Greenmantle, John Buchan [which ebook reader TXT] 📗

Peter, and we clambered into the truck next our horse-box. I had been half expecting some move like this and had made a plan.

The Turk swaggered up and addressed us. “You can get back to Rustchuk,” he said. “I take over from you here. Hand me the papers.”

“Is this Chataldja?” I asked innocently.

“It is the end of your affair,” he said haughtily. “Quick, or it will be the worse for you.”

“Now, look here, my son,” I said; “you’re a kid and know nothing. I hand over to General von Oesterzee and to no one else.”

“You are in Turkey,” he cried, “and will obey the Turkish Government.”

“I’ll obey the Government right enough,” I said; “but if you’re the Government I could make a better one with a bib and a rattle.”

He said something to his men, who unslung their rifles.

“Please don’t begin shooting,” I said. “There are twelve armed guards in this train who will take their orders from me. Besides, I and my friend can shoot a bit.”

“Fool!” he cried, getting very angry. “I can order up a regiment in five minutes.”

“Maybe you can,” I said; “but observe the situation. I am sitting on enough toluol to blow up this countryside. If you dare to come aboard I will shoot you. If you call in your regiment I will tell you what I’ll do. I’ll fire this stuff, and I reckon they’ll be picking up the bits of you and your regiment off the Gallipoli Peninsula.”

He had put up a bluff—a poor one—and I had called it. He saw I meant what I said, and became silken.

“Good-bye, sir,” he said. “You have had a fair chance and rejected it. We shall meet again soon, and you will be sorry for your insolence.”

He strutted away and it was all I could do to keep from running after him. I wanted to lay him over my knee and spank him.

We got safely to Chataldja, and were received by von Oesterzee like long-lost brothers. He was the regular gunner-officer, not thinking about anything except his guns and shells. I had to wait about three hours while he was checking the stuff with the invoices, and then he gave me a receipt which I still possess. I told him about Rasta, and he agreed that I had done right. It didn’t make him as mad as I expected, because, you see, he got his stuff safe in any case. It was only that the wretched Turks had to pay twice for the lot of it.

He gave Peter and me luncheon, and was altogether very civil and inclined to talk about the war. I would have liked to hear what he had to say, for it would have been something to get the inside view of Germany’s Eastern campaign, but I did not dare to wait. Any moment there might arrive an incriminating wire from Rustchuk. Finally he lent us a car to take us the few miles to the city.

So it came about that at five past three on the 16th day of January, with only the clothes we stood up in, Peter and I entered Constantinople.

I was in considerable spirits, for I had got the final lap successfully over, and I was looking forward madly to meeting my friends; but, all the same, the first sight was a mighty disappointment. I don’t quite know what I had expected—a sort of fairyland Eastern city, all white marble and blue water, and stately Turks in surplices, and veiled houris, and roses and nightingales, and some sort of string band discoursing sweet music. I had forgotten that winter is pretty much the same everywhere. It was a drizzling day, with a south-east wind blowing, and the streets were long troughs of mud. The first part I struck looked like a dingy colonial suburb—wooden houses and corrugated iron roofs, and endless dirty, sallow children. There was a cemetery, I remember, with Turks’ caps stuck at the head of each grave. Then we got into narrow steep streets which descended to a kind of big canal. I saw what I took to be mosques and minarets, and they were about as impressive as factory chimneys. By and by we crossed a bridge, and paid a penny for the privilege. If I had known it was the famous Golden Horn I would have looked at it with more interest, but I saw nothing save a lot of moth-eaten barges and some queer little boats like gondolas. Then we came into busier streets, where ramshackle cabs drawn by lean horses spluttered through the mud. I saw one old fellow who looked like my notion of a Turk, but most of the population had the appearance of London old-clothes men. All but the soldiers, Turk and German, who seemed well-set-up fellows.

Peter had paddled along at my side like a faithful dog, not saying a word, but clearly not approving of this wet and dirty metropolis.

“Do you know that we are being followed, Cornelis?” he said suddenly, “ever since we came into this evil-smelling dorp.”

Peter was infallible in a thing like that. The news scared me badly, for I feared that the telegram had come to Chataldja. Then I thought it couldn’t be that, for if von Oesterzee had wanted me he wouldn’t have taken the trouble to stalk me. It was more likely my friend Rasta.

