Sherlock Holmes and The Sword of Osman (5 page)

‘And you are given a free hand?' I enquired.

‘Of course not,' he replied cheerfully. ‘This is Turkey. All local papers receive subsidies from Yildiz.'

‘Therefore,' I pursued, ‘you cannot criticise the Sultan?'

‘Great Scot no!' he exclaimed. ‘When His Majesty's name is mentioned we speak in superlatives. Last week I referred to him as ‘recognised to be the wisest ruler in Europe'. Next week...'

He paused, calculating.

‘...it'll soon be time once more for ‘the greatest Sovereign who ever girded on the Sword of Osman'. After that it may return to the old standby, ‘a model ruler, one whose good actions are so numerous that if those performed in a single day were all printed, the columns of all the newspapers in the Empire would be insufficient to report them'.'

He pointed to the camera at my side.

‘What a wonderful Quarter Plate.'

His hand went to a pocket.

‘That reminds me, I have a photograph for you. An enlargement of the Sword blade as requested.'

The dragoman stared at my new camera with a dubious expression.

‘And you intend to photograph ‘the Mountain Eagle, the one whose exploits outshine every other monarch'?'

‘I do,' I replied. ‘Unless you think he...?'

‘Far from it,' he replied. ‘He'll be delighted. The Sultan will save you the bother of carrying your camera all the way back to
HMS Dreadnought
. He takes it for granted that anything which attracts him is being given to him - daggers, jewel-encrusted ornaments. The Sultan-Caliph will be very grateful for...' he bent forward to get closer to my camera, ‘... the latest Lizars.'

Conversation lapsed. I looked out of the carriage at the passing sights. Small, clean-eared Arabian horses plunged their faces into great deep basins, lustily lapping the water. Rows of fruit-shops offered apricots, cherries and plums from large baskets, and packages of young vine leaves used lavishly in Turkish cooking. A Cypress tree in the courtyard of a mosque and a stand of Oriental Plane, huge and old, had managed to survive a recent conflagration. The trees stood bereft of greenery, stately boles pitted and charred.

Our dragoman followed my gaze.

‘As you see, fire is a great hazard in Stamboul.'

He pointed up the hill.

‘That white tower has a perpetual watchman stationed in the turret to signal if a fire breaks out. At the first sign of fire drums are banged and guns fired and a coloured flag is raised to indicate the quarter. The firemen rush in with long iron hooks and pull down all the adjacent houses.'

‘What's the local word for ‘fire'?' I asked.

‘
Yangin
,' came the reply.

‘
Yangin
,' I repeated. It was my first Turkish word.

‘Another fireman stands watch on the Yildiz clock tower,' our dragoman went on. Dropping his voice he murmured, ‘They say the Sultan likes to take a rifle up there of an evening to indulge in what your Army calls the Mad Minute.'

I was familiar with the Mad Minute from my military training. It entailed firing a minimum of fifteen aimed bullets into a distant target within sixty seconds.

When the clatter of the wheels obscured his words from the driver, Shelmerdine added, ‘The ‘mad minute' here is like yours, with one important difference. The Sovereign of the House of Osman aims bullets at real people. With so much practice he has become a magnificent shot. I wager he would challenge you, Dr. Watson, for marksmanship with the rifle.'

He pointed at the lengthy bundle at my side.

‘He'll soon master that. And,' he carried on slyly, looking at the boxes, ‘the smokeless cartridges will be most useful. At present, everyone knows when the Sultan fires down on his subjects by the cloud of black-powder smoke rising from the spot.'

We drove past a dignified tomb surrounded by a complex of medreses and mosques. Other tombs were scattered among ancient Italian cypresses and nettle-trees. Storks wandered freely or nested on the domes.

In a louder voice Shelmerdine continued, ‘Mr. Holmes, your brother has asked me to give you some background into the state of play here. You will find Yildiz Palace a strange and cosmopolitan landscape. The grooms are Arabs, the footmen English, German and French. The nurses are Armenian, the housemaids Russian, stewards Italian, janizaries Turkish. French is the first foreign language acquired by members of Turkey's elite. The rest speak Persian, Arabic, Greek, Judeo-Spanish, Armenian, Wallachian, English, Dutch, German, Italian, and Sclavonian.'

