The room was just my ideal of a man’s den, lined as it was with books with a soft-lined Turkish carpet, a big carved writing table and several deep saddle-bag chairs. The atmosphere was heavy with the scent of his exquisite Turkish tobacco—that my host smuggled—the only way to get the first grade of tobacco-leaf.
He referred to it as he handed me a thin cigarette.
“In these days of Turkey’s trials—thanks to her German betrayers, one no longer gets a little of the tobacco reserved for the Yildiz as it used to be. The Sultan grew his own tobacco in Anatolia—the most delicious of all tobacco and the second grade was sold to Europe as the finest. But the best was always kept for the Yildiz and for His Majesty’s ministers and his harem. I fear the few cigarettes I have left are the last of the Imperial tobacco.”
My cosmopolitan host was a prominent and powerful figure on the Bosphorus. I knew what he had said was the truth, and I smoked the delicious cigarette with intense enjoyment.
“Dinner, sir!” announced the smooth, round-faced man.
Crossing the hall I found myself in a long, sumptuously furnished dining room with shaded pink lights and at a small table set in the big window covers were laid for two.
A big dining table of polished rosewood, which could seat a dozen persons or more, stood in the middle of the room. In its centre was an oblong piece of Chinese embroidery and upon it was set a great apricot-colored bowl of autumn flowers.
“I eat at this little table,” he laughed as we sat down. “One has to have a larger table, but I shall only use it when I have guests.”
The room was a very handsome one with several fine old portraits on the green-painted walls, while a cozy wood fire burned upon huge old-fashioned “dogs,” sending out a fragrant scent and a glowing warmth which was comforting on that chilly autumn night.
“It is most artistic,” I declared when I was seated.