the torrent had changed to a driving drizzle; clouds were breaking, and their wrack was flying past the infrequent stars. The moonlight broke through the storm at times and lit the roof-tops across the Golden Horn. Soon it would be fine.

We took it in turns to stay in the garden against the return of the motor wanglers.

It was half-past one when I began my watoh. The rain had stopped, but my leaky boots squelched in mud and puddles, and I confess I was rather pessimistic and tired of the whole dem'd damp conspiracy. Francesco was not of the stuff of which criminals are made. Our night was wasted. He would not return. ... Then lo! the noise of an engine came to my ears-a fat contented hum. And round the corner of the cobbled street a car came creeping.

I called my partner, and he was instantly at my side. We opened the other half of the gate.

There stood the Mercedes, with Rudolph at the wheel and Francesco beside him. Once inside the garden and the car was ours!

"Back her in here," we whispered, lighting up up the posterns with an electric torch.

It was a narrow and difficult entrance, for, not a chassis length inside the garden, there was a small pond, which had to be circumvented by running the oar forward again and then backing on the opposite look. The car was to be put on one

side of the pond; the bear was tethered near the other side.

During the manoeuvring of the Mercedes, the bear merely mumbled and scratched his head. With the circus he had no doubt become accustomed to nocturnal traffic. But when finally the car was inside the garden, he began to get restless and inquisitive. Perhaps our whispering got en his nerves (I don't know why we whispered, but we did), or perhaps the contagion of excitement, citement, which is readily communicable from men to animals, made him feel it was necessary to offer his help. He began to squeak and yowl and hug himself. I could just see him, about three yards away, like gigantio dormouse, and threw him a biscuit te prevent him "butting in."

But it was too late. The conspirators had already seen him. Franeesco made for the door, but my partner was there before him and barred it. Rudolph ran round to the far side of the car and fumbled with his holster.

"Don't be alarmed; it's only a pet of ours,” I said.

My friend flashed his torch in the direction of the pet, who was yammering to himself with lowered snout, searching for my biscuit and sweeping the mud with his hairy forearms. The light made him blink and look up. There was something strange about his audience, he perceivedsomething oritical and friendly. After & second's silence he reared up to the

...

height of a man, made an apoplectic gesture as if trying to unbutton his cellar, and then sprang towards the car with a roar. . . . It was a fine circus stunt, straight in the limelight of my friend's torch, and no artifice could have increased its unrehearsed effect.

"We had better get into the house," I said hurriedly.

"He'll tear the ear to bits," said Rudolph, following me very briskly, however, up the garden steps.

As to Francesco, he was dumb. Verbally he could hold his own with most men, but a physical threat left him paralytio.

"Don't worry about about the oar," we said when we were in the cosy library again. "The bear can be trusted to look after our property. But seeing you two indistinctly in the darkness, he must have mistaken you for thieves."

The decanter of rum put into circulation to restore the equipoise necessary to business. After lighting cigarettes, and some general conversation, Francesco and Radolph began a heated argument between themselves.

"But which of you gentlemen is selling the car?" I asked.

"I am," said Francesco. "It was agreed that I was to take the money. Thirty-three per cent goes—

"I am going to take the money," interrupted Rudolph. "I took the car, and I'm going to take the money. You will

be paid your commission," he added to Francesco.

"How do you know we are going to buy it?" my partner asked.

"You said you would," said Francesco.

"So we will, if it is in fit condition," he replied; "but we must have a look at her before we make you an offer."

"It is the best car in Turkey at the present time," said Rudolph.

"That may be," I said, "but we are not going to buy a pig in a poke. Besides, you must agree between yourselves how much you want."

"A thousand poundsbegan Rudolph.

"Eight hundred from friends," suggested Francesco.

"And how much from enemies?" I could not help asking.

But the conspirators were obviously in an amenable mood, so we furnished them with English cigarettes and rum and black beer, and suggested that they should thrash out between them the lowest figure they would take.

Gathering together a few papers which were unsuitable for inquisitive eyes, we went out to the garden again, leaving Rudolph looking less seraphie than usual, and Franoesoo inhaling 8 Scissors cigarette.

From the even purring of the engine, and what we could make out from examining the car by the torch, we soon realised that we had "struck oil." The tyres were nearly new, the upholstering and general ap

pearance of the bodywork showed that it had been cared for. It was a typical G.H.Q. brass-hat sort of car, all comfortable and complete. In a side-pocket we found a diary in German, and ration-book, which we confiscated. A knife, fork, spoon, and part of a pork-pie were in another wallet, together with numerous sparking plugs and other spares of all kinds, showing that the chauffeur had left in a hurry, just as Franeeseo had said. The car was worth two thousand pounds Turkish money, we decided. If Government by any chance refused it, we would take it as & speculation ourselves.

Then we returned to bargain. But the conspirators had not become chastened by their tête-à-tête. They were still in contradictory mood.

"We'll let you have the oar for three hundred gold sovereigns in cash," said Francesco generously.

"No, we won't," said Rudolph; "the very lowest is four hundred and fifty."