I found the ferry of Ratchik by asking a soldier and a German sailor there told me where the Kurdish Bazaar was. He pointed up a steep street which ran past a high block of warehouses with every window broken. Sandy had said the left-hand side coming down, so it must be the right-hand side going up. We plunged into it, and it was the filthiest place of all. The wind whistled up it and stirred the garbage. It seemed densely inhabited, for at all the doors there were groups of people squatting, with their heads covered, though scarcely a window showed in the blank walls.

The street corkscrewed endlessly. Sometimes it seemed to stop; then it found a hole in the opposing masonry and edged its way in. Often it was almost pitch dark; then would come a greyish twilight where it opened out to the width of a decent lane. To find a house in that murk was no easy job, and by the time we had gone a quarter of a mile I began to fear we had missed it. It was no good asking any of the crowd we met. They didn’t look as if they understood any civilized tongue.

At last we stumbled on it—a tumble-down coffee house, with A. Kuprasso above the door in queer amateur lettering. There was a lamp burning inside, and two or three men smoking at small wooden tables.

We ordered coffee, thick black stuff like treacle, which Peter anathematized. A negro brought it, and I told him in German I wanted to speak to Mr Kuprasso. He paid no attention, so I shouted louder at him, and the noise brought a man out of the back parts.

He was a fat, oldish fellow with a long nose, very like the Greek traders you see on the Zanzibar coast. I beckoned to him and he waddled forward, smiling oilily. Then I asked him what he would take, and he replied, in very halting German, that he would have a sirop.

“You are Mr Kuprasso,” I said. “I wanted to show this place to my friend. He has heard of your garden-house and the fun there.”

“The Signor is mistaken. I have no garden-house.”

“Rot,” I said; “I’ve been here before, my boy. I recall your shanty at the back and many merry nights there. What was it you called it? Oh, I remember—the Garden-House of Suliman the Red.”

He put his finger to his lip and looked incredibly sly. “The Signor remembers that. But that was in the old happy days before war came. The place is long since shut. The people here are too poor to dance and sing.”

“All the same I would like to have another look at it,” I said, and I slipped an English sovereign into his hand.

He glanced at it in surprise and his manner changed. “The Signor is a Prince, and I will do his will.” He clapped his hands and the negro appeared, and at his nod took his place behind a little side-counter.

“Follow me,” he said, and led us through a long, noisome passage, which was pitch dark and very unevenly paved. Then he unlocked a door and with a swirl the wind caught it and blew it back on us.

We were looking into a mean little yard, with on one side a high curving wall, evidently of great age, with bushes growing in the cracks of it. Some scraggy myrtles stood in broken pots, and nettles flourished in a corner. At one end was a wooden building like a dissenting chapel, but painted a dingy scarlet. Its windows and skylights were black with dirt, and its door, tied up with rope, flapped in the wind.

“Behold the Pavilion,” Kuprasso said proudly.

“That is the old place,” I observed with feeling. “What times I’ve seen there! Tell me, Mr Kuprasso, do you ever open it now?”

He put his thick lips to my ear.

“If the Signor will be silent I will tell him. It is sometimes open—not often. Men must amuse themselves even in war. Some of the German officers come here for their pleasure, and but last week we had the ballet of Mademoiselle Cici. The police approve—but not often, for this is no time for too much gaiety. I will tell you a secret. Tomorrow afternoon there will be dancing—wonderful dancing! Only a few of my patrons know. Who, think you, will be here?”

He bent his head closer and said in a whisper—

“The Compagnie des Heures Roses.”

“Oh, indeed,” I said with a proper tone of respect, though I hadn’t a notion what he meant.

“Will the Signor wish to come?”

“Sure,” I said. “Both of us. We’re all for the rosy hours.”

“Then the fourth hour after midday. Walk straight through the cafe and one will be there to unlock the door. You are new-comers here? Take the advice of Angelo Kuprasso and avoid the streets after nightfall. Stamboul is no safe place nowadays for quiet men.” I asked him to name a hotel, and he rattled off a list from which I chose one that sounded modest and in keeping with our get-up. It was not far off, only a hundred yards to the right at the top of the hill.

When we left his door the night had begun to drop. We hadn’t gone twenty yards before Peter drew very near to me and kept turning his head like a hunted stag.

“We are being followed close, Cornelis,” he said calmly.

Another ten yards and we were at a cross-roads, where a little place faced a biggish mosque. I could see in the waning light a crowd of people who seemed to be moving towards us. I heard a high-pitched voice cry out a jabber of excited words, and it seemed to me that I had heard the voice before.