Shelmerdine described an empire in miniature populated with Sandali - black eunuchs whose genitalia had been entirely amputated - white eunuchs, harem women, some captured or purchased, some voluntarily entering a hotbed of plots and counter-plots, mystery and bribery in return for the chance of high rank and wealth. Until recently the Valide Sultan Rahime Perestu presided over them all as ruler of the Imperial Harem. She was the all-powerful foster-mother of the present Sultan, with her rooms always adjacent to her son's. The post was now vacant. ‘Eighteen months ago the Valide Sultan took ill in her villa at Maçka and died. The Sultan felt her loss terribly. For one week the military band did not perform. At the time of her passing I wrote: ‘The esteemed lady's luminous face, graciousness, delicate manner, and elegance inspired respect and affection in everyone's heart, so that all those living in the palace loved her deeply'.'

‘She died of...?' I asked.

‘Croup.'

‘Croup?' I exclaimed, puzzled.

Croup was a respiratory condition almost only seen in children. Even in the very young it was seldom fatal.

Our dragoman nodded.

‘Newspapers are under the strictest orders never to report a Royal Personage died from old age or assassination. No king, president or emperor dies by an assassin's knife, pistol or bomb. Empress Elizabeth wasn't really stabbed to death in Geneva by an Italian anarchist.'

‘So how...?' I asked.

‘Pneumonia.'

‘And President McKinley?' Holmes asked.

‘Anthrax. As to King Alexander and Queen Draga of Serbia two years ago, you would be wrong to assume they were killed by a fusillade of bullets.'

We looked at our dragoman expectantly.

‘Indigestion. Simultaneously.'

Abd-ul-Hamid's succession was not without its difficulties, Shelmerdine continued. The Sultan was brought to the throne by the murder of his uncle and the deposing and imprisonment of his half-brother.

‘As a result he is dominated by fears of conspiracy and revolt, and not without reason. Last year the Armenian Revolutionary Federation left a bomb for him outside the Yıldız Mosque. I was there. There was a huge explosion. People, phaetons and horses were blasted into the air but the Sultan survived. Since then he has become morbidly suspicious. He buries himself in his Palace, in the company of soothsayers, astrologers, courtiers and police informers. He appears in public as seldom as possible, and always heavily guarded by soldiers.'

Shelmerdine pointed down a side-street at an assembly of parked vehicles identical to London's Metropolitan Police wagons.

‘Those are everywhere, ready to make mass arrests if the people riot.'

We were now high up on the slope.

‘I may not be a medical man, Dr. Watson,' the dragoman pursued, turning to me, ‘but I'm not the only person to say God's Promise on Earth is sick in mind and body, obsessed with one idea, that of preserving his throne and his life. Wherever the Sultan sits he has advance notice of anyone coming in. Mirrors hang at every angle of the room. Every room has its cage of parrots which screech at the sight of strangers. Every door is lined with steel. He goes to bed only after the woman who shares his bed has searched every cranny for a hidden bomb. In knowledge of your own English Gunpowder Treason Plot he never sits in a room above a dungeon. Abd-ul-Hamid even keeps his own submarine down near the Dolma Baghchech Pier. When a fit of fear or superstition strikes the Commander of the Faithful and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe, he hastens to the pier and stays the night submerged in his submarine a few miles out in the Sea of Marmara. He did so two days ago when news arrived from the Black Sea that a flock of purple-and-white hoopoes appeared at the very time the North Star was in alignment with the moon.'

Our guide pulled another photograph from his pocket. This time it was a fading picture of a submarine. He pointed at the waters below.

‘Your English submarine down there is to be a replacement for this vessel, the Nordenfelt 11.'

Like the earlier enlargement of the Sword of Osman, the photograph was in sharp focus.

‘Who took these?' I heard Holmes ask.

Shelmerdine pointed at himself.

‘I did.'

Our interpreter resumed, ‘As he grows older the Sultan's private horrors also grow, not least a horror of darkness. By night tortoises with oil lamps attached to their shells creep among the beds of flowers. The Great Lord is so terrified by the stillness that armed guards have to tramp ceaselessly up and down outside his bed-room. If eunuch or guard encounters the Sultan, they must shake his hand in a particular way, with a twist or crack of the fingers. Without that secret signal he's likely to pull out an automatic and kill them on the spot.'

Shelmerdine told us about a diver trying to reach a wreck just off Seraglio Point who signalled violently to be drawn back up. Once safely ashore the man explained in a voice quaking with terror he'd found himself among a great number of sacks on the bottom of the sea. Each contained the body of a woman standing upright, her hair swaying to and fro in the current.

We were approaching the Palace. Shelmerdine lowered his voice.

