THE FACE AT THE WINDOW
"Monsieur Titoff," announced the first mate, entering his cabin with a
hunched-up figure of a man, whose most obvious characteristics were
shifty eyes, very high cheekbones and a shrivelled, yellow skin.
M. Titoff and I inspected each other with care as I rose from the only
chair and shook hands. He, I knew, was the guiding spirit in the
syndicate of mates and engineers whom we were bribing.
He produced a book of English phrases, with their Russian equivalents.
Opening it at a prepared page he ran his finger down the list and said
"Seegnal!"
"Signal?"
"Yess, ceegarette seegnal."
Remembering the arrangements for the beerhouse rendezvous, I placed a
cigarette behind my left ear; whereat the chief engineer and the first
mate smiled, and shook hands once again. Neither of them could speak
any language but Russian, so that we talked with difficulty, exchanging
half-understood patter from the phrase book.
After some strumming on the mandolin and balalaika by Titoff and
Belaef, I slept on the first mate's couch, with my money tucked next to
my skin.
Next morning I was introduced to the third mate, a stocky Lett who
could speak German. Using him as interpreter Titoff explained his
arrangements. I was to dress myself as a Russian sailor, leave the
_Batoum_, and be led to the hiding-place in Pera. White and I were to
remain there for a week, until the day before the ship sailed. We could
then be concealed on board the _Batoum_ until she was safely out of the
Bosphorus.
Wearing some old clothes belonging to Kulman, the third mate, but with
their rank badges removed, I rowed ashore. Kulman accompanied me, while
Titoff, prominent in white drill, waited on the quay. Neither he nor
the white-bearded old man to whom he was talking took the least notice
of us, but turned and passed toward the Rue de Galata. The third mate
and I followed, without, however, showing apparent concern in their
movements.
At the corner of a side street on the far side of the Rue de Galata
Titoff parted from his companion. Kulman followed suit by leaving me,
after giving low-voiced instructions that I must follow the old man.
The stranger led the way up the hill, toward Péra, while I kept behind
him at a convenient distance, on the opposite side of the road. For a
quarter of an hour he moved through a succession of uneven streets and
cobbled alleys, so that I soon lost my bearings.
I was not conscious of danger, however. In the faded old uniform of a
sailor, and with my civilian clothes wrapped in a newspaper, I
attracted little attention. Occasionally I looked into shop windows to
divert the suspicions of any who might otherwise have noticed that I
was following the ancient.
Finally the guide halted among the wooden houses on the outskirts of
Péra, produced an enormous key, and unlocked an iron door. I slackened
my steps as he disappeared inside the door, but passed through it a few
seconds later.
Inside was half-darkness. Besides the old man I could see, dimly, an
unkempt and unshaven figure, wearing an overcoat that was much too
small for him. I looked at this apparition with puzzled doubt. Surely
it could not be White, whom I had last seen running through the streets
of Koum-kapou, in a perfectly respectable suit of Red Cross clothes?
Yes, it must be, for it came toward me with outstretched hand.
"Glad to see you, old man," said the figure in the overcoat. "I don't
know which of us looks the more comic."
"Why the dyed moustache, and why this?" pointing to a faded fez which
protruded from one of his pockets.
White reserved his tale until Titoff's friend had left us, after
promising to return with food and water.
While the guard was chasing him in Koum-kapou, White related, he turned
the corner suddenly and saw an open doorway. He rushed into it, acting
on impulse.
Just inside the door was a woman, who screamed. He put his hand over
her mouth, then dodged down a narrow passage into the back room, while
the pursuing guard raced past the house and up the street.
Very fortunately for White the woman was a Greek, and as such well
disposed to the British. She hid him in a cupboard for an hour, and
persuaded her husband, when he arrived home at midday, to provide a
disguise.
White bought a fez and an overcoat, and blackened his moustache. The
Greek was shorter and slighter than he, so that it was impossible to
wear the overcoat without removing his own jacket and waistcoat. These
he left in the house. The results, however, justified his loss, for
when he went into the streets, during the afternoon, he was a perfect
study of a broken-down Levantine.
