Sherlock Holmes and The Sword of Osman (4 page)

The train gathered speed, clacking its way across the Thames. Victoria Station fell back. I turned my attention to the outside world. St. Paul's Cathedral came into view, 365 feet high. A cloud-burst earlier that morning had washed the smoke and dust out of the air so that even at a distance the gilt cross sparkled in the sunshine. Spires, dwarfed by the dome, stood out with unnatural clarity.

I surrounded myself with a cloud of newspapers until at last, saturated with the events of the day, I tossed them to one side and stared at my sleeping friend. Next to Holmes lay a long cherry-wood pipe and his favourite clay pipe, a box of vestas, and a pouch with Grosvenor tobacco mixture (at eightpence an ounce). He had opted for a rare Poshteen Long Coat. He had worn it last in our encounter with the ruthless Empire Loyalists of the Kipling League and their President, David Siviter, in
The Case of
the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle
some two years earlier. No-one would accuse Holmes of foppishness. The bulky piece with its many flaps and pockets was accompanied by a regrettable common-or-garden ear-flapped travelling cap showing signs of savage attack by moths, no respecters of ancient relics.

Beside me was a heavily-sealed document ‘for the attention of Commander Hewitt' delivered to the train and passed to me by Holmes with the words ‘Do oblige me when you have time'. The succinct address ‘Bankside' indicated it had been written by Mycroft Holmes in the privacy of the Diogenes Club.

I lit a lunkah and began to read.

‘Dear Sherlock, by now you will be boarding the express train to Dover, engaged in a task as important as any you have undertaken. Your destination Constantinople - often referred to as ‘Stamboul' - has been called empress of the world, a city of beauty and tragedy, where a man's ancestry is proclaimed by the colour of his trousers - Turks red, Greeks black, Jews blue, Armenians violet. Turkey is more an Asiatic power than a European one.

‘First, a cautionary word on wearing naval officers' uniforms. The Civil Service is in the throes of drawing up a new Convention regarding the status of wartime spies. Ch.11, Article 29 will state a person is considered a spy who acts clandestinely or on false pretences, infiltrates enemy lines with the intention of acquiring intelligence and communicating it to the belligerent during times of war. You should, therefore, be aware that if war breaks out during your stay in Turkey, and the Ottomans are on the other side, you will be executed. Now you know of this risk no-one will hold it against you or Dr. Watson if you spend a pleasant hour or two at Dover Castle followed by a six-course dinner courtesy of His Majesty on the next train back to Victoria. Otherwise read on.

‘The Sultan is a bottomless pit of falsehood and fraud who will fulfil nothing except under force or the proximate use of force. The East is, and ever was from times immemorial, the land of the most striking contradictions. Venice in its darkest days was light and freedom compared to the cesspool of vice, decay and blood which is the Stamboul of today. Across the Ottoman Empire provinces which were once rich and fertile have returned to nearly the desolation of the desert, in parts a howling wilderness.

‘Europe waits with bated breath for Ottoman rule to collapse. St. Petersburg and Vienna bide their time like crows on a fence post. Berlin maintains a ship anchored for months at a time in the harbour at Stamboul full of political and commercial spies masquerading as archaeologists and engineering geographers. We have good reason to believe the Kaiser signed a secret military convention with the Sultan when Abd-ul-Hamid hosted him in Constantinople eight years ago. If war breaks out between Germany and England, we will find the Turk on the other side. Why should this be of concern to London? Because when the Sick Man does collapse England must have her share of the spoils. Our power extends to the boundaries of even the farthest ocean. In Kipling's words, England holds Dominion over palm and pine. Our world-empire is an octopus with gigantic feelers stretching out over the habitable globe. Many economies including China and Siam are under our control.'

