And what do you suppose the Judge told us when we joined him?
That scoundrelly Oriental had locked the door on the Judge and refused to let him descend until he paid the five francs, which he afterward demanded of us, and the good-natured ex-dispenser of justice actually paid the fellow three francs, and then grew wrathy and threatened to break the door if it was not opened.
The Turk saw he meant business, and then unlocked the door, not without a final demand, which he repeated while our friend descended.
We learned at the hotel that half a franc would have been a sufficient “back sheesh” for the whole party. Had we paid that and no more when we entered, the fellow would have seen that we knew the price, and would have made no further demand. But my gift of a franc—double the proper fee—coupled with my question showed him that we were a lot of modest idiots who might be swindled. It was our first experience with the Moslem, and you can wager that we learned a good lesson from it.
Now, this happened in the month of Ramadan, and that Turk was keeping the fast with religious exactness. Yet we shouldn’t have been swindled any more by a Christian hackman in New York or Chicago, unless we had given the hackman an equal chance.