He reached Galata too late for the beerhouse rendezvous, and was
obliged, therefore, to spend the evening and night as best he could. As
he wandered along the Rue de Galata a policeman stopped him and,
according to the Near East habit, showed a cigarette without saying a
word and signed that he wanted a light. This White supplied from the
cigarette he was smoking. The gendarme passed on, without deigning to
thank the wretched looking man in a faded fez and torn coat.
A café and two cinemas filled his evening. Afterward, unable to hire a
room at any hotel or lodging-house, because he had no _vecika_, he
spent the night huddled behind a cemetery tombstone.
Next day he met Titoff's Russian friend in the German beerhouse,
according to plan; and so to the hiding-place.
This hiding-place of ours was a disused workshop belonging to the
Russian, who claimed to be a carpenter. Its only furniture was a crude
bench and a long table. The floor lay inches deep in shavings through
which the rats rustled all night and most of the day. There was one
small window; but this we were told to keep covered by its iron
shutter, in case somebody should look in from the street. A tiny yard
led from the corner opposite the door to the bottom of a shaft, down
which the dwellers on the upper floors of the building threw their
rubbish.
In themselves these conditions were fairly bad; for apart from the lack
of furniture, the atmosphere was always dusty and unpleasantly musty,
and unless we opened the window the workshop remained in perpetual
twilight. But the worst drawback of all was that only a flimsy
partition separated us from the living room of a Turkish officer. His
bedroom was above our wooden ceiling. Everything he did we could hear
quite plainly, whether he coughed, spoke, whistled, removed his boots,
or snored.
The Turkish officer, we realized, must likewise hear every movement of
ours; so that whenever either he or his orderly or anybody else was in
his rooms we maintained, perforce, a death-like stillness. We scarcely
dared to whisper, or to tip-toe across the workshop on bootless feet.
In the daytime, the striking of a match had to be masked by scraping
the shavings, so as to make a noise like a rat. After daylight smoking
was impossible, because the glimmer would have shown through the many
cracks in the partition.
We slept side by side on the wooden table, with rolled-up coats as
pillows. White once woke up in the middle of the night and was
horrified to hear me talking in my sleep. Fortunately, the Turk above
was not awake, and so missed the performance. Afterward we never slept
at the same time, but kept watch in turn, in case one of us should
snore or otherwise attract attention. Four of the nights were broken
into by machine-gun fire from a near-by roof, during British air-raids.
On my arrival White had told me that we must be particularly careful in
the mornings, just after the Turkish officer left the house. The noises
from the living room then suggested that somebody, probably the Turk's
wife, was tidying it. This happened on three successive mornings. What
worried us in particular was a scrunching and scraping behind the
partition, which suggested that the wife suspected our presence and
tried to look at us through the cracks.
Each time this occurred we crouched at the bottom of the partition,
fingered our lips warningly, and scarcely dared to breathe. On the
fourth day, when the Russian brought our food, we told him our
suspicions.
"We believe this Turkish officer's wife knows of us," said White.
"Every morning she comes to the partition and seems to be looking
through it."
The carpenter grinned.
"But," he explained, "the Turk has no wife. What you've been frightened
of is his tame rabbit!"
Each day we hoped for news of the _Batoum_'s date of sailing. Three
times it was postponed; and, bored and wretched, we remained perforce
in the miserable workshop.
Unable to keep our minds as inactive as our bodies, we took the risk of
leaving the window half open during the daytime, so that we might study
our Russian textbooks, in readiness for Odessa. Seated on the shavings
in a position to catch the shaft of light that streamed through the
narrow panes, we passed many hours with the copying and learning of
Russian phrases.
When, after hours of study, our concentrative faculties became stale,
the only alternative was to hope for success, and to live again in
retrospect the extravagant happenings of the past few weeks. Most of
the business usually associated with the crudest melodrama had been
there, I reflected--spies, policemen, disguises, chases, female
accomplices, and bluff. Decidedly it had been thrilling; but for the
future I desired intensely to experience such thrills only at second
hand.
But even in this secluded room we were not to be spared the atmosphere
of movie-horrifics. Another stock thrill was inflicted on us--The Face
at the Window.