The letter went on,

‘The Foreign Secretary is not the most sensitive barometer by which to read tendencies in foreign policy. His attention is fixed too hard on France, a corrupt and traditional enemy which to my mind remains of interest but no longer consequence. England herself is in urgent need of a Metternich, a Talleyrand, a blood-and-iron Bismarck, which Sir Edward is not. History may show the King's recent Entente with Paris was England's first blundering step to war with Germany. There is not enough dissimulation in Grey for a politician. Rather, he is an unpretending Englishman of country tastes, simple in word and thought, good at fishing and learned in sparrows. Perhaps I'm being unfair - there is in great affairs so much less in the minds of the chief actors than in the minds of the event. In emergencies we discover we are the puppets of the past which, of a sudden, pulls the unseen wires and determines the action.'

I resented Mycroft's mild contempt for Sir Edward's ‘country tastes'. The Foreign Secretary was a man after my own heart.

A chilling analysis unfolded.

‘When the next crisis comes we shall find the war-chariots' reins not in Whitehall but Wilhelmstraße. There is a good deal of gunpowder lying about in Berlin waiting for a spark, its ruler keen to settle differences sword in hand. The mischief-makers' time is coming,
ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast
- without haste, but without rest. The gifts of patience, forbearance and tact may be invaluable for the conduct of delicate negotiations but Germany is not a wilting lily. She is a walnut which it will require a hammer to crack. Grey will be powerless to prevent the shipwreck which is now inevitable It only takes one to make a quarrel; it needs two to preserve the peace.'

The above is expressed in the deepest confidence that it will find a place in your and Dr. Watson's minds and not an inch further. This was followed by the cautionary words, ‘I need not remind you, dear brother, I have a comfortable chair here in Whitehall. With time and usage it has taken on the curvature of my back (and rump) and I hope to remain in it for many moons to come. After you have fully absorbed its content burn this document.'

‘Burn this document'was heavily underlined.

The last of London was now behind us. We were puffing towards the forbidding bulwark of the White Cliffs and, beyond, the English Channel and France. I put Mycroft's letter away and pulled my tin box from the rack, riffling through case-notes yet to see the light of day.

I smoothed out the pages and spread them on the seat beside me.

***

Days and nights passed. We rattled through France at forty miles an hour aboard a succession of wind-splitting ‘pig-nosed' trains. A hundred hamlets passed by in a blur. Restaurant cars serving hearty food and fine wines ameliorated the long evenings. I picked up and put down and picked up
The Best Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
and
Diary of an Idle Woman in Constantinople
. I alternated staring out of the carriage windows with seizing the chance when Holmes dozed to continue my transcriptions. Finally we were within shot of Algeciras. Beyond lay Gibraltar. Soon we would be sailing through the Mediterranean into the Aegean Sea.

Hundreds of miles into our journey, irrevocably committed to our new adventure, I returned to the final paragraph of Mycroft's letter.

‘I think Sir Edward and I have covered the politics enough. You will be received by the Sultan at Yildiz Palace in your guise as naval emissaries acting on requests from the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Zoological Society Gardens. You will not be shown the Sultan's Harem, the Harem-i Hümâyûn. English feet have stamped their mark on much of the world, Whymper's on the peak of the Matterhorn, Speke's at the source of the Nile, but along with the North Pole and the summit of Everest the Harem remains among the few places on earth no English (or American) foot has yet trod.'

We Board HMS Dreadnought

I awoke next morning to find Holmes changing into the Commander's uniform and pulling on his boots. I flung myself into the Surgeon Lieutenant's dress uniform. The train slowed and came to a halt at our final station, Algeciras. I jumped out. Across the bay we could see the rock of Gibraltar towering above the sea.

A porter unloaded our luggage and placed it alongside us in a cab to the harbour. Holmes murmured, ‘Watson, I understand old Army habits die hard but if you are to pass as a naval officer you must rid yourself of the custom of placing a handkerchief in your sleeve. It might well be remarked upon by the crew.'

