Talha smiled and left me. He thought he had got the admission he wanted, for I had described the treatment for syphilis.

CHAPTER XXVIII

OF THE WASSERMANN TESTS AND HOW WE DECEIVED THE

MEDICAL BOARD

Hill’s examination followed. It was much shorter, for Hill’s conduct was in every way the antithesis of mine. He answered each question with a gloomy brevity, and never spoke unless spoken to. The questions asked were much the same as those put later to him by Mazhar Osman Bey in the interview which I quote below, but at this preliminary examination Hill denied the hanging. I could not hear what was said, for they spoke in low tones; in the middle of it I saw Ihsan grab Hill’s wrist, but the phenacetin was doing its work and his pulse revealed nothing. Once Hill wept a little, and several times while Ihsan and Moïse were talking together in Turkish he opened his Bible in a detached sort of way and went on with his eternal reading. His face throughout was puckered and lined with woe. How he kept up that awful expression through all the months that followed I do not know. But he did it, and from first to last I never saw him look anything like his natural happy self. At the close of his examination he was taken back to bed and Ihsan ran over his reflexes in the ordinary way. Then the doctors left the room.

An hour later the orderly on duty called out, “Doctor Bey geldi!” (the Doctor has come) and every patient in the ward, except Hill, sat up in an attitude of respect. A little procession entered. At its head was the chief doctor, Mazhar Osman Bey. Behind him followed his two juniors, Ihsan and Talha, in their white overalls, and behind them a motley crowd of students and orderlies, the latter carrying trays of instruments which the great man might need on his rounds.

Mazhar Osman was a stout, well-dressed, well-set-up man of about 40 years of age, with a jovial and most confoundedly intelligent face. He spoke French and German as easily as Turkish, and was in every way a highly educated and accomplished man. In his profession he had the reputation of being the greatest authority on mental diseases in Eastern Europe. As we discovered later, he was Berlin trained, had studied in Paris and Vienna, and was the author of several books on his subject,[[53]] some of which we were told had been translated into German, and were regarded as standard works. It is of course impossible for a layman to judge the real professional merit of a doctor, but this Hill and I can say: during our stay in Constantinople we were examined at various times by some two score medical men—Turks, Germans, Austrians, Dutch, Greek, Armenian, and British. We were subjected to all sorts of traps and tests and questions. There is no doubt we were often suspected, especially by those who were ignorant of our full “medical history,” but nobody inspired us with such a fear of detection, or with such a feeling that he knew all about his business, as Mazhar Osman Bey.

He seemed hardly to glance at Hill as he made his round. I found out afterwards that it was a favourite trick of his to leave his patients alone for several days after their arrival—but when he got to my bed he stopped, and stood looking at me in silence for some time. Then he put his hand on my heart. It was quite steady.

“I suppose,” I said gloomily, “you are a heart specialist.” Moïse translated, and Mazhar Osman laughed, showing he knew of my tirade against specialists, and asked me why I looked so cross. I complained bitterly that Ihsan Bey had said I was mad and was keeping me there against my will.

“Ihsan Bey does not understand you,” said Mazhar Osman; “you must learn to speak Turkish.”