There had seemed no likelihood of discovery from the street. Even if we
bared the window from its iron shutter, nobody could see into the room
without raising himself on the ledge, for the lower panes were coated
with an opaque glaze. At mealtimes, therefore, we let in the daylight
by withdrawing the shutter.
One morning, after breakfast, when the Turkish officer had left his
rooms, I saw White stiffen suddenly as we cleared the table.
"Look natural," he whispered. "There's no time to duck."
I picked up a plank of wood and tried to appear as if my business were
carpentry; for over there, four yards away, a fez was rising slowly
above the glazed portion of the window. White performed convincingly
with a tape-measure, the nearest thing to his hand.
The fez was the forerunner of a much-wrinkled forehead. Then came a
pair of villainous eyes, a bent nose, and cheek-bones with light olive
skin drawn tightly across them. The rest of the face remained hidden by
the glaze. The Turk--for such he evidently was--have levered himself
from the ground by means of the window-ledge.
"Don't take any notice of the swine," White murmured.
Outwardly calm, but inwardly nervous and shaking, I pretended to busy
myself with the carpenter's tools, although it was difficult to
withstand a shocked instinct to gaze at the Face. It remained for about
two minutes of heart-throbbing tension, then disappeared, and left me
gasping with the surprise and the shock of its visit. We heard somebody
walking away from the building and down the hill toward Galata.
The Face might have belonged to a police spy, we speculated, but it
might have been that of a casual passer-by who was indulging the
curiosity in respect of other people's business which is common to most
Turks. In that case no harm would be done, for the stranger had seen
nothing suspicious--only a workshop, some tools and planks, a loaf of
bread and a half melon on the table, and two coatless, collarless,
unshaven, untidy-haired men who seemed to be working.
The carpenter showed fright on being told that a Turk had looked in at
us, and said he must consult Titoff. Before he returned on the
following morning the Face had again appeared, as before--first a fez
rising slowly above the glazed pane, then a wrinkled forehead, then the
villainous eyes and the crooked nose. It remained staring for a few
seconds, and disappeared.
This time the Russian could contain neither his fear nor his impatience
to get us out of the workshop. If we were caught, said he, it would
only mean imprisonment for us; but him the Turks might hang as a spy.
He told us to pack our belongings, while he went to the _Batoum_ and
arranged with Titoff for us to be taken on board.
An hour later a procession of three passed through the winding streets
toward the quay. We left the workshop in turn, at intervals of a few
seconds, for we had decided to walk separately, so that if one of us
were stopped the others could make themselves scarce.
First went the carpenter, leading the way down the hill to Galata. I
followed twenty yards behind him, still dressed as a Russian sailor;
and about twenty yards behind me came White, in his fez and old
overcoat. We scarcely looked at each other, but mooched along different
sections of the road. Each was ready, at a second's warning, to dash
down the nearest alley.
Until the Rue de Galata was reached the only people we saw were the
dull-eyed and ragged inhabitants of the slum quarter that fringes Pera,
sitting in their doorways and blinking in the heat of early afternoon.
But when we crossed the Rue de Galata White almost rubbed shoulders
with a couple of gendarmes.
Titoff was waiting on the quayside. White and I approached him,
whereupon the Russian carpenter retraced his steps and left us. In my
character of a Russian seaman I saluted the _Batoum's_ chief engineer.
He hustled us into a waiting _kaik_, and ordered the _kaiktche_ to row
to the _Batoum_.
Kulman was waiting at the top of the gangway. He led us to his cabin,
where, he said, we were to live for the present.
Meanwhile, the ship was still empty of cargo, and no definite date of
sailing had yet been given. This uncertain delay was especially
unfortunate because, apart from the growing risk of discovery, our
money was diminishing at an alarming rate.
The door was perforce closed all day long, to prevent discovery by the
captain. In the heat of those August days on the Bosphorus the stifling
stuffiness of the unventilated little cabin became almost unbearable.
Yet we had one consolation. The port-hole could be left open without
fear of intrusion by the Face, with its wrinkled forehead surmounted by
a fez, its villainous eyes, its crooked nose, and its olive skin drawn
tightly across the cheek-bones....