Part 20 (1/2)

[Footnote 9: Five s.h.i.+llings.]

CHAPTER XII

OUR SECOND ESCAPE

The ghosts of the prisoners of the Tower, or of the Bastille, could they revisit earth, would undoubtedly have found themselves more at home in the Military Prison, Constantinople, than anywhere else in the world.

The dark ages were still a matter of actuality in the dark dungeons of Constantinople in 1918. To be tried, for instance, was there considered something very up-to-date. Most prisoners were not tried, until their sentence was nearly over, when they were formally liberated.

After a month of solitary confinement, and a week of confinement with the Bulgarian, which was an even worse travail of the spirit, I received the joyful news that the preliminaries for my court-martial were almost complete.

I attended this first sitting with the thrill of a debutante going to a ball. I determined to make up arrears of talk. And I did. I began at the beginning of my life, sketched my education, and came by easy stages to my career as an officer in the Indian Cavalry. The clerk who recorded my evidence wrote for two hours without pause or intermission, but it is worthy of record that at the end of that time we had only reached the point where an officer of the Psamattia fire brigade, hearing, as I thought, a suspicious movement on the roof of the house across the street, kept a stern and steadfast gaze in our direction, while we crouched trembling under cover of the parapet. At this point the proceedings were adjourned.

But the Court had let fall a useful piece of information. Robin was back in prison, but was being kept even more secret and secluded than I.

However, love laughs at locksmiths, and it takes more than a Turkish sentry to defeat a persevering prisoner. We sighted each other in pa.s.sages, we met in wash-places, we flipped notes to each other in bits of bread, or sent them by a third party concealed in cigarettes. By such means, I learnt Robin's remarkable story. . . . After being caught at Malgara, ten days after his first escape, he was taken back to the Central Gaol, where he was treated as a Turkish deserter and given nothing but black bread to eat. He thereupon went on hunger strike for three days, and alarmed the Turks by nearly dying in their hands. Later he was allowed to purchase a liberal diet, including even wine and cigars, which he declared were necessary to his health, but his const.i.tution being enfeebled by privation, he developed alarming swellings over his face and scalp, which were probably due to some noxious ingredient of the hair-dye he had used. In this condition he was sent to hospital, and from hospital he escaped again. A Greek patient was his accomplice.

Giving this man ten pounds to buy a disguise with, he made an appointment with him for nine o'clock outside the German Emba.s.sy (!) and then set out on his adventures dressed in a white night-s.h.i.+rt. How he eluded the sentries is a mystery to me, although I inspected the place after the armistice. Patients were then saying (Turks, who are sometimes sportsmen, among them): ”Here is where a British officer escaped. Thus and thus did he climb--past the sentries--along that b.u.t.tress--down into the street hard by the guard-house!”. . . . He arrived punctually at nine o'clock at the German Emba.s.sy, in his night-s.h.i.+rt. But the Greek accomplice was not there. He was at that moment drinking and dicing with Robin's money. For half an hour Robin waited for him by a tree in the shadows of a side street leading to the sea. The few people who pa.s.sed him stared hard, and then moved nervously across to the other pavement.

They thought he was a madman.

Robin, I think, felt he was a madman too. In his present situation and dress, detection was only a matter of time. However, chance might be kind and send him a disguise. Cold and disconsolate, he ascended the main road that led to the top of the Grand Rue de Pera, and taking his way through the traffic, dipped down into the ruins beyond. The saint who protects prisoners must have guided that tall white figure, that paddled across the busy town. . . . And more, once he was hiding in the ruins, the saint must have sent along the small boy who pa.s.sed close to him in that lonely spot of cypresses and desolation. All-unknowing of the fate that awaited him behind the angle of the wall, the small boy strode st.u.r.dily along, thinking perhaps of the nice bran-bread and synthetic coffee that awaited him for supper. Robin pounced out of the shadow, and seized him by the scruff of the neck. . . . The victim instantly began to blubber.

”Give me all your clothes,” said Robin.

”Who are you?” sobbed the little boy.

”Brigand,” said Robin shortly.

This answer had the desired effect. The youth dried his tears, and divested himself of his apparel, which Robin immediately put on. The boots were much too small to wear and were returned. Still, the brigand was so satisfied with his clothes that he gave the small boy four pounds with a magnanimous gesture. Then he set out to seek his fortune, wearing a tiny fezz, and a coat whose sleeves reached half-way down his forearm.

For four days he dodged about the city, never more than a few hours at one place, until, just when his strength and his funds were exhausted, he found a house to give him shelter. From here he made a plan to escape, but was recaught through treachery at the docks, and taken back to the Military Prison. Only an Ali Baba could do justice to these experiences. Alas! the best books of adventure are just those which are never written.

Anyway we were together again, two desperadoes in dungeon, ”apart but not afar.”

The Damad's little n.i.g.g.e.r boy often contributed to our schemes for communication. This lad, who was in training for the position of keeper of the harem, and consequently belonged to the species that rises to eminence in Turkey, was a remarkable child. He did exactly what he liked and no one dared interfere with the little Lord Chamberlain _in posse_.

He had an uncanny brain and uncanny strength, and I can quite understand the reliance which Turkish Pashas are wont to repose in these servants.

I relied on him myself at times, and was never disappointed.

The arrival of a neutral Red Cross delegate, at about this time, did much to secure us better treatment. For over five weeks now I had not breathed fresh air, but directly the Red Cross delegate arrived I was allowed to go to the bath, escorted by two dog-collar gentlemen with revolvers and two sentries with side arms. While glad to feel I was employing so many of the Turkish Army while at my ablutions, I could not but deplore their anxiety on my behalf.

”No officer has ever succeeded in escaping from this wonderful gaol of yours,” I said to the Prison Commandant, who (in contrast to Djevad) was quite a good fellow in his way ”and I don't suppose anyone ever will.

Why therefore go to the trouble of guarding us so closely? It would be a very graceful act on your part if you allowed us to go occasionally into the garden.”

”Yarin, inshallah,” murmured the Commandant, meaning, ”To-morrow, please G.o.d.”

And to-morrow, strange to say, actually arrived in about a week's time.

Perhaps a bomb raid hastened matters, by stimulating the Commandant's desire to do graceful acts before the war was over.

One of the bombs of this raid dropped in the school playground just outside the Seraskerat Square, and shattered all the windows in my pa.s.sage. Fortunately all the children were away, it being Friday. No one was killed by that bomb, but a large handsome Turkish officer prisoner standing beside me in the pa.s.sage, when some panes of gla.s.s beside us burst, threw himself on the floor and refused to rise again, declaring he was killed. A full ten minutes he lay, with his moustaches in the dust, surrounded by sentries. In the confusion that ensued Robin cleverly slipped over to me and we had a very useful chat.