And because the old, sleepy-eyed Admiral seemed so interested and
amused, I told him about Herr Wilner's box and his diary and the plans
and maps and photographs with which I used to play as a little child.
After dinner, Princess Naïa asked me what it was I had been telling
Murad Pasha to wake him up so completely and to keep him so amused. So
I merely said that I had been telling the Admiral about my childhood
in Brookhollow.
Naturally neither she nor I thought about the incident any further.
Murad did not come again; but a few days later the Turkish Chargé
d'Affaires was present at a very large dinner given by Princess Naïa.
And two curious conversations occurred at that dinner: The Turkish Chargé suddenly turned to me and asked me in English
whether I were not the daughter of the Reverend Wilbour Carew who once
was in charge of the American Mission near Trebizond. I was so
surprised at the question; but I answered yes, remembering that Murad
must have mentioned me to him.
He continued to ask me about my father, and spoke of his efforts to
establish a girls' school, first at Brusa, then at Tchardak, and
finally near Gallipoli. I told him I had often heard my father speak
of these matters with my mother, but that I was too young to remember
anything about my own life in Turkey.
All the while we were conversing, I noticed that the Princess kept
looking across the table at us as though some chance word had
attracted her attention.
After dinner, when the gentlemen had retired to the smoking room, the
Princess took me aside and made me repeat everything that Ahmed Mirka
had asked me.
I told her. She said that the Turkish Chargé was an old busybody,
always sniffing about for all sorts of information; that it was safer
to be reticent and let him do the talking; and that almost every scrap
of conversation with him was mentally noted and later transcribed for
the edification of the Turkish Secret Service.
I thought this very humorous; but going into the little salon where
the piano was and where the music was kept, while I was looking for an
old song by Messager, from "La Basoche," called "Je suis aimé de la
plus belle--" Ahmed Mirka's handsome attaché, Colonel Izzet Bey, came
up to where I was rummaging in the music cabinet.
He talked nonsense in French and in English for a while, but somehow
the conversation led again toward my father and the girls' school at
Gallipoli which had been attacked and burned by a mob during the first
month after it had been opened, and where the German, Herr Wilner, had
been killed.