The paddle-steamer
Elvira
was waiting to take us across the water to the spanking new Edward VII Dock. To reinforce our subterfuge we made a point of going at once to inspect the pile of Wardian cases delivered to the dockside ahead of us. The sealed glass protected plants imported from faraway regions. Several cases were filled with plants personally requested by the Sultan from the Royal Botanical Gardens - bulbs of an exotic lily discovered in the I'Chang gorges of the Yangtze River in 1881, cushion plants with their origins in the Peruvian Andes, and the gigantic Victoria regia lily, brought to England from the shallow waters of a river in British Guiana.

The mighty
HMS Dreadnought
, built at a cost of £1,783,883, was to become the defining artefact of the Age. Colourful flags flew from her masts and sternpost. Before boarding the battleship we collected a package of letters forwarded to us care of Messrs. Cox & Co's correspondent bank in Gibraltar. One letter was directed at Holmes from his brother, the other to me from the Congo. I retained considerable loyalty to Cox's. The Bank served me well in India and during a short stint in the barrier-colony of Burma.

With the letters in our pockets we went aboard and were shown to our cabins. I unpacked and opened Pretorius's letter. It had passed mine in transit, probably at one or other end of the Suez Canal. He was anticipating my arrival with a keen interest, and that of my ‘magic box' (the medicine chest).

I put the document down with a heavy heart. Our plans would now have to take their place on the back-burner.

Well before dawn a Yeoman boarded with the final telegraphs from the Signal Tower.
Dreadnought
cast off her moorings and slowly swung away from land. I stared out of the porthole. Even in the dark, a large patriotic crowd gathered along the dock to watch the impressive sight. The great vessel gathered speed. She cast off the tugs and we steamed away as though on a course for the Caribbean. At our back lay the Mediterranean, formed where Africa crashes against Eurasia, a million square miles of sea of a shape and clime almost perfect for the development of civilization. Out of sight of land we would make an about turn, steam through the Pillars of Hercules and run as secretly as possible to the shores of Stamboul, 2,101 nautical miles distant.

***

Dinners aboard were remarkably friendly affairs. The pudding served, Commodore Bacon would give orders no-one was to enter the Wardroom without his express permission unless war was declared. The first night he raised a glass and addressed Holmes and me with ‘I advise you to snatch whatever sleep you can. We shall be steaming at 21 knots, testing the new Parsons turbines to the limit, big guns and torpedoes too. There'll be long range battle practices, short range battle practices, night battle practices and several advanced day battle practices - firing in indirect mode through smoke screens. We'll also be testing whether our torpedoes can hit a target at 4,000 yards.'

He planned at least one experimental practice, to explore
Dreadnought's
ability to keep on target during a radical turn. ‘Nevertheless, gentlemen, despite all the action we should have time for the occasional glass of port and conversation.'

The Commodore looked across at Holmes and me. In a lowered voice he said, ‘Only the officers around this table know who you are. The crew have been told you're visiting Anatolia and East Thrace to purchase exotic birds for the Zoological Society of London and rare plants for the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. The large pile of Wardian cases has impressed them no end. I think it best from now on if we become accustomed to using your pseudonyms. Once we've coaled and my men go ashore it's not unknown for them to take a Mastika or a Raki or two - banana raki, mustard raki, pomegranate raki, aniseed raki - or other tongue-loosening concoctions. Everyone aboard has arrived within the last couple of months or so from other ships of the line. I suggest you stay entirely non-committal if asked where and on which ships you've served, in case you give yourselves away.'

Thus eight days passed with tranquil intervals between the uproar of the great guns and torpedo-firing. I spent hours with the binoculars purchased for the Congo trip staring at passing islands wreathed in the legends of noble Hector, brave Achilles and cunning Ulysses.

On the last evening during drinks in the Mess a signal was brought in by a Petty Officer and handed to the Commodore who took us to one side.

‘The Sultan of Turkey will come aboard soon after we set anchor. I'll have to lay on a bit of pomp and ceremony and a display of uniforms. I take it you would like to meet the Khan of Khans and his party? If you come to the Gun-deck we'll introduce you...'

Almost rudely, Holmes interrupted.

