John Buchan - The Collected Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

‘For yourself,’ he said. ‘It is the usual custom.’

It was the first time anyone had ever tried to bribe me, and it made me boil up like a geyser. I saw his game clearly enough. Turkey would pay for the lot to Germany: probably had already paid the bill: but she would pay double for the things not on the way-bills, and pay to this fellow and his friends. This struck me as rather steep even for Oriental methods of doing business.

‘Now look here, Sir,’ I said, ‘I don’t stir from this place till I get the correct way-bills. If you won’t give me them, I will have every item out of the trucks and make a new list. But a correct list I have, or the stuff stays here till Doomsday.’

He was a slim, foppish fellow, and he looked more puzzled than angry.

‘I offer you enough,’ he said, again stretching out his hand.

At that I fairly roared. ‘If you try to bribe me, you infernal little haberdasher, I’ll have you off that horse and chuck you in the river.’

He no longer misunderstood me. He began to curse and threaten, but I cut him short.

‘Come along to the commandant, my boy,’ I said, and I marched away, tearing up his typewritten sheets as I went and strewing them behind me like a paper chase.

We had a fine old racket in the commandant’s office. I said it was my business, as representing the German Government, to see the stuff delivered to the consignee at Constantinople ship-shape and Bristol-fashion. I told him it wasn’t my habit to proceed with cooked documents. He couldn’t but agree with me, but there was that wrathful Oriental with his face as fixed as a Buddha.

‘I am sorry, Rasta Bey,’ he said; ‘but this man is in the right.’

‘I have authority from the Committee to receive the stores,’ he said sullenly.

‘Those are not my instructions,’ was the answer. ‘They are consigned to the Artillery commandant at Chataldja, General von Oesterzee.’

The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘Very well. I will have a word to say to General von Oesterzee, and many to this fellow who flouts the Committee.’ And he strode away like an impudent boy.

The harassed commandant grinned. ‘You’ve offended his Lordship, and he is a bad enemy. All those damned Comitadjis are. You would be well advised not to go on to Constantinople.’

‘And have that blighter in the red hat loot the trucks on the road? No, thank you. I am going to see them safe at Chataldja, or whatever they call the artillery depot.’

I said a good deal more, but that is an abbreviated translation of my remarks. My word for ‘blighter’ was Trottel , but I used some other expressions which would have ravished my Young Turk friend to hear. Looking back, it seems pretty ridiculous to have made all this fuss about guns which were going to be used against my own people. But I didn’t see that at the time. My professional pride was up in arms, and I couldn’t bear to have a hand in a crooked deal.

‘Well’, I advise you to go armed,’ said the commandant. ‘You will have a guard for the trucks, of course, and I will pick you good men. They may hold you up all the same. I can’t help you once you are past the frontier, but I’ll send a wire to Oesterzee and he’ll make trouble if anything goes wrong. I still think you would have been wiser to humour Rasta Bey.’

As I was leaving he gave me a telegram. ‘Here’s a wire for your Captain Schenk.’ I slipped the envelope in my pocket and went out.

Schenk was pretty sick, so I left a note for him. At one o’clock I got the train started, with a couple of German Landwehr in each truck and Peter and I in a horse-box. Presently I remembered Schenk’s telegram, which still reposed in my pocket. I took it out and opened it, meaning to wire it from the first station we stopped at. But I changed my mind when I read it. It was from some official at Regensburg, asking him to put under arrest and send back by the first boat a man called Brandt, who was believed to have come aboard at Absthafen on the 30th of December.

I whistled and showed it to Peter. The sooner we were at Constantinople the better, and I prayed we would get there before the fellow who sent this wire repeated it and got the commandant to send on the message and have us held up at Chataldja. For my back had fairly got stiffened about these munitions, and I was going to take any risk to see them safely delivered to their proper owner. Peter couldn’t understand me at all. He still hankered after a grand destruction of the lot somewhere down the railway. But then, this wasn’t the line of Peter’s profession, and his pride was not at stake. We had a mortally slow journey. It was bad enough in Bulgaria, but when we crossed the frontier at a place called Mustafa Pasha we struck the real supineness of the East. Happily I found a German officer there who had some notion of hustling, and, after all, it was his interest to get the stuff moved. It was the morning of the 16th, after Peter and I had been living like pigs on black bread and condemned tin stuff, that we came in sight of a blue sea on our right hand and knew we couldn’t be very far from the end.

It was jolly near the end in another sense. We stopped at a station and were stretching our legs on the platform when I saw a familiar figure approaching. It was Rasta, with half a dozen Turkish gendarmes.

I called Peter, and we clambered into the truck next our horse-box. I had been half expecting some move like this and had made a plan.

The Turk swaggered up and addressed us. ‘You can get back to Rustchuk,’ he said. ‘I take over from you here. Hand me the papers.’

‘Is this Chataldja?’ I asked innocently.

‘It is the end of your affair,’ he said haughtily. ‘Quick, or it will be the worse for you.’

‘Now, look here, my son,’ I said; ‘you’re a kid and know nothing. I hand over to General von Oesterzee and to no one else.’

‘You are in Turkey,’ he cried, ‘and will obey the Turkish Government.’

‘I’ll obey the Government right enough,’ I said; ‘but if you’re the Government I could make a better one with a bib and a rattle.’

He said something to his men, who unslung their rifles.

‘Please don’t begin shooting,’ I said. ‘There are twelve armed guards in this train who will take their orders from me. Besides, I and my friend can shoot a bit.’

‘Fool!’ he cried, getting very angry. ‘I can order up a regiment in five minutes.’

‘Maybe you can,’ I said; ‘but observe the situation. I am sitting on enough toluol to blow up this countryside. If you dare to come aboard I will shoot you. If you call in your regiment I will tell you what I’ll do. I’ll fire this stuff, and I reckon they’ll be picking up the bits of you and your regiment off the Gallipoli Peninsula.’

He had put up a bluff—a poor one—and I had called it. He saw I meant what I said, and became silken.

‘Good-bye, Sir,’ he said. ‘You have had a fair chance and rejected it. We shall meet again soon, and you will be sorry for your insolence.’

He strutted away and it was all I could do to keep from running after him. I wanted to lay him over my knee and spank him.

We got safely to Chataldja, and were received by von Oesterzee like long-lost brothers. He was the regular gunner-officer, not thinking about anything except his guns and shells. I had to wait about three hours while he was checking the stuff with the invoices, and then he gave me a receipt which I still possess. I told him about Rasta, and he agreed that I had done right. It didn’t make him as mad as I expected, because, you see, he got his stuff safe in any case. It was only that the wretched Turks had to pay twice for the lot of it.

He gave Peter and me luncheon, and was altogether very civil and inclined to talk about the war. I would have liked to hear what he had to say, for it would have been something to get the inside view of Germany’s Eastern campaign, but I did not dare to wait. Any moment there might arrive an incriminating wire from Rustchuk. Finally he lent us a car to take us the few miles to the city.