‘Abd-ul-Hamid fritters away his days in intrigue. He bribes everyone he considers a likely enemy - soldiers, hodjas, imams. Dancing Dervishes. Softas. At least, he thinks he's bribing them. The money and jewels seldom reach their targets. They mostly remain in the pockets of the two chief Palace eunuchs.'

Our interpreter bent his head to look out of the carriage window. The first of the Imperial gates loomed, the fine portico flanked by sixteen columns of Bulgarian syenite. The bright muskets of a dozen sentinels rustled in salute as we drew near.

‘The Great Khan is particularly sensitive right now. This month we've had an eclipse of the Moon, the flight of a shooting star, flashes of lightning, thunder as deafening as a battleship's biggest guns. Last week street dogs howled during the morning Ezan, the Islamic call to worship. To Ottomans these are omens spelling the death of someone of great importance. Abd-ul-Hamid fears it could be his.'

Our dragoman opened the carriage door and stepped out.

‘Here I shall bid you adieu. You will find the Second Black Eunuch waiting for you just inside the gate. His name is Nadir Aga.'

‘And the First Black Eunuch?' I called out.

‘That's Djafer Aga, a pasha of three peacock tails. You saw him on the Imperial barge.'

He leaned in at the now-open window.

‘Abd-ul-Hamid likes to be called “His Sublimity”. Doesn't come easily to Englishmen's lips, does it! A last word. If there's any truth in the rumour about the sword my guess would be the conspirators are members of the Committee of Union and Progress. Half the Keepers of the Imperial nightingales and parrots, the pipe-cleaners and coffee-makers, the sword-bearers and stirrup-holders are in the pay of the CUP. Even barbers who have no other function than to trim the Sultan's beard, every hair of which is reverentially preserved. If their leader Bahaeddin Shakir gains possession of the sword they could move against His Sublimity within days.'

He paused, looking hard at us.

‘If that were to happen the CUP will throw their lot in with Berlin not London. You, sir...' at this he stared at Sherlock Holmes, ‘...may well be the Padishah's last hope.'

I leaned from the carriage window and dropped a few piastres into his hand as though we had hired him for the hour. With a loud
As-salamu alaykum
he turned away from the carriage. Holmes called after him, ‘And you, sir, your religion?'

The answer came back in a whisper.

‘I was born into the Mother Church of Christendom but,' and his voice dropped even lower, ‘whichever suits the circumstance.'

At this he was gone, curiously diaphanous amid the cluster of flower-sellers, barbers and perfumers who importuned visitors from each side of the great gate.

We stepped out of the carriage.

We Meet The Khan Of Khans

Inside the great gate we were approached by the Second Black Eunuch, Nadir Aga. He led us towards our destination, the elaborately decorated Mabeyn Pavilion, the most important building of the Palace. Columns of porphyry, white-mottled verd-antique and stones stood in the most unlikely places surmounted with capitals appropriated from the fallen churches and tombs of Constantine and his descendants.

Holmes whispered, ‘Watson, I'll be most obliged if you'll fix in your mind each detail of our journey through the Palace. It may come in useful.'

We padded behind the Second Black Eunuch, along corridors and up and down hidden stairways, through rooms with walls decorated with flintlock holster pistols. Kapıcı (doorkeepers) at every entrance hurriedly performed their duties as we approached. We passed through workshops manufacturing heavy silks with exotic names to match - kemha, kadife, çatma - lighter silks such as taffeta and seraser, a precious silk fabric woven with threads of gold and silver. In the gathering heat it felt a long walk to our destination. We glimpsed fretted fountains and gilded kiosks, scarlet, blue, yellow, brilliant lilac and mauve mingling in the wildest ways, the love of colour quite Indian. On we strode, past shade trees, bowers with ivy and wisterias, and lion statues, water pouring like near-silent roars from their mouths. I inhaled the soft perfume of honeysuckles and jessamines wafting from nearby parterres.

The Second Black Eunuch's pace slowed. We were nearing the Mabeyn Pavilion. Uncertain which of us was which, he addressed us together.

‘Milords, the Sultan has provided a test. Mr. Holmes must prove beyond doubt he is the real Sherlock Holmes, Europe's greatest detective, and not a look-alike bent on His Imperial Majesty's destruction. It will be better for you both if Mr. Holmes passes the test by making the correct choice.'