‘Thank you no, Commodore. The Lieutenant and I intend to go ashore at precisely that moment if you'll make the arrangements.'

Without further explanation, Holmes said his goodnights and strode away.

Perplexed, I hurried after him.

‘Holmes, I thought our aim was to meet the Sultan. Why are we passing up such a golden opportunity?'

He waved a ciphered telegram at me.

‘Neither the Sultan nor we should wish to meet amid the throng of international Press and a hundred cameras. Besides, Mycroft's agent has arranged a transport to take us to the Palace as soon as we can get ashore.'

***

The constellation Draco was still visible in the night sky when we dropped anchor. Across the Sea of Marmara I could see a thousand sparkling lights. Stamboul, the arm of the peninsular, was now within range of our immense guns. Like the ashes of a phoenix, the Scott Eccles affair would have to lie awaiting rebirth as a fully-fledged Sherlock Holmes manifesto. The material was unusually extensive. I sat on the bunk staring at it. I supposed I could break the chronicle into two parts. There was a knock on the cabin door. It was a steward returning my freshly-ironed Surgeon Lieutenant's naval dress suit. The sword too had been polished and was returned with its scabbard.

As the sun rose, dark shapes around us suddenly became comprehensible. I climbed up to the Gun-deck. Our battleship was surrounded by the largest single assembly of warships I had ever seen. When we crept past the island of Malta by night, a Royal Navy squadron must have sailed out of Grand Harbour and fallen in behind us, accompanying us for the last fifteen hundred miles, unseen, swift and unlit.
I counted 10 first-class battleships silhouetted against the pink sky, plus frigates, torpedo boat destroyers and various despatch vessels and depot ships and the great bulks of two armoured cruisers of 9800 tons,
HMS Lancaster
and
HMS Suffolk
, castles of steel with fourteen six-inch guns and four-inch armour plate.

I stood with Holmes on
Dreadnought's
deck waiting for a pinnace from the dockyard to take us ashore. Great steamers from every country churned back and forth whistling incessantly. Across the shimmering waters of the Golden Horn richly painted private vessels with long up-curving prows carried distinguished passengers in the stern under silken canopies, the owner's rank dictating the number of oars. Nearby was a ship of the North German Lloyd line, the
S.S. Grosser Kurfürst
. Her decks and bridge were alive with the flashes of the sun reflecting from a hundred telescopes pointed in our direction.

By the harbour the creaking board-walk known as Galata Bridge bound Europe with Asia, Frank with Moslem, civilization with barbarism. Below and around it, tiny against the immensity of our battleship, barges plied for hire, darting about in every direction among lateen-rigged yawls and feluccas. In a high state of anticipation onlookers in turbans, keffiahs and fezzes, and Europeanised Turks in Stamboulines, moved along the bridge in a steady stream with the sedan-bearers. English couples en route to India with white umbrellas and puggried sun-hats wandered alongside veiled women with long draping mantles and ribboned panniers. Firemen carried large skins of water ready to dampen down any sudden conflagrations.

The roar of the crowds and the sudden flare of a beacon on the hillside announced the Sultan was about to leave his Palace. Through my binoculars I watched the open phaeton emerge at a trot from a huge gate, heading for the Imperial caique moored at Tersane. It was escorted by a detachment of the Twelfth Royal Lancers composed of Khurds and Anatolians. A living swarm of courtiers, eunuchs, household aides and panting pashas in heavy gold-embroidered uniforms ran alongside. An enthusiastic crowd of about fifty people waited at its waterfront destination ready to remove the horses and pull the coach the final hundred yards.

I heard Holmes's voice. There was tinge of urgency in it.

‘Watson, are you ready? We must go.'

He gestured as though sweeping me to a gangplank. The steam pinnace had arrived, the name
Haroony
in English lettering still fresh on its bow.
Dreadnought's
crew briskly transferred the thirty or more wood-and-glass Wardian cases guising us as naval plant collectors.

