"Then find out from Ali, and I will see the Governor."
But within an hour or two Frank was himself summoned to the Governor's palace.
"It is with grief and surprise I learn," said the Governor, "that you, a foreigner, have taken it upon yourself to give orders to my constables. What have you to say?"
"Seeing that the zaptiehs were looking on unconcerned at a set of ruffians assaulting the premises of your army contractor, excellency, I think that perhaps a foreigner's intervention may have done you a service."
Frank took a higher tone than he would have adopted had he not still felt the sting left by his previous interview with the Governor.
"It is inexcusable," was the reply. "You will henceforth keep to your own house. If you are seen in the streets you will be arrested. You English take too much upon yourselves."
Frank was too much surprised to expostulate, even if there had seemed any use in so doing. It was clear that his crime was the being an Englishman. Filled with a new anxiety as to the future, he left the palace, to find that he was to be escorted home by a file of infantrymen. On reaching the house he sent Joseph at once to ask the British consul to visit him.
"I think you had better remain quiet for the present," said that gentleman when the matter had been explained to him. "You are technically in the wrong, though the late governor would have thanked you for what you did. Wonckhaus is in the ascendant here. The authorities won't take any serious steps against you at present. Until that affair of yours with Wonckhaus is decided you need have no anxiety. Your course is certainly to lie low and refrain from the least appearance of provocation. You are expecting your father?"
"Yes, I am surprised that I haven't heard from him."
"Well, everything is more or less disorganized. Probably he will turn up unexpectedly one day and take you away with him. All indications point to the entrance of Turkey into the war. She has closed the Dardanelles--an ominous sign. Wonckhaus put it about to-day that Paris had fallen. I don't believe it, but the authorities are absolutely hypnotized by the Germans, and Enver Pasha, their tool, seems to be having it all his own way at Constantinople. I hope to get trustworthy information through a courier shortly; I don't believe what they dole out here. If Turkey does enter the war, I shall have to go, of course; and if your father hasn't arrived by that time, you must come away under my safe-conduct."