Five minutes later he and I were joined by Yeats-Brown, who, as he returned with Theodore, took care to flaunt a newly bought box of cigarettes before the eyes of his guard. He had been to look at the outside of Theodore's own house, so that he might recognize it.
He and Paul were to be turned out of hospital in two days' time. They had had no time to arrange a definite scheme, but as they were to be sent to Asia Minor very shortly, it would be necessary for them to escape almost immediately. I did not seek to join them, for White and I were still safe in Gumuch Souyou and had hopes of stealing an aeroplane. I therefore wished Yeats-Brown the best of luck, and after returning to hospital, waited anxiously for news.
Our first intimation of what had happened came when the chief doctor announced that no Britishers were to be allowed into the city, because two prisoners had escaped. Soon afterward a Russian, who arrived from Psamatia with influenza, brought details. With their bank-notes (obtained from Mr. S., a British civilian living in Pera) sewn up in suspenders and braces, with faces and hands stained brown, and each wearing a fez, the pair had climbed out of their window at Psamatia in the middle of the night, crept along a ledge, tied a rope to the gutter of the roof, and let themselves down into a dark doorway. The rope was found in the morning, still dangling from the roof. Since then--three days ago--nothing had been heard of them.
Meanwhile the hopes of White and myself revolved round John Willie the Bosnian. This man, an Austrian aviator who was a lieutenant in the Turkish Flying Corps, had been shot down in Palestine, and in the ward next to ours was receiving treatment for minor injuries. He told Ms. that in a few weeks' time he would desert from Turkey by aeroplane, and said he wanted a letter of recommendation, to be presented to the British when he landed at Mudros. Ms. refused to write such a compromising letter, and, not trusting the Bosnian, disregarded a suggestion that he should be taken as passenger in the proposed flight to Mudros.
Next, Ms. having left the hospital, the Bosnian approached me. Finding that I was a fellow-aviator, his first overtures dealt, innocuously enough, with war-flying in general and his own experiences in particular.