I went to my cabin to pick up the Offenbach rolls and the Lee Enfield. Holmes and I each wedged under an arm a copy of Hooker's
On the Vegetation of the Galapagos Archipelago
, a study of the plants Charles Darwin brought back on the
Beagle
. The wind blew straight in from the distant isles of Greece as we went down a gangway and clambered aboard the waiting transport, an awkward manoeuvre in naval dress uniform and sword.

I used the binoculars to watch the Imperial caique setting out. The Sultan and four personages of his suite were seated on a dais in crimson-magenta velvet under a gold and purple canopy, rowed at an impressive pace by forty oarsmen dressed in white with blue, red-tasselled caps. The whole looked like a gigantic water-boatman on the surface of a pond. The royal turban-bearer followed the Sultan's caique in a smart, eighteen-oar ship's cutter, holding up one of three royal turbans ornamented with herons' feathers and huge jewelled aigrettes which he inclined to the right and left, acknowledging the prostrations and cheers of the onlookers on behalf of his Imperial master. He was followed by an ensemble of energetic musicians - two drums, flute, triangle and viola - standing at constant risk of tipping over the gunwale of their tiny craft.

We slowed to avoid our wake jolting the on-coming barge as it went on by. The caique presented a sight of Moghul-like magnificence. The Sultan wore a turban adorned with three upside-down aigrettes, the equivalent of crowns, reinforced with hooked gold chains, dancing with plumes sourced from half the globe - crested cranes, peacocks, herons, hawks, ostriches, and birds of paradise. Behind him, like a bulbous shadow, stood a gigantic Abyssinian of phenomenal stature, head abased, the innumerable chins melting into a mountain of flesh. He wore a huge hat in the shape of a sugar-loaf at a slant on the back of his head.

Minutes later the Imperial visitors stepped aboard
Dreadnought
. The heaviest guns ever mounted at sea began a 21-gun salute. Then it was the Turkish Navy's turn to commence their own deafening salute, gun for gun.

Holmes and I stepped ashore. A sudden roar from the assembly on Galata Bridge drowned out the wailing note of the water-carriers and the raucous shouts of the Khurdish porters. We swung round to look. A submarine had bobbed up by the bridge. The Turks do not applaud with their hands. Their approval was signified by the hum of hundreds and hundreds of voices, a noise like the purring of a thousand cats. The telescopes aboard the
S.
S. Grosser Kurfürst
swung to study the jouncing craft with the British navy White Ensign flapping in the slight breeze.

***

The steel wheels made a familiar growling sound as a Clarence emerged from the shade of a high wall at the Vinegar Sellers' wharf. Behind it came a heavy two-wheeled cart to transport the pile of Wardian boxes, pulled by a jink-backed mare with feet like butcher's blocks. I had seen this condition often when animals suffer an extreme wrench below the short ribs from a slip, or more often from being made to drag too great a burden. Both conveyances had a horseshoe with a central glass ‘evil eye' dangling from the side to ward off bad things.

A man jumped out of the Clarence and greeted us. It was Mycroft's man, Eric Shelmerdine. His English was so perfect he might have attended Eton College.

‘I've obtained an audience for you from His Imperial Majesty, the Padishah,' he told us in a whisper as we climbed into the coach. ‘I'm to take you to him straight away.'

‘Which will be where?' I asked, wondering how long we would have to wait, knowing the glistering ‘Padishah' and his entourage were behind us aboard
Dreadnought
.

He pointed.

‘Up there. At Yildiz Kiosk. The Sultan's favourite palace. Despite the heat I advise you to put on your coats and keep them buttoned up. We get there by a dusty track.'

The dragoman pulled up the carriage windows on either side, tapped on the wood-work, and away we rattled as fast as the horse could go.

Conversationally I began, ‘I believe you write for the newspapers?'

‘Yes,' he affirmed. ‘Mostly obituaries.'

‘Obituaries!' I blurted.

‘Sometimes I do a piece on the Sultan's activities.'