"Bonjour! What would you like, gentlemen?" Then, running his finger down the list as if suggesting something to eat, he would continue: "I heard to-day that the Grand Vizier had quarrelled once more with the Sultan"; or, "Enver Pasha was shot at in Galata yesterday, and is wounded in the chest. It is said that he will not recover." He never failed to produce at least one such rumour as these. Most often he would announce that Bulgaria was about to make a separate peace, which possibility was reported in Constantinople at least a dozen times before it really happened.
I always found him trustworthy, for his hatred of the Turks was stronger even than his greed for money, and no sum could have tempted him to become a spy in the service of the Turkish police—a position once offered to him. In any case, he was always convinced that the British would win the war; and, therefore, knowing which side his bread was buttered, would never have dared to betray the Britishers who employed him.
As an intermediary for correspondence he was reliable but expensive, his charge being twenty piastres for each letter delivered.
"Theodore, my friend," one would say, "I want you to go to Pera for me."
"Good. If you have not written the letter I will engage the guards while you prepare it."
He would then stroll across to the guards' table with the news that the British officers would be pleased to buy them whatever they wanted to eat; and the prisoner scribbled his note, a slip of paper resting on his lap and the body of Theodore screening him from the guards in the far corner. Later the letter would be handed to Theodore, in the middle of the banknotes with which one paid the bill.
If a reply were brought, Theodore delivered it under cover of a menu-card, always with a whispered reminder, "Twenty piastres." During the last six months of the war the Greek waiter must have been the messenger for scores of secret communications.
It was early in July when we heard of the arrival in Haidar Pasha Hospital—across the Sea of Marmora—of Captain Yeats-Brown and Captain Sir Robert Paul. Yeats-Brown was demanding attention for his nose and Paul for his ear. With vivid memories of conversations in Afion, I had sympathy for neither the nose nor the ear, but a great deal for the schemes of escape which I knew them to be planning. I sent Yeats-Brown a note, through the agency of Theodore, suggesting an appointment for lunch on the following Sunday.
As a matter of fact, I met him before lunch-time. With the rest of the congregation we were leaving for the little English church off the Grande Rue de Péra, when the pair approached the vestry door with guards at their heels. Since I last saw them both had grown moustaches, and an appearance of dishevelled untidiness was given to Paul by a short, stubby tuft of beard. At the time I was talking to Miss Whittaker, and I took the opportunity of introducing the new arrivals. Paul drew Miss Whittaker aside, and began talking earnestly, while Yeats-Brown told me that the guards' orders were to take him direct to Haidar Pasha, and that we should have to wait a week longer before meeting at the Maritza.
Next Sunday afternoon, on entering the little restaurant, I heard Yeats-Brown asking Theodore to show him where a special brand of cigarettes might be bought. This he did in a loud voice, speaking Turkish, as if he wished the guards to overhear. The pair left the doorway, and disappeared into a tobacco shop. Both departed bare-headed, so that the guards remained in their seats and were unsuspicious. Paul was at a table near them, taking great care to appear unconcerned. His beard had grown longer during the past seven days, and he looked stranger and more dishevelled than ever.