***

We stepped through the Pavilion doorway like Alice following the White Rabbit. A window like a balcony jutted into the Royal Garden. A drugget covered the centre of the waxed oak floor. Four fair slaves moved around the room perfuming the air. The walls were arrayed with landscape paintings, interspersed by tiles put together to make whole murals of calligraphy. In a wall niche stood a painted grey pottery figure of an official of the Northern Wei Dynasty, brought from faraway Cathay, hands hidden within the sleeves rested atop a sheathed sword.

It was not the magnificence of the furnishings nor the beguiling female slaves which transfixed me. It was the three men seated on separate identical thrones. Each was an exact copy of each other, not only in their gorgeous attire and the jewelled orders on their breasts but in height, shape of nose, jaw and forehead, and colouration of eye. The trio peered back at us with a curiosity equal to our own. Each held a lance topped by a gold-plated brass ball with nine tails of yak or horse-hair suspended from it. Each wore an identical turban placed neatly above the ears, a straight cylinder of pasteboard about two feet high covered with muslin and then red fabric, and decorated with feathers and a band of gold. A bejewelled Turkish water-pipe, a nargileh, stood beside each man. At their waists were identical daggers with three pear-shaped emeralds.

We waited, staring at the trio until the slaves had filled the room with the scent of aloes-wood and amber. The silence was broken only by the continuous and gentle sounds of water tumbling from basin to basin of a white marble wall-fountain.

After a profound obeisance, the Second Black Eunuch bade us move forward to a place of honour in the corner of the room. As we did so, he whispered in my ear, ‘Do not be surprised at the sight of three identical sultans before you. His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan us-Salatin, has fifteen doubles.'

As Nadir Aga ended this explanation the three sultans' hands rose in greeting. The Second Black Eunuch called out in a magniloquent voice, ‘Whichever of you is Mr. Holmes must prove you are the world's most famous consulting detective with powers of observation far beyond the ordinary run of men. This is your test. You are required to identify which of those seated before you is the true Redresser of Wrongs, the Khan of Khans.'

I smiled. Patently the Palace had arranged to play an amusing trick. We had passed close by the ruler and his entourage on their way to
HMS Dreadnought
. Even now we could hear the distant rat-tat-tat of the 12lb anti-torpedo craft guns and the occasional thunder of the battleship's heavy guns as she waged mock battle against her sister ships for the Sultan's entertainment. It would be at least two hours before they could return to the Palace.

Noting my expression the Second Black Eunuch murmured, ‘I can assure you the real Sultan rarely leaves Yildiz. He is here, now, in this room. One of the three before you is God's Promise on Earth. Two of them - like the surrogate who at this moment stands on the bridge of the English battleship - are not.'

Without a second's hesitation Holmes indicated the figure on the right.

***

With a wave of the genuine Sultan's hand the two doppelgänger left, carrying their glittering water-pipes. We were now alone with the 34
th
sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the 99
th
caliph of Islam, ruler of a vast Asiatic empire. Our inability to speak Turkish or Persian was absolute and would require an interpreter. I wondered how we would communicate when in French as fluent as Holmes's mastery of that rigorous and beautiful language the Sultan said, ‘Welcome, Messieurs. The air of Stamboul is the sweeter for your presence'.

This was followed by the droll explanation, ‘I shall no more declare war on the English language than I would on the English King.'

‘And how is London?' the Sultan added affably.

Holmes replied, ‘From the point of view of the criminal expert, since the extinction of Professor Moriarty, the most dangerous and capable criminal in Europe, London is a singularly uninteresting city. When Moriarty was in the field, at every breakfast time my gazette presented infinite possibilities.'

I recorded the abominable Moriarty's much-deserved end at the Bernese Reichenbach Falls in
The Adventure of the Final Problem
. For those who have not read my previous annals, I should explain that Professor James Moriarty's criminal network stretched from the Bentinck Street corner of London's Welbeck Street to the Daubensee above the Gemmi Pass in the Swiss Alps. Holmes once described Moriarty without a hint of hyperbole as ‘the organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker.'

‘Are you are certain the Arch-criminal is dead?' came the Sultan's query. ‘They speak of a resident of Bavaria by the name of Gustav von Seyffertitz who bears a remarkable resemblance. You say you disposed of him down the Reichenbach Falls but perhaps...?'

It was clear the Ruler of the Ottoman Empire maintained an extensive and flattering interest in our cases.

‘Moriarty is gone forever, unless you believe in reincarnation,' my companion confirmed.

‘Can you oblige me with a description of his end?' asked the Sultan, leaning forward.

