Caught by the Turks Part 15

Meanwhile the band played, and people pa.s.sed, and inquisitive eyes were turned in our direction.

"That's a spy who knows me," Miss Whitaker would say. "_Encore une ta.s.se, mademoiselle? Non?_ I think we ought to be going."

"We'll settle the final details to-morrow," I whispered.

"Right! Remember to let your beard grow. I couldn't have a smooth-faced orderly."

"_Eh bien, mille mercis, Colonel_," said I, giving him my hand.

He held it a moment, bowing, and looking inexpressible things.

"_Ah, Josephine. . . ._"

"_A demain, alors!_"

And with a simper I left my gallant and dapper cavalier to pay the bill.

CHAPTER X

RECAPTURED

At five o'clock one morning Mlle. Josephine received a staggering note from the Russian Colonel to say that he had had to leave at a moment's notice for the Caucasus, under a Turkish guard, and that there was no prospect at all of his taking his dear Josephine with him.

Thus my plan had failed. It was not the Colonel's fault, but it was annoying all the same. I had wasted both time and money, provisions and opportunities, and now I had to begin all over again.

I decided that I would not continue in my disguise as a girl. It was too nerve-racking to begin with; and also, as a girl, I could not go down myself to the docks and arrange matters at first hand. I felt I must do something for myself. During the month that had elapsed Robin had been recaptured, other officers had escaped, the whole course of the war was changing, and here was I still _embusque_ in Constantinople.

Something must be done, and, as usual, my good angel did it for me. . . . She bought me a small upturned moustache, spectacles, hair-dye, a second-hand suit, a stained white waistcoat which I ornamented with a large nickel gilt watch chain, a pair of old elastic-sided boots (price 7), an ebony cane with a silver top, and a bowler hat which I perched rakishly askew. I was a Hungarian mechanic, out of a job. I had lost my place at the munition factory near San Stefano. But I was not down-hearted. My nails were oily and my antecedents doubtful, but I drank my beer and smoked my cigars and looked on life brightly through my spectacles.

I did not avoid the Boche--in fact, I frequently drank beer with him.

The non-Latin races are not inquisitive as a rule. They cared little whether I was Swiss or Dutch or Hungarian, and I frequently claimed all three nationalities. They did not even think it odd when, on one occasion, I said that I had been born in Scandinavia and later that I was a naturalised Hungarian, and later again (when a Jewish gentleman with military boots joined us, whom I recognised to be a Government informer, paid to pick up information) that I was really of Russian parentage and that I had a pa.s.sport to this effect (which I showed to the company present) signed by Djevad Bey, the military commandant of Constantinople, permitting me to proceed to Russia and ordering that every facility should be given to me at the custom-house.

This forged pa.s.sport was a source of perplexity to me at the time, and later it was to be the cause of great discomfort. I had bought it for ten pounds from the gentleman whose pumicestone engraving die reposed at the bottom of the cistern. It was an ornate affair, duly stamped, and sealed, and signed with a Turkish flourish. But I could not bring myself to believe that it would get me through the pa.s.sport office, the _douane_, and the medical station at the entrance to the Bosphorus. Some hitch would certainly have occurred.

However, it impressed the company in the cafe. People generally take one at one's own valuation, and the few secret agents to whom I spoke obviously considered that I was not a likely person to be blackmailed.

With the Greeks I was certainly popular. The seedy-smart polyglot youth who was so liberal with his cigars (which were rather a rarity then) and so fond of talking politics and drinking beer was a _persona grata_ in the circles he frequented. We talked much of revolution.

"We will crucify the Young Turks," said a Greek to me one day, "and then eat them in little bits. We will----" His expressive hands suddenly paused in mid-gesture, and his mouth dropped open, but only for an instant. He had seen a detective enter. "We will continue to preserve our dignity and remain calm whatever happens," he concluded neatly.

But calm the Greeks certainly were not.

In the cellar of a German hotel in Pera the Greek proprietor displayed one night a collection of rusty swords and old revolvers which were the nucleus of the New Age of brotherly love, when the streets were to run with Turkish blood, and the Cross replace the Crescent in San Sophia. I was privileged to be present at this conclave of desperadoes. After swearing each other to eternal secrecy we sampled some of the contents of our host's cellar, and talked very big about what we were going to do. But our host, beyond dancing a hornpipe and declaring that he was going to murder everybody in the hotel (after they had paid their bills), propounded no very definite scheme.

Out of this atmosphere of melodrama one emerged into the sombre, silent streets and went rather furtively home, feeling that there was something to be said for the Turks after all. But I need hardly say that no influential Greeks had a share in these proceedings: they were always on the side of moderation. One had been a fool to consort with fools.

Behind the lattices of the harems it was said that Enver Pasha's day was done. The new Sultan had thrown him out of the palace, neck and crop.

