Chapter Ten. The Garden-House of Suliman the Red

Greenmantle

by John Buchan

We reached Rustchuk on January 10th, but by no means landed on
that day. Something had gone wrong with the unloading arrangements,
or more likely with the railway behind them, and we were kept
swinging all day well out in the turbid river. On the top of this
Captain Schenk got an ague, and by that evening was a blue and
shivering wreck. He had done me well, and I reckoned I would stand
by him. So I got his ship's papers, and the manifests of cargo, and
undertook to see to the trans-shipment. It wasn't the first time I
had tackled that kind of business, and I hadn't much to learn about
steam cranes. I told him I was going on to Constantinople and would
take Peter with me, and he was agreeable. He would have to wait at
Rustchuk to get his return cargo, and could easily inspan a fresh
engineer.

I worked about the hardest twenty-four hours of my life getting
the stuff ashore. The landing officer was a Bulgarian, quite a
competent man if he could have made the railways give him the trucks
he needed. There was a collection of hungry German transport
officers always putting in their oars, and being infernally insolent
to everybody. I took the high and mighty line with them; and, as I
had the Bulgarian commandant on my side, after about two hours'
blasphemy got them quieted.

But the big trouble came the next morning when I had got nearly
all the stuff aboard the trucks.

A young officer in what I took to be a Turkish uniform rode up
with an aide-de-camp. I noticed the German guards saluting him, so I
judged he was rather a swell. He came up to me and asked me very
civilly in German for the way-bills. I gave him them and he looked
carefully through them, marking certain items with a blue pencil.
Then he coolly handed them to his aide-de-camp and spoke to him in
Turkish. 'Look here, I want these back,' I said. 'I can't do without
them, and we've no time to waste.' 'Presently,' he said, smiling, and
went off.

I said nothing, reflecting that the stuff was for the Turks and
they naturally had to have some say in its handling. The loading was
practically finished when my gentleman returned. He handed me a
neatly typed new set of way-bills. One glance at them showed that
some of the big items had been left out.

'Here, this won't do,' I cried. 'Give me back the right set.
This thing's no good to me.' For answer he winked gently, smiled like
a dusky seraph, and held out his hand. In it I saw a roll of
money.

'For yourself,' he said. 'It is the usual custom.'

It was the first time anyone had ever tried to bribe me, and it
made me boil up like a geyser. I saw his game clearly enough. Turkey
would pay for the lot to Germany: probably had already paid the bill:
but she would pay double for the things not on the way-bills, and pay
to this fellow and his friends. This struck me as rather steep even
for Oriental methods of doing business.

'Now look here, Sir,' I said, 'I don't stir from this place till
I get the correct way-bills. If you won't give me them, I will have
every item out of the trucks and make a new list. But a correct list
I have, or the stuff stays here till Doomsday.'

He was a slim, foppish fellow, and he looked more puzzled than
angry.

'I offer you enough,' he said, again stretching out his hand.

At that I fairly roared. 'If you try to bribe me, you infernal
little haberdasher, I'll have you off that horse and chuck you in the
river.'

He no longer misunderstood me. He began to curse and threaten,
but I cut him short.

'Come along to the commandant, my boy,' I said, and I marched
away, tearing up his typewritten sheets as I went and strewing them
behind me like a paper chase.

We had a fine old racket in the commandant's office. I said it
was my business, as representing the German Government, to see the
stuff delivered to the consignee at Constantinople ship-shape and
Bristol-fashion. I told him it wasn't my habit to proceed with
cooked documents. He couldn't but agree with me, but there was that
wrathful Oriental with his face as fixed as a Buddha.

'I am sorry, Rasta Bey,' he said; 'but this man is in the
right.' 'I have authority from the Committee to receive the stores,'
he said sullenly.

'Those are not my instructions,' was the answer. 'They are
consigned to the Artillery commandant at Chataldja, General von
Oesterzee.'

The man shrugged his shoulders. 'Very well. I will have a word
to say to General von Oesterzee, and many to this fellow who flouts
the Committee.' And he strode away like an impudent boy.

The harassed commandant grinned. 'You've offended his Lordship,
and he is a bad enemy. All those damned Comitadjis are. You would
be well advised not to go on to Constantinople.' 'And have that
blighter in the red hat loot the trucks on the road? No, thank you.
I am going to see them safe at Chataldja, or whatever they call the
artillery depot.'

I said a good deal more, but that is an abbreviated translation
of my remarks. My word for 'blighter' was trottel, but I used some
other expressions which would have ravished my Young Turk friend to
hear. Looking back, it seems pretty ridiculous to have made all this
fuss about guns which were going to be used against my own people.
But I didn't see that at the time. My professional pride was up in
arms, and I couldn't bear to have a hand in a crooked deal.

'Well', I advise you to go armed,' said the commandant. 'You
will have a guard for the trucks, of course, and I will pick you good
men. They may hold you up all the same. I can't help you once you
are past the frontier, but I'll send a wire to Oesterzee and he'll
make trouble if anything goes wrong. I still think you would have
been wiser to humour Rasta Bey.'

As I was leaving he gave me a telegram. 'Here's a wire for your
Captain Schenk.' I slipped the envelope in my pocket and went
Out.

Schenk was pretty sick, so I left a note for him. At one
o'clock I got the train started, with a couple of German Landwehr in
each truck and Peter and I in a horse-box. Presently I remembered
Schenk's telegram, which still reposed in my pocket. I took it out
and opened it, meaning to wire it from the first station we stopped
at. But I changed my mind when I read it. It was from some official
at Regensburg, asking him to put under arrest and send back by the
first boat a man called Brandt, who was believed to have come aboard
at Absthafen on the 30th of December.

I whistled and showed it to Peter. The sooner we were at
Constantinople the better, and I prayed we would get there before the
fellow who sent this wire repeated it and got the commandant to send
on the message and have us held up at Chataldja. For my back had
fairly got stiffened about these munitions, and I was going to take
any risk to see them safely delivered to their proper owner. Peter
couldn't understand me at all. He still hankered after a grand
destruction of the lot somewhere down the railway. But then, this
wasn't the line of Peter's profession, and his pride was not at
stake. We had a mortally slow journey. It was bad enough in
Bulgaria, but when we crossed the frontier at a place called Mustafa
Pasha we struck the real supineness of the East. Happily I found a
German officer there who had some notion of hustling, and, after all,
it was his interest to get the stuff moved. It was the morning of
the 16th, after Peter and I had been living like pigs on black bread
and condemned tin stuff, that we came in sight of a blue sea on our
right hand and knew we couldn't be very far from the end.

It was jolly near the end in another sense. We stopped at a
station and were stretching our legs on the platform when I saw a
familiar figure approaching. It was Rasta, with half a dozen Turkish
gendarmes.

I called 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.