk, "follow your comrades."

In full view of the rest of the party I walked after Pappas Effendi and Fulton, and while keeping close to the sergeant, as if to show I was under his wing, took care to remain behind him so that he himself should know nothing of my presence.

The little group entered the café, first Pappas Effendi and Fulton, then the sergeant, and finally myself.

Inside the doorway was the plump waitress, who smiled affably. I stayed near her while the other three passed to the inside room, where we had been seated earlier. I fingered my lips warningly, and in soft-spoken French asked where I could hide.

The waitress gave no answer, but without showing the least excitement or even surprise, half opened a folding doorway that led to the kitchen. I planted myself behind it, while she entered the inner room and talked to the Turkish sergeant.

A minute later I heard the three of them—Pappas Effendi, Fulton, and the guard—tramp past my doorway and out to the ferry stage. Just then the arriving steamer hooted.

"Now," said this waitress-in-a-million, "they have gone, and so must you. The Turks may come any moment, and if they find you here I shall suffer more than you."

"Goodbye, and a million thanks," I said, fervently, and walked into the open.

Without even turning my head to see whether the disappearance was known I swerved to the right, and, taking great care not to attract attention by walking in haste, passed up the long line of steps leading to the bridge. I continued to look straight ahead, but I could sense the presence, only a few yards away, of the German soldiers who loitered by the railings. Fortunately, several other people were moving up or down the steps; and dressed as I was in a civilian suit obtained from the Dutch Legation, the Germans paid no more attention to me than to them.

I reached the pavement, and still not daring to look behind, crossed the tram-lines to the opposite side of the bridge. Then only did I turn round to find out whether I were followed.

Everything was normal. Not one of the idlers who lined the railings had noticed me; the usual traffic and the usual crowds ebbed and flowed across the bridge; the sun shone. I lit a cigarette and walked eastward.

Having crossed the circus of streets at the Galata end of the bridge, I turned to the right and made for the Rue de Galata. At the corner I looked back again. To my very great relief, I found that I was still not followed.

I was conscious of an intense exhilaration as, free at last, I rubbed elbows with the crowd of nondescript Levantines. It was the first time for months that I had ever walked the streets without the burden of an oppressive consciousness that a yard or two to the rear was an animal of a Turkish soldier. That sense of always being followed and spied upon and menaced and held on a leash had weighed so much on my mind that I had come to look upon a guard in the same light as an old-time convict must have looked upon the lead ball chained to his foot. The sense of freedom from this incubus was glorious.

I was worried about my chances of meeting the unknown Russian who had agreed to hide White and myself. According to the plan detailed to me some hours earlier by Vladimir Wilkowsky, he was to wait for me in a German beerhouse from two o'clock to four. I had been unable to escape in time for the appointment and it was now four-twenty.

Nevertheless, hoping that the Russian might have lingered over his drink, I decided to carry out the same arrangements as if I had arrived in time. These, I remember thinking as I strolled along the Rue de Galata, studiously unconscious of gendarmes and soldiers, were suggestive of a Deadwood Dick thriller, or of some sawdust melodrama at a provincial theatre.

Having entered the beerhouse (named Zum Neuen Welt), I was to pass down the main room until, on the right-hand side of it, I reached the piano. I must seat myself at the table next to the piano, order a glass of beer, put a cigarette behind my left ear, and look around without showing too much anxiety.

Somewhere near me I should find a man whose left ear, also, was adorned with a cigarette; or, if not already there he would arrive very shortly. He would occupy the table beyond mine—that is to say, the next but one to the piano. On no account must I speak to him in the beerhouse, although to make his identity doubly clear he might ask for a light, speaking in German. He would remain until I had paid my reckoning, then pay his own, leave the Bierhaus Zum Neuen Welt, and walk toward Pera.

I was to follow him not too closely, always taking care to be separated by a distance of at least twenty yards, so that nobody might observe how my movements depended on his. Arrived on the fringe of Pera he would unlock a door, leave it open, and disappear; whereupon all that remained for me was to follow him into this retreat, where I should find Captain White already installed.

It was four-twenty-seven when I entered the Bierhaus Zum Neuen Welt, a close-atmosphered café in the Rue de Galata. The customers inside it were few, but some of them caught my attention at once, for they included a group of German soldiers and a Turkish officer of gendarmerie, who was talking to a civilian. The table next to the piano was vacant, as were those surrounding it. I sat down, casually placed a cigarette behind my left ear, and ordered a glass of beer.

As I sipped the beer I looked around the room for the man of mystery. Nobody paid the least attention to me. Plenty of cigarettes were held in the hand or the mouth, but none in the cleft of the left ear.

Still with a faint hope that the Russian who was to hide me might return, I ordered a second then a third glass of beer, and made a study of every man present, in case one of them might be he. But nothing had happened, and nothing continued to happen. The officer of gendarmerie kept his back toward me, while the German soldiers grew boisterous over repeated relays of beer, and over mandolin strummings by a red-faced Unteroffizier. The proprietress, a German woman of an especial corpulence, dragged her fleshy body from table to table, and finally arrived before mine.

"You seem hot," she said in German. "You must have been walking too fast."

"No, I have merely been out in this atrocious sun."

"German?" she asked—at which I was delighted, for it proved that my accent, acquired many years before as a student in Munich, was not yet too rusty to pass muster.

"No, madam, Russian," I replied, hoping hard that she could speak no Russian.

"So! Plenty of Russians come here since the Ukraine was occupied, and the boats began to arrive from Odessa."

Now although the fat proprietress had paid such a compliment to my German accent, I remembered the five years since I had spoken the language continuously, and I was frightened that in any word she might detect an English accent. I grew more and more frightened and anxious, for it was very unlikely that the man with the cigarette would arrive now. I looked at my watch, and found the time to be five-twenty-five.

Finally the tension of trying to think clearly while answering the German female's questions was more than I could stand. I paid my bill, and returned to the Rue de Galata.

By now, I judged, the guards must have discovered my escape. Probably they were searching the streets for me; and probably the gendarmerie in Galata, Pera, and Stamboul had been instructed to look out for a European in a gray civilian suit and a black hat. I stopped at the nearest outfitting shop, bought a light-gray hat, and left the black one lying on a chair.

Deciding that the water would be safer than the land, I made my way back to the bridge, with the intention of chartering a small boat for a trip up the Bosphorus.

Then, crossing the open space facing the bridge, I was horrified to see Mahmoud, one of my old guards. He revolved undecidedly and peered among the crowd. Obviously he was looking for someone; and the odds were a hundred to one that the someone must be me.

I edged away from him without being observed, and dodged into the fruit bazaar among the quayside streets to right of the bridge.

This bazaar was one of the dirtiest in Constantinople. Millions of flies drifted over and settled on the baskets of tired fruit. The very stalls seemed ready to fall to pieces from decrepitude. The people, vendors and buyers alike, were dusty and ragged. A few loiterers squatted on the cobble stones and sucked orange-peel.

It was inevitable that in such a place my more or less smart Legation suit and my newly bought hat should attract attention. A policeman, of the "dog-collar" species, seemed particularly interested in them. I was leaving the bazaar by a narrow street that looked as if it might lead me to the subway station of Galata when he barred the way and said something in Turkish, while holding out his hand expectantly.

I failed to understand most of the words, but one of them—vecika—was enough. Vecikas were the Turkish passports with which every honest, or rich but dishonest, civilian had to provide himself if he wished to remain at liberty. They might be demanded at any time in any place by any gendarme.

Naturally I could produce no vecika. But I had the next best thing. That same morning I had discussed with Vladimir Wilkowsky the possibility of being stopped in the street by a policeman. His advice was that if it happened I must claim to be a German officer. I remembered being photographed in civilian clothes when at Gumuch Souyou Hospital; and before leaving Psamatia I gave myself a useful identity by signing one of the copies with a German name.

After searching an inside pocket, I now handed to the gendarme a photograph which went to prove that I was "Fritz Richter, Oberleutnant in der Fliegertruppen." Speaking [in fluent German, interspersed with a few words of broken Turkish], I protested violently that I was a German officer in mufti, and that he would get himself into trouble for having presumed to stop a German officer. And never was I more frightened than when uttering that bombast.

