“Did you never see men try to cover a secret before?” Will whispered.

“Or give it away?” I added.  Six of the men placed themselves between Fred and the opening where the blankets hung, ostentatiously not looking at the blankets.

“Have you an American lady with you?” Fred asked, and as he spoke he reached a hand behind him.  But it was not his pistol that he drew.  He carries his concertina slung to him by a strap with the care that some men lavish on a camera.  He took it in both hands, and loosed the catch.

“Have you an American lady named Miss Vanderman with you?” he repeated.

“Effendi, we do not understand.”

He repeated in Armenian, and then in Turkish, but they shook their heads.

“Very well,” he said, “I’ll soon find out.  A mission-school pupil might sing My Country, ’Tis of Thee or Suwannee River or Poor Blind Joe.  You know Poor Blind Joe, eh?  Sung it in school?  I thought so.  I’ll bet you don’t know this one.”

He filled his impudent instrument with wind and forthwith the belly of that ancient castle rang to the strains of a tune no missionaries sing, although no doubt the missionary ladies are familiar with it yet from where the Arctic night shuts down on Behring Sea to the Solomon Islands and beyond—­a song that achieved popularity by lacking national significance, and won a war by imparting recklessness to typhus camps.  I was certain then, and still dare bet to-day that those ruined castle walls re-echoed for the first time that evening to the clamor of ’—­a hot time in the old town to-night!”

Seeing the point in a flash, we three roared the song together, and then again, and then once more for interest, the Armenians eying us spell-bound, at a loss to explain the madness.  Then there began to be unexplained movements behind the blanket hanging; and a minute later a woman broke through -an unmistakable Armenian, still good-looking but a little past the prime of life, and very obviously mentally distressed.  She scarcely took notice of us, but poured forth a long flow of rhetoric interspersed with sobs for breath.  I could see Fred chuckling as he listened.  All the facial warnings that a dozen men could make at the woman from behind Fred’s back could not check her from telling all she knew.

Nor were Will and I, who knew no Armenian, kept in doubt very long as to the nature of her trouble.  We heard another woman’s voice, behind two or three sets of curtains by the sound of it, that came rapidly nearer; and there were sounds of scuffling.  Then we heard words.

“Please play that tune again, whoever you are!  Do you hear me?  Do you understand?”

“Boston!” announced Will, diagnosing accents.

“You bet your life I understand!” Fred shouted, and clanged through half a dozen bars again.