I could only apply, as a last resource, to the Vali’s secretary, who at once took me to the Caracol (_i.e._, the “lock-up”), where we found my friend in company with the Frenchman we had already been pitying for his struggles with passports. Neither of these young men were known in Smyrna; neither of them had secured permission from Angora to land; neither of them were personally known to their Consuls; neither of them were able to speak a word of Turkish. They could not explain themselves, and were, therefore, to be kept under arrest till further inquiries could be made. “After all, in war-time did we not do worse things than this?” I asked the enraged Frenchman, who was declaring such treatment would make a _casus belli_. “When I was serving your country and travelling to San Remo with a special letter of recommendation from the French Minister of War, I was detained for forty-eight hours at Mentone, because they considered my ‘Plato’s Republic’ a proof of sympathy with the Bolshevists.” I was able, however, with the secretary’s willing assistance, to liberate both my fellow-passengers without further delay. * * * * * Naim Bey gave me many special privileges, no doubt as the result of prompting from the same quarter. He sent me up breakfast in the mornings, though his servants were all “Catholics” (_i.e._, Armenians, under the Papal protection), and did not know their job. I never could understand how he contrived to supply me with milk, as the Greeks had killed most of the cows; but I was no less heartily grateful for his permission to use the Spartelli library, and for the reading-lamp which he borrowed for me from an American. All these acts of kindness, however, were done with such an appearance of ease that I even ventured upon one more request. “Could I use the piano to accompany my Italian friend?” He did not hesitate to banish the six occupants of “mattresses” in the drawing-room from their domain until we finished “La Tosca” and “Madame Butterfly.” Then an American begged me to play the “Swannee River,” and nearly broke down before he had even got to the chorus. “Did I not tell you,” said the sympathetic Naim, “Poor things, they are so far away from home!” I suppose I should not be too severe upon these merchants among the ruins of their past glory, and, to do them justice, they are accepting defeat like good sportsmen. The Dutchman is as merry as a cricket, despite his £80,000 “gone west,” his thirty years’ work undone for ever, his fine farm burnt to cinders.