Half convinced and half browbeaten, the gendarme took the photograph, looked at it dubiously, and consulted a Greek from among the curious crowd that circled us. This man, it appeared, claimed to know German. I understood little of the conversation, but as far as I could gather the policeman asked if I really were a German officer; and the stallkeeper, reading the signature laboriously, informed him that it proclaimed me to be a Supreme Lieutenant of the Flying Soldiers.

"Pek ee, effendi," said the gendarme to me. He returned the photograph, salaamed, and apologized. He then went away. So did I.

I returned cautiously, through a combination of side streets, to the bridge-head, and I was much relieved to find that Mahmoud had disappeared. From the quay I chartered a rowing-boat, ordering the Turkish kaiktche to row me up the Bosphorus.

"Are you Russian, effendim?" he asked.

"No, German," I replied, surlily. At that his conversational advances ended.

The train of thought started by the word Russian led me to decide that I had better spend the night aboard the Russian tramp steamer on which White and I were to travel as stowaways. Vladimir Wilkowsky, in fact, had told me to make for it if I failed to reach the hiding-place on shore, and to ask for M. Titoff, the chief engineer. Its name, I knew, was the Batoum, and most of its officers were in the conspiracy to help us, in return for substantial consideration. I knew that the ship was moored in the Bosphorus, but of its appearance or exact position I had been told nothing.

"Russky dampfschiff Batoum," I ordered the kaiktche, using the polyglot mixture which he was most likely to understand. But his voluble jabbering and his expressive shrug showed that he, also, was ignorant of where it lay.

"Bosphor!" I commanded, pointing higher up the Bosphorus and thinking that I would find the name Batoum painted on one of the five or six ships that I could see in the distance, moored in midstream.

But having rowed some distance up the Bosphorus and already passed Dolma Bagche Palace, I found no ship labelled Batoum. Most of the craft seemed to use only numbers as distinguishing marks. What was worse, most of them flew the German flag; although two of the masts sported a yellow-and-blue standard which I failed to recognize. Certainly none flew the Russian eagle.

Our only chance of finding the Batoum was to ask directions. We visited several lighters near the quay; but the kaiktche's questions to Turks and Greeks were unproductive. As a last chance I told him to row close to a large steamer, on the deck of which I could see some German sailors.

"Please tell me where I can find the Russian boat Batoum," I shouted in German, standing up while the kaiktche kept the little craft steady with his oars.

"Don't know the Batoum," said a sailor. "Here there are no Russian ships now. They've become German or Austrian."

"And those two over there?" I asked, pointing toward the vessels with the green-and-black ensign.

"Ukrainian."

"Thanks very much," I called as we sheered off. My mistake, I realized, had been in forgetting for the moment the existence of that newly-made-in-Germany republic the Ukraine. Any vessel from Odessa not flying the German or the Austrian flag would now be Ukrainian; and the yellow-and-blue standard must be that of the Ukrainian Republic. One of the pair flying this flag proclaimed itself to be the Nikolaieff. It followed that the other, which was marked only by a number, must be the Batoum.

Having made the kaiktche take me to the bottom of its gangway, I climbed to the deck. At the top of the gangway was a tall man made noticeable by a bristling moustache and a well-pressed uniform of white drill. Obviously he was a ship's officer, and as such he must be one of the syndicate whom Captain White and I were bribing. If so, he would know of Wilkowsky.

"Russky vapor Batoum?" I asked in pidgin-Russian.

"Da."

"Monsieur Titoff?"—pointing at him by way of enquiry into his identity.

"Niet; Monsieur Belaef."

"Droug Vladimir Ivanovitch Wilkowsky?"

He gave me a long look, smiled, and said under his breath: "Yes, meester."

These were the only English words known by Ivan Stepanovitch Belaef, first mate of the Ukrainian tramp steamer Batoum, from Odessa. And for the moment, at any rate, I was safe among friends.

At about armistice time I was hailed unexpectedly in Port Saïd by C., one of the British officers whom I had left behind on the ferry stage of the Golden Horn. He himself had seen me leave the café, climb the steps leading to the bridge, and fade into the crowd.

A few moments after my disappearance, related C., the Turkish officer called the roll of the prisoners, before taking them to the ferryboat. That roll-call almost led to the premature discovery of my escape; for when the Turk said "À-lan Thòm-as Bott," four people answered.

CHAPTER XII

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW

"Monsieur Titoff," announced the first mate, entering his cabin with a hunched-up figure of a man, whose most obvious characteristics were shifty eyes, very high cheekbones and a shrivelled, yellow skin.

M. Titoff and I inspected each other with care as I rose from the only chair and shook hands. He, I knew, was the guiding spirit in the syndicate of mates and engineers whom we were bribing.

He produced a book of English phrases, with their Russian equivalents. Opening it at a prepared page he ran his finger down the list and said "Seegnal!"

"Signal?"

"Yess, ceegarette seegnal."

Remembering the arrangements for the beerhouse rendezvous, I placed a cigarette behind my left ear; whereat the chief engineer and the first mate smiled, and shook hands once again. Neither of them could speak any language but Russian, so that we talked with difficulty, exchanging half-understood patter from the phrase book.

After some strumming on the mandolin and balalaika by Titoff and Belaef, I slept on the first mate's couch, with my money tucked next to my skin.

Next morning I was introduced to the third mate, a stocky Lett who could speak German. Using him as interpreter Titoff explained his arrangements. I was to dress myself as a Russian sailor, leave the Batoum, and be led to the hiding-place in Pera. White and I were to remain there for a week, until the day before the ship sailed. We could then be concealed on board the Batoum until she was safely out of the Bosphorus.

Wearing some old clothes belonging to Kulman, the third mate, but with their rank badges removed, I rowed ashore. Kulman accompanied me, while Titoff, prominent in white drill, waited on the quay. Neither he nor the white-bearded old man to whom he was talking took the least notice of us, but turned and passed toward the Rue de Galata. The third mate and I followed, without, however, showing apparent concern in their movements.

At the corner of a side street on the far side of the Rue de Galata Titoff parted from his companion. Kulman followed suit by leaving me, after giving low-voiced instructions that I must follow the old man.

The stranger led the way up the hill, toward Péra, while I kept behind him at a convenient distance, on the opposite side of the road. For a quarter of an hour he moved through a succession of uneven streets and cobbled alleys, so that I soon lost my bearings.

I was not conscious of danger, however. In the faded old uniform of a sailor, and with my civilian clothes wrapped in a newspaper, I attracted little attention. Occasionally I looked into shop windows to divert the suspicions of any who might otherwise have noticed that I was following the ancient.

Finally the guide halted among the wooden houses on the outskirts of Péra, produced an enormous key, and unlocked an iron door. I slackened my steps as he disappeared inside the door, but passed through it a few seconds later.

Inside was half-darkness. Besides the old man I could see, dimly, an unkempt and unshaven figure, wearing an overcoat that was much too small for him. I looked at this apparition with puzzled doubt. Surely it could not be White, whom I had last seen running through the streets of Koum-kapou, in a perfectly respectable suit of Red Cross clothes? Yes, it must be, for it came toward me with outstretched hand.

"Glad to see you, old man," said the figure in the overcoat. "I don't know which of us looks the more comic."

"Why the dyed moustache, and why this?" pointing to a faded fez which protruded from one of his pockets.

White reserved his tale until Titoff's friend had left us, after promising to return with food and water.

While the guard was chasing him in Koum-kapou, White related, he turned the corner suddenly and saw an open doorway. He rushed into it, acting on impulse.

Just inside the door was a woman, who screamed. He put his hand over her mouth, then dodged down a narrow passage into the back room, while the pursuing guard raced past the house and up the street.

Very fortunately for White the woman was a Greek, and as such well disposed to the British. She hid him in a cupboard for an hour, and persuaded her husband, when he arrived home at midday, to provide a disguise.

White bought a fez and an overcoat, and blackened his moustache. The Greek was shorter and slighter than he, so that it was impossible to wear the overcoat without removing his own jacket and waistcoat. These he left in the house. The results, however, justified his loss, for when he went into the streets, during the afternoon, he was a perfect study of a broken-down Levantine.

