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The justice did not wear a fez, but had on a turban, so dad did not give
him any signs, but after jabbering a while they sent for an interpreter,
who could talk pigeon English, and then dad had a trial, and I acted
as his lawyer. I told about how dad had tried to be kind and genial to
another man's wife, and how, in his hurry to get away from the murderous
husband he fell over a mess of dogs, and that he was a distinguished
American, who was in Turkey to negotiate a loan to the sultan.

Say, that fixed them, and they all made salams to dad, and bowed all
over themselves, and the justice of the peace prayed to Allah, and the
interpreter said we could go, but to be careful about touching a Turkish
woman or a dog, particularly a dog, as the Turks were very sensitive on
the dog question. So we went out of the courtroom and wandered around
the town, and you can bet that dad didn't look at any more women, though
they were everywhere with veils that covered their faces so nothing but
their eyes could be seen.

Gee, but you never saw such eyes as these Turkish women have. They are
big and black, and they go right through you, and clinch on the other
side. Dad says the facilities for getting into trouble are better in
Constantinople than any place we have been, as the men look like bandits
and the women look like executioners. Dad thanked me for helping him
out of that scrape by claiming he was the agent of a financial syndicate
that wanted to lend money to the sultan. If I had said dad was a
collecting agency, to make the sultan pay up, they would have sentenced
him to be boiled in oil.

Well, we thought we had been in trouble before, but we are in it now
worse than ever. We heard at the hotel that at 11 o'clock in the morning
the sultan would pass by in a carriage, with an escort, on the way to a
mosque, to pray to Allah, and everybody could see the sultan, so we got
a place on a balcony, and at the appointed time the procession came in
sight. It was imposing, but solemn, and the people on both sides of the
street acted like they do in America when the funeral of a great man is
passing. No man spoke, and all looked as though they expected, if they
moved, to be arrested and have a stone tied to their feet and thrown
into the Bosphorus, the way they kill one of the sultan's wives when she
flirts with a stranger.

We watched the soldiers, and finally the carriage of the sultan came,
and in it was a dried u