ABDUL SAID BEY EFFECTS A RESCUE
Martin, tall and aggressively British, from the black silk tassel on his red fez to the battered puttees and brown boots that had once come out of Bond Street, stood watching the Isis outlined against the opposite walls of the Yildiz Kiosk.
Few pleasure-craft call at Constantinople.
"If you had not, as usual, been so damned late"—he turned with a gesture of raw impatience to the heavy-faced Osmanli at his side—"I could have pointed them out to you on Galata Bridge. As it is, they have returned to the yacht."
"May Heaven never again thwart your wish with delay, Martin Effendi." The Turk spoke placidly, his oily voice soft as a benediction, "I was delayed by pigs, and sons of pigs! Your annoyance is my desolating sorrow, yet"—he waved his hand with a bland gesture—"I am but the servant of His Majesty, the Sultan—whom Allah preserve—and the official is frequently detained."
"What is done, is done. Bismillah—no matter!" The Englishman curbed his annoyance and spoke as one resigned. "What now remains is this: We must see them, and you must learn to recognize them. You understand?"
The other bowed in unperturbed assent.
"All Europeans," he suggested, "dine at the Pera Palace Hotel—it is the Mecca of their hunger."
To the white man's voice returned the ring of asperity. "And at the Pera Palace, we shall not only see, but be seen. Likewise unless we have a care in this enterprise, we shall not only eat, but be eaten. A man may stare at whom he chooses on Galata Bridge."
"When I dine in a public place"—the Osmanli smiled cunningly from the depths of small pig-like eyes—"I shield myself behind a screen. Thus may I observe unobserved."