He reached Galata too late for the beerhouse rendezvous, and was obliged, therefore, to spend the evening and night as best he could. As he wandered along the Rue de Galata a policeman stopped him and, according to the Near East habit, showed a cigarette without saying a word and signed that he wanted a light. This White supplied from the cigarette he was smoking. The gendarme passed on, without deigning to thank the wretched looking man in a faded fez and torn coat.

A café and two cinemas filled his evening. Afterward, unable to hire a room at any hotel or lodging-house, because he had no vecika, he spent the night huddled behind a cemetery tombstone.

Next day he met Titoff's Russian friend in the German beerhouse, according to plan; and so to the hiding-place.

This hiding-place of ours was a disused workshop belonging to the Russian, who claimed to be a carpenter. Its only furniture was a crude bench and a long table. The floor lay inches deep in shavings through which the rats rustled all night and most of the day. There was one small window; but this we were told to keep covered by its iron shutter, in case somebody should look in from the street. A tiny yard led from the corner opposite the door to the bottom of a shaft, down which the dwellers on the upper floors of the building threw their rubbish.

In themselves these conditions were fairly bad; for apart from the lack of furniture, the atmosphere was always dusty and unpleasantly musty, and unless we opened the window the workshop remained in perpetual twilight. But the worst drawback of all was that only a flimsy partition separated us from the living room of a Turkish officer. His bedroom was above our wooden ceiling. Everything he did we could hear quite plainly, whether he coughed, spoke, whistled, removed his boots, or snored.

The Turkish officer, we realized, must likewise hear every movement of ours; so that whenever either he or his orderly or anybody else was in his rooms we maintained, perforce, a death-like stillness. We scarcely dared to whisper, or to tip-toe across the workshop on bootless feet. In the daytime, the striking of a match had to be masked by scraping the shavings, so as to make a noise like a rat. After daylight smoking was impossible, because the glimmer would have shown through the many cracks in the partition.

We slept side by side on the wooden table, with rolled-up coats as pillows. White once woke up in the middle of the night and was horrified to hear me talking in my sleep. Fortunately, the Turk above was not awake, and so missed the performance. Afterward we never slept at the same time, but kept watch in turn, in case one of us should snore or otherwise attract attention. Four of the nights were broken into by machine-gun fire from a near-by roof, during British air-raids.

On my arrival White had told me that we must be particularly careful in the mornings, just after the Turkish officer left the house. The noises from the living room then suggested that somebody, probably the Turk's wife, was tidying it. This happened on three successive mornings. What worried us in particular was a scrunching and scraping behind the partition, which suggested that the wife suspected our presence and tried to look at us through the cracks.

Each time this occurred we crouched at the bottom of the partition, fingered our lips warningly, and scarcely dared to breathe. On the fourth day, when the Russian brought our food, we told him our suspicions.

"We believe this Turkish officer's wife knows of us," said White. "Every morning she comes to the partition and seems to be looking through it."

The carpenter grinned.

"But," he explained, "the Turk has no wife. What you've been frightened of is his tame rabbit!"

Each day we hoped for news of the Batoum's date of sailing. Three times it was postponed; and, bored and wretched, we remained perforce in the miserable workshop.

Unable to keep our minds as inactive as our bodies, we took the risk of leaving the window half open during the daytime, so that we might study our Russian textbooks, in readiness for Odessa. Seated on the shavings in a position to catch the shaft of light that streamed through the narrow panes, we passed many hours with the copying and learning of Russian phrases.

When, after hours of study, our concentrative faculties became stale, the only alternative was to hope for success, and to live again in retrospect the extravagant happenings of the past few weeks. Most of the business usually associated with the crudest melodrama had been there, I reflected—spies, policemen, disguises, chases, female accomplices, and bluff. Decidedly it had been thrilling; but for the future I desired intensely to experience such thrills only at second hand.

But even in this secluded room we were not to be spared the atmosphere of movie-horrifics. Another stock thrill was inflicted on us—The Face at the Window.

There had seemed no likelihood of discovery from the street. Even if we bared the window from its iron shutter, nobody could see into the room without raising himself on the ledge, for the lower panes were coated with an opaque glaze. At mealtimes, therefore, we let in the daylight by withdrawing the shutter.

One morning, after breakfast, when the Turkish officer had left his rooms, I saw White stiffen suddenly as we cleared the table.

"Look natural," he whispered. "There's no time to duck."

I picked up a plank of wood and tried to appear as if my business were carpentry; for over there, four yards away, a fez was rising slowly above the glazed portion of the window. White performed convincingly with a tape-measure, the nearest thing to his hand.

The fez was the forerunner of a much-wrinkled forehead. Then came a pair of villainous eyes, a bent nose, and cheek-bones with light olive skin drawn tightly across them. The rest of the face remained hidden by the glaze. The Turk—for such he evidently was—have levered himself from the ground by means of the window-ledge.

"Don't take any notice of the swine," White murmured.

Outwardly calm, but inwardly nervous and shaking, I pretended to busy myself with the carpenter's tools, although it was difficult to withstand a shocked instinct to gaze at the Face. It remained for about two minutes of heart-throbbing tension, then disappeared, and left me gasping with the surprise and the shock of its visit. We heard somebody walking away from the building and down the hill toward Galata.

The Face might have belonged to a police spy, we speculated, but it might have been that of a casual passer-by who was indulging the curiosity in respect of other people's business which is common to most Turks. In that case no harm would be done, for the stranger had seen nothing suspicious—only a workshop, some tools and planks, a loaf of bread and a half melon on the table, and two coatless, collarless, unshaven, untidy-haired men who seemed to be working.

The carpenter showed fright on being told that a Turk had looked in at us, and said he must consult Titoff. Before he returned on the following morning the Face had again appeared, as before—first a fez rising slowly above the glazed pane, then a wrinkled forehead, then the villainous eyes and the crooked nose. It remained staring for a few seconds, and disappeared.

This time the Russian could contain neither his fear nor his impatience to get us out of the workshop. If we were caught, said he, it would only mean imprisonment for us; but him the Turks might hang as a spy. He told us to pack our belongings, while he went to the Batoum and arranged with Titoff for us to be taken on board.

An hour later a procession of three passed through the winding streets toward the quay. We left the workshop in turn, at intervals of a few seconds, for we had decided to walk separately, so that if one of us were stopped the others could make themselves scarce.

First went the carpenter, leading the way down the hill to Galata. I followed twenty yards behind him, still dressed as a Russian sailor; and about twenty yards behind me came White, in his fez and old overcoat. We scarcely looked at each other, but mooched along different sections of the road. Each was ready, at a second's warning, to dash down the nearest alley.

Until the Rue de Galata was reached the only people we saw were the dull-eyed and ragged inhabitants of the slum quarter that fringes Pera, sitting in their doorways and blinking in the heat of early afternoon. But when we crossed the Rue de Galata White almost rubbed shoulders with a couple of gendarmes.

Titoff was waiting on the quayside. White and I approached him, whereupon the Russian carpenter retraced his steps and left us. In my character of a Russian seaman I saluted the Batoum's chief engineer. He hustled us into a waiting kaik, and ordered the kaiktche to row to the Batoum.

Kulman was waiting at the top of the gangway. He led us to his cabin, where, he said, we were to live for the present.

Meanwhile, the ship was still empty of cargo, and no definite date of sailing had yet been given. This uncertain delay was especially unfortunate because, apart from the growing risk of discovery, our money was diminishing at an alarming rate.

The door was perforce closed all day long, to prevent discovery by the captain. In the heat of those August days on the Bosphorus the stifling stuffiness of the unventilated little cabin became almost unbearable.

Yet we had one consolation. The port-hole could be left open without fear of intrusion by the Face, with its wrinkled forehead surmounted by a fez, its villainous eyes, its crooked nose, and its olive skin drawn tightly across the cheek-bones….

