Oriental Encounters | Page 9

have been enabled to do a little service for your Highness,' cried
the sergeant. Therewith he pounced upon my hand and kissed it. I made them both sit
down and called for coffee. Between the two of them, I heard the story. The sergeant
praised Rashîd's intelligence in going out and crying in a public place until the city and
its whole police force had a share in his distress. Rashîd, on his side, said that all that
would have been in vain but for the sergeant's knowledge of the cabman's house. The
sergeant, with a chuckle, owned that that same knowledge would have been of no effect
had not Rashîd once more displayed his keen intelligence. They had poured into the
house--a single room, illumined only by a saucer lamp upon the ground--and searched it
thoroughly, the cabman all the while protesting his great innocence, and swearing he had
never in this world beheld a whip like that described. The soldiers, finding no whip, were
beginning to believe his word when Rashîd, who had remained aloof, observing that the
cabman's wife stood very still beneath her veils, assailed her with a mighty push, which
sent her staggering across the room. The whip was then discovered. It had been hidden
underneath her petticoats. They had given the delinquent a good beating then and there.
Would that be punishment enough in my opinion? asked the sergeant.
We decided that the beating was enough. I gave the sergeant a small present when he left.
Rashîd went with him, after carefully concealing the now famous whip. I suppose they
went off to some tavern to discuss the wonderful adventure more at length; for I supped
alone, and had been some time stretched upon my mattress on the floor before Rashîd
came in and spread his bed beside me.
'Art thou awake, O my dear lord?' he whispered. 'By Allah, thou didst wrong to give that
sergeant any money. I had made thy name so great that but to look on thee was fee
sufficient for a poor, lean dog like him.'
He then was silent for so long a while that I imagined he had gone to sleep. But, suddenly,
he whispered once again:
'O my dear lord, forgive me the disturbance, but hast thou our revolver safe?'
'By Allah, yes! Here, ready to my hand.'
'Good. But it would be better for the future that I should bear our whip and our revolver. I
have made thy name so great that thou shouldst carry nothing.'

CHAPTER IV
THE COURTEOUS JUDGE
We were giving a dinner-party on that day to half a dozen Turkish officers, and, when he
brought me in my cup of tea at seven-thirty a.m., Rashîd informed me that our cook had
been arrested. The said cook was a decent Muslim, but hot-tempered, and something of a
blood in private life. At six a.m., as he stood basking in the sunlight in our doorway, his
eyes had fallen on some Christian youths upon their way to college, in European clothes,
with new kid gloves and silver-headed canes. Maddened with a sense of outrage by that
horrid sight, he had attacked the said youths furiously with a wooden ladle, putting them
to flight, and chasing them all down the long acacia avenue, through two suburbs into the
heart of the city, where their miserable cries for help brought the police upon him. Rashîd,
pursuing in vain attempts to calm the holy warrior, had seen him taken into custody still
flourishing the ladle; but could tell me nothing of his after fate, having at that point
deemed it prudent to retire, lest he, too, might be put in prison by mistake.
It was sad. As soon as I was up and dressed, I wrote to Hamdi Bey, the chief of our
intended visitors, informing him of the mishap which would prevent our giving him and
his comrades a dinner at all worthy of their merit. By the time that I had finished dressing,
Rashîd had found a messenger to whom the note was given with an order to make haste.
He must have run the whole way there and back, for, after little more than half an hour,
he stood before me, breathless and with streaming brow, his bare legs dusty to the knee.
Rashîd had then gone out to do some marketing. The runner handed me a note. It said:
'Why mention such a trifling detail? We shall, of course, be charmed with anything you
set before us. It is for friendship, not for food, we come!'
There was a postscript:--
'Why not go and see the judge?'
Suleymân was in the room. He was an old acquaintance, a man of decent birth, but poor,
by trade a dragoman, who had acquired