There was to be an inquiry into the means by which he had acquired huge farms round Constantinople--farms which were supposed to be purchased from the proceeds of a corner in milk that had killed many children. The Custodians of the Harem (and in Turkey these tall flat-chested individuals have positions of great power; the Chief of the White Custodians, for instance, is one of the high dignitaries of the Empire, and ranks with a Lord Chamberlain) had long been intriguing against the Committee and especially against the German element with Enver at its head. . . . The Sultan was high in popular favour, and a dramatic suicide in the main street of Pera, which lifted a corner of the curtain hiding the unrest behind the scenes at the Imperial Palace, became a nine days' wonder, and gave rise to extraordinary rumours. A Turkish officer in full uniform had been seen running for dear life down the Grand Rue de Pera, pursued by policemen. The officer took refuge in the Turkish club, but he was refused asylum there. The policemen crowded into the entrance hall to arrest him, while the fugitive dashed upstairs to the card-room. Finding, however, that he could not avoid arrest, he threw himself out of the window, and was instantly killed on the pavement below. For some time, the corpse, dressed in the uniform of the Yildiz Guards, blocked the traffic of the city.

A few days later a British air-raid gave the Constantinopolitans something new to think about. It was a stifling night, and I was dozing and listening to the mosquitoes that buzzed round me, when their drone seemed to grow louder and louder. I lay quite still, thinking that another raid would be too good to be true. But presently there was no doubt about it. Invisible, but very audible, the British squadron was sailing overhead. I jumped up and at that moment the Turks put up their barrage. Bang! Boom! Whizz! Kk--kk--kk! All the little voices of civilisation were speaking.

Greeks crowded into the streets, and clapped their hands when the crash and rumble of a bomb was heard in the Turkish quarter of Stamboul.

"The Sultan is going to make peace," they told me. "He has refused to gird on the Sword of Othman until the Committee of Union and Progress give an account of their funds."

"Hurrah for the English!" shouted others, quite undismayed by the shrapnel and falling pieces of sh.e.l.l.

Here are some chance remarks, actually heard during air raids.

"Ah! Here is the revolution at last!" said a Turkish officer in a chemist's shop in the Grand Rue de Pera, thinking the firing meant the downfall of Enver Pasha and his gang.

"Bread costs four shillings a two-pound loaf," said an Armenian in the suburb of Chichli--"and as often as not there is a stone or half a mouse thrown into the four shillings' worth, for luck. May this gang of swindlers perish!"

"Allah! send the English soon," wailed a Turkish widow in a hovel in Stamboul, where she was living with her five starving children. "We are being killed by inches now; it would be better to be killed quickly by bombs. The English cannot be worse than Enver."

This, indeed, was the general opinion in Constantinople. Few of the population, outside the high officials, bore us any grudge. The thieving of the Young Turks was on as vast a scale as their ambition. From needy adventurers they had become the prosperous potentates of an Empire. No country, surely, has ever been the prey of such desperate and determined men.

The air raids were one of the first causes of their weakening hold on the people. The moral effect of these demonstrations was incalculable, coming as it did at a time when the Sultan was supposed to be in favour of peace.

Peace, indeed, was the only faint hope of salvation that remained to the very poor. Milk had almost disappeared from the open market, and for some time past children had been exposed in the street, their mothers being unable to support them any longer.

Each night, when I pa.s.sed the Pet.i.ts Champs, I saw a row of starving children, poor little living protests of humanity against the barbarisms of war and the cruelty of profiteers, huddled on the pavement, mute, uncomplaining, too weak to even ask for alms.

And Bedri Bey, sometime Prefect of Police at Constantinople, when appealed to, said: "_Bah! Les pauvres, qu'ils crevent._"

Although politics were interesting enough, escape was my first preoccupation. It was necessary to approach the harbour officials with caution, and they, on their side, although ready enough to help with suggestions, seemed inclined to shelve all the actual work on to a person or persons unknown, who remained in the background. It was very difficult to get at the princ.i.p.als.

One of the chief agents of escape, however, I met one day in the Grand Rue de Pera. He was a most remarkable man. Intrigue was the breath of his nostrils, and although he had made thousands of pounds by helping rich refugees out of the country, he was really more interested in politics than pelf. He laid the groundwork of such knowledge as I acquired of Constantinople.

Incidentally, in the course of our conversation, a squad of Russian officer prisoners pa.s.sed, accompanied by two sentries whom I knew quite well. So confident did I feel of not being recognised that I said a few words to one of the Russians, while their escort glanced at me with faces perfectly blank. They had not the vaguest idea who I was.

To get away from Constantinople, the escape merchant told me, was a matter of pa.s.sing the custom house. Formerly this had been easy, but now every ship was searched from stem to stern and from deck to keelson.

Also every skipper was a Mohammedan. All Christians had been recently deprived of their positions.

Still, Mohammedans are not an unbribable people, and something might possibly be done for me. In fact, that very day he had learnt of a certain Lazz shipmaster, who was going over to the Caucasus in his own boat, and who would be prepared to take a few pa.s.sengers for a consideration.

Later in the same day I heard that two other officers, who had escaped about a week before (by bolting under a train in Haidar Pasha railway station), were already in touch with this Lazz. I went to see them early the following morning and we agreed to charter the boat between us, so as to reduce expenses.

My two friends were living in the house of one Theodore, a Greek waiter at a restaurant in Sirkedji, who believed that they, as well as myself, were Germans.

The Lazz, who came to visit us, was absolutely astounded when we proclaimed ourselves as British officers: he had been under the impression that we were some sort of Turkish subject. However, all pa.s.sengers were grist to his mill, and British officers who talked glibly of gold payments were not people to be neglected. After haggling about terms, we made an appointment for the next day, and parted with some cordiality.

On the morrow, punctual to our appointments, the Lazz and I again arrived at Theodore's house to confer further with my two friends.