CHAPTER XIII

A SHIPLOAD OF ROGUES

Michael Ivanovitch Titoff, one-time chief engineer of the tramp steamer Batoum, proved to the dissatisfaction of Captain White and myself that he was a thief, a mean blackguard, a cunning liar, a cringing coward, a rat, and an altogether despicable cheat. Otherwise he was not a bad sort of fellow.

At the time when we lived on board the Batoum as stowaways her officers and crew were rogues almost to a man. Except Titoff and one or two of the crew they were likeable rogues, however, and applied an instinctive sense of decency to their unlawful dealings. For example, Andreas Kulman, the Lettish third mate, would cheerfully cheat the Turkish merchant who had chartered the vessel, and cheerfully smuggle drugs from anywhere to anywhere; but I never knew him cheat a friend or a poor man, or take advantage of a stranger in difficulties. To us, as prisoners escaping from Turkey, he showed many kindnesses; and if we had been without money he would have been willing to take us across the Black Sea without payment. The other mates were of the same type, if a trifle less obliging.

The second and third engineers—Feodor Mozny and Josef Koratkov—were among the few of our shipmates who could not be classified as rogues. They transgressed only to the innocuous extent of smuggling moneyed stowaways and contraband goods. They, also, showed White and myself many kindnesses; as did the second engineer's wife, who voyaged with her husband. Several evenings she spent in the heat of the frowsy little engine room, washing our only underclothes, while we sat in Josef's cabin, clad in nothing but the tunic and trousers of our Russian-sailor disguises.

We wore these disguises for the benefit of visitors to the Batoum, and not to throw dust in the eyes of the crew. That was needless, for, except the captain, every man belonging to the ship soon knew of us. The marvel was that with so many people privy to the secret it never leaked to the Turkish police. In pro-Entente circles ashore our presence on the Batoum was widely known and widely discussed; and I count it a debt to Providence that the news was not carried to the Ministry of War by one of the city's many police spies. The crew were unlikely to betray us knowingly, for every man of them must have been concerned in something which might wither in the strong light of a police investigation. Besides, they were tolerant of the British, while disliking the Turks even more than they disliked the Germans.

The captain—a white-bearded, bent-backed Greek of about eighty—seemed incompetent, and well on the way to senile decay, but withal harmless. This voyage was to be his last before enforced retirement. He was as wax in the cunning hands of Titoff, who kept from him the knowledge that two escaped Britishers were aboard. Had he known he would have either insisted on our removal, or—more probably—demanded a large share of the passage money. It was easy to keep the ancient in ignorance, for apparently he knew less than anybody else of what happened on his vessel. Titoff assured us that should the captain see us in our disguise of Russian sailors he would remain unsuspicious if we took care not to speak. His declining mind had become too feeble to remember off-hand even the number of the crew; and much less could he remember their faces. Once I brushed by him closely, outside Kulman's cabin. He passed without a glance at me, looking on the ground and muttering into his beard.

The crew was a dubious mixture. Many—in particular the firemen—had been Bolsheviki until Austro-German forces landed at Odessa and Sevastopol and temporarily crushed Bolshevism in South Russia. Other ex-members of the bourgeoisie, but unable to make a living on land under present conditions, had become temporary seamen by the grace of friends connected with the shipping company that owned the Batoum. There was also a bright youth named Viktor, who, until the Bolshevist revolution, was a student. His father, a lawyer, had been killed in the rioting at Kieff that accompanied the Soviet rise to power; and the son, to keep himself alive, now swabbed the decks of a tramp steamer and submitted to being kicked by sailors and corrupted by Michael Ivanovitch Titoff. Viktor spoke French and German, and was therefore much in request as interpreter when the ship's officers bargained with their stowaways or invested in contraband consignments, or when one of them brought on board some cosmopolitan wench from Pera or Galata.

Our most interesting shipmate on the Batoum was perhaps Bolshevik Bill the Greaser. One afternoon when White, dressed in sailor's clothes, was helping to paint the ship's side, a hard-faced giant in overalls approached him, produced a Russian-French grammar, and asked for a lesson. So far as his slight knowledge of French and slighter knowledge of Russian allowed, White did his best to comply. Thereafter the greaser became a close friend, following us round the deck in the evening, visiting us at odd hours during the day-time, and bringing us figs.

Like most of the greasers and firemen he was a Bolshevik. He was not a bloodthirsty Bolshevik, however, but one who, according to his own limited and crude conceptions of universal equality, wanted plenty of wealth, plenty of happiness, plenty of vodka for all. He was especially eloquent and brotherly when drunk.

Others of the Bolsheviki were idealists of a more exterminative type. Once, when White was playing cards with some firemen in the engine room, the talk swung to the Russian Revolution. A lean man, who until then had been too busy drinking to speak, began to describe the mutiny in the Baltic Fleet, of which he had been a sailor. In his intensity he seemed to live again through the horrors of it, as with gloating gesture he described how unpopular officers had been thrown into the sea with weights tied to their feet.

"That was bad, very bad," protested White in his halting Russian. "If you are in power and somebody has done wrong, he should be given a fair trial and, if convicted, put in prison. But to kill men merely because you dislike them is very wrong."

"Well said!" commented Bolshevik Bill the Greaser.

"No; well meant if you like," amended the lean fireman, as he patted White on the back; "but the Meester does not understand us. We would never do such a thing to English officers. We had them as instructors and found them true friends of their men. Our officers were very different. They hit us and ignored us and treated us like animals. We shall never be permanently free until they are all dead. We must destroy their class. Russia——"

His voice had been growing louder and more raucous. Suddenly it softened as he turned to White and said: "Meester, you know your business and we know ours. Have a fig." And the game of cards continued.

Yet, among the whole shipload of rogues, the only man who victimized us was Titoff, the chief engineer. When we first came aboard he demanded twelve dollars a day for food which, being stolen from the ship's supplies, cost him nothing. At the instigation of the second and third engineers we reduced the payment to six dollars a day. He blustered, but gave way and tried to make up the difference by cheating us over tobacco, cigarettes, newspapers, and other articles bought on shore. He paid twenty-five dollars for a revolver, and tried to sell it to us for thirty-five, as being the cost price.

We had left at Psamatia a store of clothes and tinned food, which was to have been smuggled on board by the Russian aviator Vladimir Wilkowsky. As the days passed and nothing arrived we suspected Wilkowsky of having either failed or fooled us. Then, at a party in Titoff's cabin one evening, I saw inside a cupboard some tins of biscuits and cocoa, of the kinds that were sent to aviator prisoners in Turkey by the British Flying Services Fund. Titoff could not—and in any case certainly would not—have bought them in Constantinople; for English cocoa and biscuits, if obtainable at all in the shops of Pera, fetched extortionate prices.

Although the mere sight of the tins provided insufficient proof, the inference was that Wilkowsky had sent our belongings and that Titoff had stolen them. But we delayed investigation and accusation until we should be safely out of Turkey, and in the possession of revolvers. Some time or other we meant to make Titoff suffer. Meanwhile, we were forced to wait until our moment came.

Delay followed upon heart-breaking delay, until we began to lose hope that the Batoum would ever weigh anchor. In four days' time, it was promised, the cargo would arrive. Two days later the four days had stretched, elastic-wise, to ten, because a consignment of figs had not arrived from Smyrna. Then, a week afterward, a further extension of five days was reported, the Turkish merchant having failed to come to terms with the Ministry of Commerce.

It became impossible for us to remain in Kulman's cabin, which faced the captain's. The old skipper received many visitors, including Turkish officials, any one of whom might have been led by mischance to discover us. At Titoff's suggestion we moved to a small room on the bridge, formerly occupied by a wireless operator, in the days when the Batoum was a Russian transport. The transmitter and receiver were still there, but had been out of action long since, for the Germans forbade the use of wireless by merchant craft in the Black Sea.

There we remained hidden for a succession of twelve monotonous days and nights enlivened only by British air-raids and by expeditions to the deck when sunset and twilight were past, and we could take exercise by tramping backward and forward, forward and backward, in the shadow. For the rest, we continued to study Russian, and received friendly calls from Kulman, Josef, Feodor, Viktor the Student, and Bolshevik Bill the Greaser.

