Oriental Encounters | Page 9

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 Rash?d, 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. Rash?d 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 Rash?d 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., Rash?d 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. Rash?d, 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, Rash?d 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. Rash?d 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?'
Suleyman was in the room. He was an old acquaintance, a man of decent birth, but poor, by trade a dragoman, who had acquired a reputation for unusual wisdom. When he had nothing else to do, he came to me unfailingly, wherever I might chance to be established or encamped. He was sitting cross-legged in a corner, smoking his nargh?leh, capriciously illumined by thin slants of light, alive with motes, from the Venetian blinds. He seized upon the postscript, crying:--
'It is good advice. Why not, indeed? Let us approach the judge.'
Therewith he coiled the tube of his nargh?leh carefully around the bowl thereof, and, rising with the same deliberation, threw upon his shoulders a white dust-cloak, then looked at me, and questioned: 'Are you ready?'
'But I do not know the judge.'
'No more do I. But that, my dear, is a disease which can be remedied.'
Without much trouble we found out the judge's house. A servant told us that his Honour had already