I went to the big gate, and tried to bluff the sentry to let me go to see the Commandant. But a clean face and a full stomach are practically necessary to a _debonnaire_ appearance. When one is scrubby and starved it is almost impossible to succeed in "wangling." I stared at the sentry through my eyeglass, and I offered him my twenty-five piastres as if I had plenty more _baksheesh_ to give to a good boy, but I utterly and dismally failed to impress him. "_Yok, yok, yok_," he said, looking at me as one might look at an orang-outang that has +-------------------------------+ | DO NOT IRRITATE THIS ANIMAL | +-------------------------------+ written over its cage. I gibbered in impotent rage, and then went and put my head under a tap. A little later, while I was drying my head with my handkerchief, I saw some barbers come to the big gate. They stood there, clapping and clacking their strops. Instantly, my fellow-prisoners rushed to the gate as if they had heard the beating of the wings of some angel of deliverance. This was apparently the occasion of their weekly shave, when egress to the corridor was permitted, the barbers naturally not wishing to go inside our loathsome room. Taking this tide in the affairs of men at the flood, I found it led on to fortune. I was in the corridor with six other prisoners, and a barber confronted me with a razor in his hand. He whetted his steel expectantly, but I would have none of him, and seized a passing official by the arm. He was a dog-collar gentleman. A dog-collar gentleman, I must explain, is Authority Incarnate. On his swelling chest he wears a crescent tablet of brass, with the one word _Quanun_ inscribed thereon. _Quanun_ means "law," and the wearer of this badge is responsible for public decorum of every kind. If a Turkish officer be seen drinking alcohol in uniform, or playing cards, or flirting, or talking disrespectfully of the Germans, or indulging in any other prohibited amusement, he is instantly arrested by the dog-collar gentleman, and brought to prison. In his official capacity, the dog-collar gentleman is one of the most important personages in Turkey: policeman, pussfoot and prude in one. "There is some mistake," I said excitedly. "I am a British officer, and have been put in a room with criminals." "You a British officer?" said the dog-collar man incredulously. "A captain of cavalry," said I, slipping him the twenty-five piastre note. "_Pekke, Effendim_," he answered. "Very good, sir, I will see what can be done." I had burnt my boats now. About ten minutes later, just as I was flatly refusing to either be shaved or to return through the gate, a sergeant-major and a squad of soldiers arrived and bore me off to the Prison Commandant. Here I caught sight of my two companions, and was able to fling them a few words through the "Yok, yok" of the sentries. They also had been separated, and put amongst criminals. Their lot had been no different to mine.