Titoff visited us once only, when he searched for the platinum points on the Marconi transmitter. But already every morsel of platinum had been removed; and the chief engineer seemed disgusted that somebody else should have anticipated his latest idea for profitable villainy.

The tedium of inactive waiting, of day-to-day hopes and disappointments, was as unpleasant and irritating as a blanket of damp horsehair. Our only diversion was the kaleidoscopic view from the window, while the ship swung with the tides. Not fifty yards away the Sultan's summer palace stood in white stone prominence amid the dull, squat buildings of Galata. Looking across the Bosphorus, with its heavy dhows, its ferryboats, its dancing kaiks, and its sun-glittering wavelets, we could see Seraglio Point, and, in the distance, the domed roofs and minaret spires of St. Sophia and the other great mosques of Stamboul.

Meals were served irregularly, for journeys from the kitchen to the wireless cabin were dependent upon the outgoings and incomings of the captain and his visitors. Whenever he or they came on the bridge we made fast the door, and crouched beneath the window.

Our supply of money continued to dwindle, until it was insufficient to pay the four hundred Turkish pounds which Titoff demanded as passage money. We hesitated to approach Mr. S. once more, not wishing to involve him in our danger. Yet we had no other method of obtaining funds. Driven to the distasteful course by urgent necessity we decided to compromise by communicating with him through intermediaries, instead of visiting his office ourselves.

Titoff was anxious to be employed as messenger, but we shrank from placing him in a position which he might misuse to blackmail Mr. S. We therefore resumed communication with Theodore, the Greek waiter, by sending him an envelope that contained instructions for himself, and a sealed letter for Mr. S. When Titoff went ashore to deliver the envelope to Theodore, Kulman accompanied him, as a check on his propensity to walk crookedly.

The pair returned with the welcome news that Mr. S. would cash our cheques in three days' time. Meanwhile, the stowaway syndicate had been offered new business. Fulton and Stone had appeared once again upon the escape-horizon, and were living in Theodore's house. Yeats-Brown, in his disguise, was paying them frequent visits. Theodore had approached Titoff with a proposition that on the night before the Batoum sailed the three of them should join us. The chief engineer and his partners rather shied at the increased risk, but the money offered was too much for them, and they agreed to take Yeats-Brown, Fulton, and Stone.

And then, with the prospect before us of sufficient funds and three useful companions, we suffered yet another disappointment. At the time appointed for a rendezvous Titoff went to fetch the money which Mr. S. was to send by Theodore. He returned with an anxious face and the announcement that the Greek waiter had disappeared. He waited vainly for more than an hour in the Maritza restaurant, where the other waiters professed to know nothing of Theodore's whereabouts.

It now seemed that not only should we be unable to pay for our passage, but that we had lost the money paid by Mr. S. (so we surmised) in exchange for our cheques. Somewhere, we felt sure, there was roguery. Three likely and unpleasant possibilities loomed before us. Theodore might have stolen the money and then vanished; Titoff might have stolen it; they might have stolen it jointly. Our one legitimate hope was that Mr. S. might not have cashed the cheques before Theodore's disappearance.

Our only chance of discovering the truth was personal investigation. On the following afternoon White, again wearing his fez and old overcoat and with his moustache darkened, rowed ashore. He took the tram to the foot of the Golden Horn bridge, walked across to Stamboul, and entered the Maritza.

The low-roofed restaurant's appearance was as usual; but somehow the atmosphere seemed electric with suspicion. A Turkish officer of gendarmerie sat at a table near the door. Theodore was conspicuously absent.

White ordered a glass of beer, and while doing so asked for news of him. The waiter looked frightened, and left the table without a reply. When he returned White repeated the question. He was then told:

"He has fallen with the three British officers. I pray you not to talk of it."

"But I must know," urged White, speaking in low-toned, halting French. "I am a British officer myself"—for this waiter, also, had acted as an intermediary for prisoners. He now looked more frightened than ever, and took care to keep away from the neighbourhood of White's table.

Glancing round, White saw a Turk washing his hands in the little basin at the back of the room, while looking, slantwise but intently, at each man present in turn, but more particularly at the proprietor and the waiters.

After White's return to the Batoum with the bad news we all but gave up hope of recovering the four hundred Turkish pounds; for the police would most certainly have taken whatever moneys were found on Theodore. We had, also, to reckon with the new danger that bastinado floggings might persuade the Greek into betraying us.

Next morning's issue of the Lloyd Ottoman brought detailed confirmations. Three British officers, said a Faits Divers paragraph, had been concealed in the house of one Theodore Yanni, a Greek waiter employed at a restaurant in Stamboul. The police surrounded the building and discovered them. They were taken to the Ministry of War Prison with Theodore, his two sisters, and his aged mother.

The Ministry of War Prison—"The Black Hole of Constantinople"! We could see the Ministry of War in the distance from the bridge of the Batoum, and knowing the horrors of its special punishment cells, we shuddered with sympathy for the strangely mixed party. Theodore himself, we supposed, would be hanged out of hand.

Our almost hopeless position forced us into the reckless decision to discover the truth by paying a personal visit to Mr. S. His office was in the Prisoners of War department of the Dutch Legation, where he helped to administer the British Red Cross funds.

The building was on the way to the Petits Champs Gardens, near the Pera Palace Hotel; and there I went, in my sailor's uniform, with Kulman as companion. At the door was a multi-lingual porter, whom I had seen when, before my escape, I once bribed a guard into letting me visit the Prisoners' Bureau. I hung back, and allowed Kulman to take the lead; for I feared that, despite the Russian uniform, the porter might recognize me by certain scars on my face, the legacy of an aeroplane crash. Fortunately he could talk Russian. In answer to Kulman he said that Mr. S. was out for the rest of the day. We left, therefore, and passed the afternoon in various cafés, where Kulman introduced me to friends as a German-speaking Lett.

Next afternoon, before starting for Pera, I was careful to make the tell-tale scars less evident by means of chalk and powder. This time we found that Mr. S. was in the Dutch Legation annexe, although engaged and busy. We walked up the stairway to the first floor and stood in the corridor outside Mr. S.'s office.

Only then did I realize the foolhardiness of the visit. Very much in evidence were two officials whom I had met as a prisoner; and I was forced to shrink behind Kulman when there passed a Jewish kavass who knew me well, from having brought clothes and money when I was a hospital patient. Fortunately he went by with only a casual glance at the two men in sailors' uniform.

We waited twenty minutes, and still the man with whom Mr. S. was closeted remained in the office. Twice, speaking in French, I made application to the lady-secretary of Mr. S.; but already, before we arrived, three people had been waiting to see him, and I was told that we must wait our turn. Kulman became anxious and fidgety, especially when, looking down the stairs, he saw some Turks in the hall.

Standing near us in the corridor were two elderly Jews, who appeared to listen intently when Kulman thought fit to emphasize my uniform by addressing me in Russian. Presently one of them produced an unlighted cigarette, and, also speaking in Russian, asked me for a match. Without a word I complied, while Kulman, by himself beginning a conversation, forestalled the suspicions which would have arisen if the Jew had begun to question me. I avoided speaking to them by again visiting the lady secretary. Later, Kulman drew me aside and said that it was impossible to remain any longer with the two Russian-speaking Jews.

His nerves—and mine also, for that matter—became still more shaky when, as we passed through the hall doorway, the porter stared hard at me and then followed us with his eyes until we turned into a side street that took us out of sight.

Although I had failed for the moment to reach Mr. S., it was imperative that one of us should see him. A new method of approach was advisable, for I believed that the porter half thought he recognized me. If I returned he would be more than ever suspicious of the scars; for everybody in the Prisoners of War Bureau had heard of my escape. The only alternative was for White to go. His disguise as Turk would be useless, as most people at the Legation spoke Turkish well, whereas he spoke it indifferently, with an accent that reeked of English vowel-sounds. We canvassed various nationalities and roles, and agreed that he must accuse himself of being one of the American missionaries who were still at liberty in Turkey.

Wearing my suit of mufti and the felt hat which I bought on the day I escaped, White shook hands and left me, after a reminder that if he were captured my clothes would go to prison with him. He was far from cheerful, for it was Friday, the thirteenth of September; and he remembered that his capture in Mesopotamia had taken place on Friday, the thirteenth of September, 1915.