"If you don't want to talk business," said my partner, "you had better go home."

"Will you take fifty?" I added with a yawn; "because, if we can't agree, I'm going to bed."

"I didn't come here to be made a fool of," said Rudolph, rising.

"Seventy-five," we said. "You can take it or leave it." But Rudolph was huffed, and went out. Francesco held up his hands in despair, and

followed him. They returned to the garden, and stood there nervously, striking matches, while the bear snored. He had grown tired of all the fuss, and thought, I dare say, that we were a very badly-managed circus.

We lit cigars and waited to see what would happen. It was now half-past two o'clock of the morning. That the conspirators would care to take the car away and lose the bird in the hand for two in the bush seemed to us very improbable. And so it proved.

Francesco returned to say that Rudolph was taking the car away.

"Let him," we said. "Goodbye. Mind the step-and the bear."

But still he lingered.

"If you give us two hundred in gold," he said, "I am eontent to lose my commission, so as to satisfy Rudolph.'

"That is nobly spoken," I said. "I should bring your friend back here for a cigar."

Presently Rudolph returned. "Look here," we said; "we don't want to be all night about this business. . . .”

Well, we were not all night, but we were quite long enough for me to become bemused with sleep. I am not very clear how we clinched the bargain, suffice it to say that the opposite parties were getting very tired also, and that we played on their natural disinclination to find a new garage and the obvious advantages sale..

of an immediate We came to terms

Now came the task of counting out the money, which, for obvious reasons, is quite a ceremony in the underworld. Nothing must change from hand to hand lest an unseemly dispute should arise, in the course of payment, as to the amount that has already passed from one set of greedy fingers to the other.

When the payment is made in notes, they are laid upon a table face upwards by the payee in piles of twenty: then the recipient advances towards the table and examines each note, counts them, and finally puts them into his pocket. It is worthy of remark that the last note in each pile is never lifted from the table by the recipient until the bargain is concluded, because it is always within the bounds of possibility that two notes have stuck together, or that the payee has been fool enough to miscount and put one note too many in the pile, when it would not be in the recipient's interest to call attention to the mistake by looking under the twentieth note.

We made thirteen oylinders of ten sovereigns each, and half a cylinder. Then Rudolph and Francesco came up to the library table and examined the money, while we watched

them.

In the course of this inspection all the lights went out. Suspecting foul play, I

Then some one struck a match and tried the switch. But the current had been out off at the main. We were in darkness. And not our house alone, but all Pera was plunged in gloom. Some more members of the Committee of Union and Progress were escaping, we heard later, and had taken this convenient method of advertising their departure, while at the same time eluding the detectives who were waiting for them at the docks.

After finding and lighting some candles-how the owners of the house would have shuddered had they known that four rascals were sitting in their library, round rum and gold and cheap cigars, bargaining by the light of tallow dips in bottle-mouths! -we checked over the money again and paid it to Francesco, to whom, as the representative of the Profiteer (and having no official cognisance of the methods by which the car was acquired), we decided to entrust the money.

Francesco, in his turn, and in the same manner, disbursed thirty-five sovereigns to Rudolph, which seemed to me a slight recompense for the work he had done. However, there may have been wheels within wheels of which we knew nothing.

And here I must confess to a serious blunder. I omitted to count the cash remaining in my money-bag that evening, with the result that, on the following day, when making up my accounts, I found I was twenty sovereigns short. I am afraid that this was due to my oarelessness entirely. When and where and how the money was lost I do not know, but I am afraid it was on the present ecossion. However, the authorities were kind about it, considering they had had value for their money in the matter of the Mercedes, and the sum of twenty pounds "unaccounted for" was passed without demur.

After paying the conspirators and giving them a Dutch Havanna apiece and a glass of black beer, we saw them safely off the premises. Then we bolted and barred the garden gate against any attempt at theft of our newly-purchased treasure. For greater security we also extracted a small but vital part of its mechanism, namely, the magnete pencil. Finally, we left a very thick jam sandwich in the bear's platter, and went to bed.

market rates. And no one was the worse off: in fact, not only had the cause of civilisation benefited by its acquisition, but the conspirators were contented, and so were we.

That forenoon we had ecoasion to go to the Banque Ottoman, and we travelled thither in the Mercedes. Having left her at the door for a few minutes, we were surprised to find on our return that a posse of German soldiers had taken possession of her.

Their sergeant addressed us in German. But we could not and would not understand. My partner took his seat at the wheel while I swung the starting-handle.

Then up spake a corporal, in English.

"You cannot have this car," he said, more in sorrow than in anger, "because it belongs to General Liman von Sanders."

"The General sold it to us last night," I said.

"It is German Government property, sir," said the corporal, pointing to the large black eagle on the panel.

"Your Government resigned yesterday," I answered, “and you can give the General our compliments, and say that if he cares to call on us at Rue Arslan we will be happy to give him a personal explanation. Otherwise, I am very much

But my companion was tired of talk. He out the cackle and slipped in the gear and we shot downhill with full throttle, leaving the Germans gaping.