Anxiously and uncomfortably, I waited through several hours of strained inactivity, fearing that if White, also, were recognized at the Prisoners' Bureau, disaster might overtake not only him, but our benefactor Mr. S.

At six o'clock he burst into the wireless cabin with a beaming face and the joyous announcement:

"I've seen S., and the money's not lost."

White's Friday, the thirteenth of September, had been an exciting one. He walked into the doorway of the Prisoners of War Bureau, and speaking in English, asked for Mr. S.

"Name?" inquired the porter.

"Mr. Henry O'Neill, from Tarsus."

"Do you know Mr. S.?"

"Why, certainly, I'm a friend of his." And White felt in his waistcoat pocket, as if searching for a card.

"His office is on the first floor," said the porter, satisfied. "Go straight up."

With a gulp of relief White passed up the stairway. Like myself on the day before, he had to wait many minutes before Mr. S. was disengaged; and like myself he was horrified to see Levy, the Jew kavass who had brought his letters and parcels to Gumuch Souyou Hospital. The kavass beamed, and delivered himself of an oily greeting, but failed to remember where he had met White.

"You speak as an Englishman," he said, after a few words of conversation. "You are a English prisoner, not?"

"Of course I'm an English prisoner," admitted White, slapping Levy on the back. "My guard's waiting outside."

The kavass fetched a chair for White and seemed disposed to ask more troublesome questions. Just then the visitor who had been engaged with Mr. S. left the office, and White walked inside, praying that the kavass and the porter would not compare notes, and identify Mr. Henry O'Neill, of Tarsus, with the British prisoner whose guard was waiting in the street.

The door being closed White explained his real identity to Mr. S., and offered apologies for the dangerous visit to which he had been forced by our desperate situation.

"You needn't worry about the money," said Mr. S., "I had no chance of paying it. I've destroyed the cheques."

He went on to relate how, not wishing to trust the Greek waiter with a large sum, he had sent a clerk to pay the banknotes into the hands of Titoff, at the Maritza. The clerk visited the little restaurant on the afternoon when Titoff waited in vain for Theodore. He dared not deliver the money there and then, for a Turk appeared to be watching the Russian engineer. When Titoff tired of waiting and went into the street the Turk followed, and shadowed him. The clerk, in his turn, trailed the Turkish agent unobtrusively. The three of them travelled in the same subway car from Galata to Pera. Titoff passed into Taxim Gardens. So did the agent and the clerk. He sat down and ordered a drink near the bandstand. The agent chose a table near him, and the clerk stationed himself within sight of both. At last, giving up hope of an opportunity to speak with Titoff, the clerk returned to Mr. S. and gave back the money.

Mr. S., meanwhile, had heard of the capture of Yeats-Brown, Fulton, and Stone, all of whom he had helped. He realized that he himself was in grave danger.

"I've had some sleepless nights over you fellows," he said to White. "I rather think I've been watched since the others were taken with Theodore, and I know your friend Titoff's watched. If Theodore blabs in prison, my neck will be almost as near the noose as his."

Mr. S., very rightly, was unwilling to advance us money for the present.

"The police want you badly," he pointed out, "and I'm probably a suspect already over Yeats-Brown and Company. If you're grabbed in Constantinople I want to be able to say with a clear conscience that I've given you no cash since you escaped. I shall know when the Batoum is due to leave, and do my best to help you on the day before she sails, when you're all but out of the wood. The difficulty will be in finding a messenger. An English lady [1] helped the fellows who were retaken, and she'd like to take you the money. But she's involved over them and the police are watching her."

Deeply appreciative of the great risks which Mr. S. was taking on behalf of not only us, but every prisoner who had tried to escape from Constantinople, White thanked him and left. At the top of the stairs he said good-bye to the kavass who knew him as a prisoner; at the front door he nodded to the porter who knew him as Mr. Henry O'Neill, of Tarsus. And so back to his rôle of paying guest on the Batoum.

With eased minds and renewed hope we continued to live in our wireless cabin, and prayed to Allah that the Batoum would sail soon, and that Mr. S. would find some means of sending the money. Away in the distance we could see the citadel of the Turkish Ministry of War, in which Yeats-Brown, Fulton, and Stone were dungeoned. All Constantinople talked of the capture, and the word went round the cafés that Theodore was to be hanged as a traitor, for having helped enemy prisoners to escape.

Thereupon Titoff, mortally afraid for his own neck, wanted to get rid of White and me. He made our shortage of ready money an excuse for ordering us ashore; but we claimed to have grown too fond of him to part company, and said that if we did leave the ship it would be to give ourselves up to the police, with the request that our friend and colleague Michael Ivanovitch Titoff should join us to prison. Michael Ivanovitch then protested, out of the kindness of his heart, that he would take us to Odessa whether we paid the full amount or only part of it.

So the anxious hours passed, until at last the sickening period of delay ended with the arrival of a consignment of cargo. A succession of lighters left the quay and moored alongside us, and all day we listened with delight to the clatter and whirr of the winches as they transferred bales and barrels to the Batoum's hatches. The final and infallible date of departure, announced the Turkish merchant who had chartered the ship for her voyage to Odessa, was September the twenty-second—four days later.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CITY OF DISGUISES

Constantinople, even at its most normal, has ever been a city of concealment—concealed motives, concealed truths and falsehoods, concealed cruelties and concealed persons. There, the way to a treaty, a change of government, a concession or a commercial contract is often through back doors and curtained corridors, with many a halt for whispered promises, whispered betrayals, and the handing over of baksheesh.

When normal life is upset by abnormal conditions the cauldron of crookedness bubbles over with a thousand and one conspiracies. Every other man is intriguing for himself, his safety, his pocket, his party, his family, or his government appointment, or from sheer inability not to intrigue. Such a period was the late summer of 1918, when we were disguised spectators of the misery and oppression that preceded the downfall of the Turkish Empire.

Four-fifths of the population, including the Turks themselves, were deadly sick of war and wanted peace at any price. They hated the Germans, and above all hated Enver Pasha and other Young Turk dictators, who ruled by violence with the support of the Germans. Only the politicians, the officials who lived by corruption, and the speculators were against a separate peace.

Many a time, before I escaped, I heard curses on Enver and on the Germans uttered by civilians, by officers, and even by guards. Once, when a party of us were sitting in Petits Champs Gardens, a waiter brought with the bill for tea a slip of paper on which he had written "Vive l'Angleterre!" Later, dressed as a sailor and sitting in the cafés with Kulman, I often heard the same sentiments expressed.

Yet the miserable, exploited populace seemed powerless to impress its wishes on the Government. It was too disunited and too listless for action. A total lack of national consciousness made Constantinople a capital without a country. The population was a haphazard jumble of races, an olla podrida of peoples that nothing, not even hunger and tyranny, could mould into a coherent whole. They murmured individually, but collectively they remained resigned and silent.

If circulation be the test of a city's vitality it proved Constantinople to be at very low ebb. All Mediterranean peoples move slowly in the streets; but the Constantinopolitans of 1918, I noticed, seemed to get nowhere; they crawled about aimlessly, or leaned against the walls and doorways in fatalistic inaction, waiting for something to happen.

In any case, the least attempt at organized protest was likely to lead to sudden disappearances. The dungeons of Stamboul jail were crammed with Greek, Armenian, and Turkish suspects; the infamous "Hall of Justice," in the Ministry of War, echoed the cries of prisoners whose interrogators extracted "information" by means of the bastinado. Open malcontents were hanged daily.

Every decent-living person was likely to feel the tentacles of Young Turk tyranny, as personified by Bedri Bey, Prefect of Police, and Djevad Bey, Military Governor of Constantinople. Only the unrighteous flourished. The speculation and graft were colossal, and beyond the most extravagant dreams of the British brand of war profiteer. Everybody was on the make. Ministers and high officials received huge bribes, little politicians made little fortunes by acting as go-betweens, rich merchants manipulated so as to get hundreds per cent profit.

To take but a few of the swindles that I remember from my Constantinople days, there were: the Smyrna sugar affaire, involving the barefaced theft of twenty truckloads of a consignment from Austria; the tobacco swindle, which made three directors of the Régie very wealthy men within a month; the cocaine and quinine corner, engineered by a few Jewish speculators, so that for a time the doctors could obtain these drugs only at the price of a hundred pounds a kilo; the oil scandal, the wood scandal, and the widespread flour-adulteration scandal, whereby the lowest grade of bread, which was all that the poor could afford, became not only unnourishing but inedible.

There being no system of rationing, only the well-to-do could buy the dearer necessities of ordinary life. The poor remained sugarless, for example, because sugar cost from two pounds sterling a kilo; and the chances were that even when bought at that price it would have been mixed with powdered marble. Thousands actually starved; while the beautiful island of Prinkipo, with its summer palaces and villas, swarmed with oily, scoundrelly, enormously wealthy Levantine vulgarians.

Some of the Ministers traded openly. Enver Pasha and his associates owned two of the largest shops in Stamboul. The Committee of Union and Progress, a vampire of corruption that drained the very life blood of Turkey, engaged enthusiastically in the orgy of speculation, and, by controlling the transport, amassed millions for their party. These sums the Committee had begun to invest in Switzerland and elsewhere as early as 1917; so that when the crash came Enver, Talaat, and other Young Turk leaders were able to abscond with bulging pockets.

The police, of course, shared in the plunder, and dabbled in every species of blackmail. They waxed fat on the system that entitled them to see the vecikas (identity papers) of any able-bodied man at any time. As the city contained many thousands of deserters, without taking into account those who obtained exemption from military service by continued bribes to recruiting officers and gendarmes, this was a profitable responsibility. A forged vecika, properly stamped, cost anything from fifty to a hundred dollars. To buy off a policeman when unprovided with a vecika was more speculative. A solitary gendarme, alone in a dark street, might be content to accept twenty-five dollars; whereas two gendarmes together could be persuaded only with difficulty to accept twenty, their mutual dignity and that of their official positions having to be maintained in face of each other.

The city was full of suppressed identities. Deserters were as common as nuts in May, and so were disguises. An enormous game of hide-and-seek was in progress, with police baksheesh as the forfeit for being caught.

When a rich man—Turk, Greek, Jew, or Armenian—was conscripted he could always pretend sickness, bribe the military doctor to send him to a hospital, bribe the hospital doctor who examined him, and finally bribe the medical board to give him leave. At the larger hospitals of Constantinople, such as Haidar Pasha and Gumuch Souyou, the recognized tariff was a hundred and twenty-five dollars for each month's leave, with pretended complaints suggested by the doctor by way of bonus.

The discontent and the misery twice showed itself in shots at Enver Pasha, as he drove through the streets in his Mercèdes; but the bullets either missed him or flattened themselves on the chain mail which he was reputed to wear.

Otherwise its outward manifestation was confined to the spreading of rumours indicative of an early victory for the Allies. The "Tatavla Agency," so-named from a district inhabitated by Greek merchants, was the centre of anti-German propaganda. From it, even at the time of Hindenburg's last great drive, there spread the wildest reports of Ententist successes. Some, no doubt, were concocted to influence the Bourse; but the object of most was to encourage the starving population in their hopes for the downfall of the Young Turco-German régime.

No statement was too far-fetched to be believed in the bazaars and cafés. When the British aeroplanes renewed their bomb-raids on Constantinople, in the autumn of 1918, Yeats-Brown dropped hints that the attacks were not the work of the British, but were a display of German frightfulness, to show what would happen if Turkey's loyalty to Germany wavered. After an interval of weeks this beautiful lie was whispered back to him by a Greek, with well-imagined circumstances and details to make it the more plausible.

Captain Yeats-Brown and Captain Sir Robert Paul lived through the most extravagant adventures before the Turkish armistice found them still in disguised liberty. They first escaped with the help of Miss Whittaker, "the Edith Cavell of Constantinople." It was owing to her that, already before leaving the prison at Psamatia, they were well supplied with money and could look forward to a hiding-place. As prisoners, they had kept in touch with her by means of letters, five-minute meetings outside the British Church, and short conversations in the park, under the complacent eyes of a bribed guard.

One night they slipped through the window of their room in the prison-house, and having climbed along a narrow ledge, let themselves into the street with a rope. Wearing fezzes and with their faces stained brown, they walked to Theodore's house. Afterward they moved to the room prepared for them in Pera.

A few days later Paul, dressed as an Arab, left Constantinople with two Greeks. The party of three crossed the Sea of Marmora in a sailing-boat, landed on the northern coast, and began tramping toward the Gulf of Enos, where a boat awaited them.

Unfortunately for Paul the description of him, which the Ministry of War circulated, mentioned that he had a prominent stoop. A stranger with this peculiarity was found asleep in the church of a Greek village; and by arresting him the local gendarme earned (but probably never received) the reward offered for the British officer's capture. Paul was brought back to the capital and dungeoned in the Ministry of War Prison.

Yeats-Brown, meanwhile, had been stalking about the streets of Constantinople as Mlle. Josephine Albert, in female clothes lent by Miss Whittaker. He was now at a loose end, for Paul and the Greeks were to have been the advance guard of a larger party, including Yeats-Brown and several civilians who wished to leave Turkey.

After weeks of excitement in the City of Disguises Mlle. Albert received an unexpected message from two old friends, who were living in a back room of Theodore's house. Fulton and Stone had escaped from a train at Haidar Pasha station two hours after my disappearance from the ferry stage. With the help of my map they made their way by moonlight to San Stefano aerodrome. There they waited for three days at the place of rendezvous appointed by John Willie, the Bosnian aviator. Made desperate by his nonappearance one of them called at the German officers' mess and enquired for him; but, as they then learned, John Willie had been arrested a week earlier as a suspect, and was in the Ministry of War Prison, awaiting court-martial.

Fulton and Stone returned to Constantinople, and bribed Theodore to hide them in his house. They were visited by Miss Whittaker, who brought money from Mr. S., and by Mlle. Josephine Albert Yeats-Brown.

Captain Yeats-Brown, wearing the disguise in which as "Mlle. Josephine Albert" he lived for several weeks in Constantinople while doing propaganda work. The clothes were lent to him by Miss Whittaker (now Lady Paul), "the Edith Cavell of Constantinople," who helped several British officers to escape from the Turks.

For want of a better opportunity the three British officers planned to buy a small sailing-boat, and take it across the Black Sea. Prince Avaloff, the Georgian officer who was a semi-prisoner at Psamatia, had kept in touch with Yeats-Brown, and promised to accompany them. Having landed somewhere near Poti their scheme would be to make for Avaloff's estate in Georgia. It was at this period that White and I heard from the trio, as a result of Titoff's visit to Theodore.

For many weeks the Maritza restaurant had been watched. A police spy suspected Theodore; and one afternoon gendarmes surrounded his house, while others entered and searched every room. Very unfortunately for Yeats-Brown, whose hiding-place lay elsewhere, he was visiting Fulton and Stone at the time. All three were captured.

A queer procession passed through the winding alleys of Stamboul to the Ministry of War Prison. First went Theodore, blinking nervously behind his blue-glassed spectacles. Then came Yeats-Brown, in his brand-new disguise of a Hungarian mechanic. Fulton and Stone were behind him, wearing only shirts, pants, and socks; for they had been half dressed when captured, and the police refused permission to put on coats and trousers. Theodore's two sisters and his old mother brought up the rear.

When the police surrounded Theodore's house Miss Whittaker was on her way to visit Fulton and Stone. Seeing gendarmes before the door she passed on, and returned to her home in Pera; but for long afterward she was conscious of being spied upon and followed. It was for this reason that she had to abandon her intention of bringing to the Batoum the money which White and I were to receive from Mr. S.

The prison beneath the Ministry of War now contained an extraordinary gathering of characters in the melodrama of escape and capture. Paul was joined by Yeats-Brown, Fulton, and Stone; John Willie, the Bosnian, was in another cell, with some political prisoners; Theodore, weakened by lack of food, fell ill in a dreadful dungeon, and nearly died. A trial, he knew, could only have one result for him—sentence of hanging. His mother and his two sisters received rather better treatment, and were soon released.

The four Britishers lived through many strange days in the prison where they consorted with a variety of captives that included Greeks, Armenians, Turkish officers, two Mohammedan notabilities from Cairo, a young Turkish prince who had been imprisoned for brawling in the Sultan's palace, and the prince's eunuch. Yeats-Brown and Paul, meantime, planned to escape from the famous old jail, a feat which no captive had yet performed since it was built, six hundred years ago.

While walking in the garden one evening they slipped away from their guards, and mingled with a crowd of officials who were crossing the courtyard outside the Ministry of War. Swerving aside before they reached the sentried gate, the pair climbed over some railings—and were free once more. They walked across the Golden Horn Bridge, and so to Pera. There, once again, Miss Whittaker and her friends found them a place of concealment, near the deserted British Embassy.

Then began for the escaped couple a period of flitting from one excitement to another. They became involved in a succession of underground activities; and, with the help of Greeks and the clever coöperation of Miss Whittaker, they spread around the city reports, beliefs, hopes, and arguments likely to influence citizens in favour of the Allies and against the Germans and Young Turks. They buried their identities under darkened hair, false moustaches, fezzes, and forged vecikas.

Yeats-Brown's propaganda work brought him into contact with a small group of politicians and malcontents who were plotting a coup d'état against the Young Turks. Although the miserable, exploited populace had no popular leader to voice its discontent there came a moment—while the Bulgars were at the gates of Adrianople, communications with Germany were cut, the Allied Fleet threatened Dedeagatch and the citizens of Aleppo were preparing to surrender to Allenby's victorious cavalry—when everyone in Constantinople knew that Turkey was beaten. Open rebellion which was to have hanged Talaat, Enver, and Djemal Pashas high in the square of the Seraskarat then threatened.

But the rising was still-born, owing to treachery. The Prefect of Police suddenly quadrupled his patrols, a few Turkish officers were arrested, a few more civilians were hanged, a few conspirators disappeared into the submerged world where men walked cautiously and in the shadow, a few machine guns were placed so as to command a Greek cathedral, a couple of aged senators were executed for having "intrigued for a political resolution hostile to the Government"; and life went on as before—upon the surface….

But escaped prisoners did not live upon the surface. They were in touch with seditious elements beneath it. Once when Yeats-Brown was in a certain café with some Greeks, and the talk was becoming wild as the árak bottle passed, there entered a detective known to everybody, even to the British officer, who was the youngest initiate in "crime" present. And without a whisper or a wink the talk swung, easily and naturally, from the rankest sedition to the most harmless commonplace.

"We will destroy the Young Turks!" said a speaker, "we will destroy the Young Turks and cut them in little pieces!"

He was harmonizing his words with indescribably graphic gesture, when his expressive hands opened in a bland expression of resignation.

"What, therefore, can we do, my friends?" he continued. "We must remain calm, and retain our dignity as citizens of a great city."

Nobody looked round or betrayed surprise; but the alien presence was sensed by all. Soon after this scene the meeting adjourned to a cellar, where a quiet, elderly gentleman, the proprietor of an hotel inhabited chiefly by German officers, declared himself desirous of cutting his clients' throats.

In war-time Constantinople one grew accustomed to this atmosphere of melodrama, and learned not to regard it too seriously. The more one knows of the Constantinopolitans of to-day the less can one trust any estimate of them. Eternally fickle, like their forerunners who looked on with equal enthusiasm at the triumph and execution of emperors and sultans, they saw no incongruity in the city's hero-worship of Enver Bey in 1908 and its deep detestation of Enver Pasha in 1918. Even now, after welcoming the French and British with mad joy one short year ago, they are restless, and again wear the cloak of conspiracy.

The wayward fickleness of Constantinople ruined the Byzantine Greeks, and sapped the strength of the Roman Empire. Now, after a long period of fretful wedlock, she is shaking herself free from the Turk. Whoever next attempts to rule her will have some restless days and nights.

At the beginning of September there arrived in Constantinople another escaped prisoner, who was to play an important part in the sensational events that preceded the downfall of the Young Turks and their German partners.

Several months earlier Lieutenant-Colonel Newcombe, D.S.O., R.E., had been imprisoned in the Turkish Ministry of War, while awaiting court-martial for an attempted escape. After his acquittal, owing to lack of evidence, he was allowed into the city with the prison interpreter. In a Pera tea-shop he met Mlle. "X", a Franco-Greek lady of Entente sympathies, who offered to help him in any way possible. A secret correspondence followed; and when Colonel Newcombe was sent to the prison camp at Broussa, Mlle. "X", with her maid, followed him.

She stayed at a small hotel, on the pretence of taking the sulphur baths for which Broussa was famous. Several meetings took place, including a rendezvous at the house of the local Austrian Consul, whose daughters were school-fellows of Mlle. "X."

The final interview at Broussa was when Colonel Newcombe, having obtained the clothes of an Arab imam, [2] disguised himself in this dress and slipped out of camp unobserved. He walked to the hotel, and there the scheme of escape was definitely arranged. He then returned, and by climbing over a wall, got back into the prison house without being seen.

Mlle. "X" left Broussa for Constantinople. On the way she stopped at Mudania (the port of Broussa) to bargain with two Greek boatmen, who agreed to take the British officer across the Sea of Marmora. From Constantinople she had a letter smuggled to Broussa, explaining how the boatmen might be recognized.

Having read the letter Colonel Newcombe again disguised himself as an Arab, and at dusk slipped away from the prison house, while another officer-prisoner distracted the guards' attention by running in the opposite direction. He walked all night by moonlight, and reached Mudania next morning.

Having found the Greeks, and paid a hundred dollars for the hire of their boat, he put to sea with them. A strong wind raged, so that he was fourteen hours on the Sea of Marmora, living during this time on bread and raisins. Finally he reached Constantinople and went to the house of Mlle. "X"'s parents.

Like White and myself, Colonel Newcombe planned to go to Russia. He, also, had his fill of adventure. Once, he remained safely hidden in Miss Whittaker's house while the police were searching it for Yeats-Brown and Paul.

He wrote several anti-German proclamations for distribution among the Turkish soldiers, and concocted a letter to the Turkish army commanders, advising them to refuse further service unless a new ministry were formed. But the Turco-German débâcle in the Near East, of which General Allenby's victories in Palestine and the Bulgarian surrender were the beginnings, made him abandon this work for something more important. Soon he found himself drawn into the very centre of the vortex of plotting that swirled around the Sultan, the Cabinet, and the Sublime Porte.

The peace parties lacked a leader powerful enough to take open action; and when the old Sultan, who had been but a puppet dancing to the strings pulled by Talaat and Enver, died in July, they hoped to find one in his brother, the successor to the throne.

The new ruler, although he was neither strong enough nor able enough to challenge the Young Turk leaders until after the Bulgarian armistice, certainly leaned toward the Entente and favoured peace. His first act was to send for the only English tailor in Constantinople, a civil prisoner, and to order several uniforms from him.

The excitement among the Turkish politicians was indescribable.

"Have you heard about Mr. Hayden, the English tailor? The Sultan said to him——" And rumour made the Sultan tell the English tailor everything that was sensationally anti-German and anti-Enver.

Had the Sultan opposed the Grand Vizier and Enver Pasha in July, he would have found support; for three-fourths of Constantinople detested the Government. But the constabulary were faithful to Enver, who could likewise have relied upon the many thousands of German troops concentrated in the city; and a premature attempt by the Sultan to withdraw Turkey from the war would have risked his life and his throne.

The defection of Bulgaria had the effect of an unexpected cold douche on Enver and Talaat; who, after the Turkish occupation of Batoum and capture of Baku, had been dreaming of a Greater Turkey that was to include the Maritza basin, most of the Dobrudja, and the whole of the Caucasus from the Black Sea to the Caspian, with a sphere of influence extending eastward to Bokhara and Samarkand. Agents and gramophone records were carrying the voice of Enver all over the Moslem world.