Holmes recounted, ‘We met at a fearful Alpine place where a torrent pours over a curving precipice into a huge cauldron from whose black depths rises a cloud of vapour. We fought. We tottered together at some eight hundred feet above the cataracts. I escaped his long reach. Moriarty gave a horrible scream. He kicked madly for a few seconds, clawing the air with both hands, gawking over his shoulder at the rushing waters. At his doom. For all his efforts he could not recover his balance.'

‘You could have saved him?' the Sultan enquired.

Holmes shrugged.

‘Yes, but I had no intention of doing so. The moment I released myself from his grasp I had manipulated my opponent's force against himself to ensure he fell a long way before striking a rock. His mouth opened and shut but his screams were obscured by the roar of the falls. His body bounded off a sharp outcrop, dropped hard on another many feet below, and then another, until at last he splashed into the water, vanquished.'

While Holmes engaged the Sultan's attention so deeply, I was able to take stock of the slight figure before us, the Emperor of The Three Cities of Constantinople, Adrianople and Bursa, and of Damascus and Cairo and an endless list of other townships and islands. Hardly a month went by without his sly, moustachioed face being featured in the latest Punch cartoon. The predominant feature, a great scimitar-shaped nose, shadowed a contemptuous mouth but he was by no means devoid of charm.

At his full height the Ruler of the Ottoman Empire could not have been more than 5 feet 6 inches. His pale forehead was lightly tinged with brown. The decades of constant strain had robbed him of the last vestiges of youth. I estimated he was over sixty years of age. His hair and beard would have been already grey except for the constant ministrations of his thirteenth wife. To comply with the Koranic law forbidding a head of state and its religion to show signs of ageing it was said she plied his hair with a special concoction of coffee, gall-nuts and henna used to dye the tails of horses.

The wildest rumours abounded about him. At the age of 25 Abd-ul-Hamid visited Louis Napoleon at the Tuileries during the final halcyon days of the French Second Empire. Rather than the reality of a short, thickset man in a simple scarlet fez and a plain blue frockcoat, Le Tout-Paris credited him with retinues of elephants and lions led by Kushite slaves laden with golden chains. They said he drove through their ranks from the Gare de Lyon like a Caliph of the Arabian Nights, in a golden carriage drawn by vassal princes, green-turbaned sheikhs and Albanian chieftains gleaming with jewelled yataghans and gold embroidery. It was said Abd-ul-Hamid's shoes were filled with sand from the Marmara Sea so his feet would not be defiled by treading on Christian soil. Alongside the dinner service of solid gold encrusted with precious stones ordered from a Parisian goldsmith, rumour added a crystal chandelier four tons in weight, and solid silver candelabra, each with the mystic number of three hundred and thirty-three. The gossips across the French Capital claimed that on his departure from Paris, the Sultan emptied all the pretty girls from the Variétés for the Imperial Harem, creating a shortage.

I became aware Holmes had stopped talking. He was staring out at the Imperial Garden. A young woman in a velvet jacket and loose entari with an emerald-studded belt stood there, silent and watchful. A rich purple Cat's Eye dangled on a lengthy chain from her neck. Small hands blazed with jewels, diamond rings of great lustre on each of her thumbs. Attached to her long black hair was a large bouquet of jewels made like natural flowers. She held a colourful posy of fresh flowers to her nostrils. Flowers were essential to domestic life in Stamboul. Their sweet smells masked foul body odours and the stench of human excreta. It was clear that satins, velvets, and wools were never washed. Plumbing seemed non-existent, bathing infrequent. At many a spot on our walk through the Palace the stale odour of human sweat assaulted our senses. Even the presence of phenomenally large honey-suckles in full bloom failed to provide a sufficient remedy.

Our host caught our glance.

‘Saliha Naciye,' he said, in an affectionate tone. ‘My thirteenth wife. With a soul as sweet as blood red jam. She's an Abkhazian. Ah, youth! So impetuous. So...volcanic.'

He turned back to us. ‘Saliha Naciye is the most assiduous of all my spies. My day is never complete unless she approaches me with news of some connivance against me.'

I wondered how someone so sequestered, observed night and day by the ever-watchful ‘Lord of the Door', would be able to garner information from the outside world. My expression must have changed slightly. Reading my thoughts, our host exclaimed, ‘I agree, Dr. Watson. How she manages to be so well-informed about the outside world is a mystery to us all'.

He turned his gaze toward my companion, ‘If you can solve that puzzle, Mr. Holmes, you'd relieve my mind tremendously.'

The Sultan reached inside his coat and pulled
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
from a hidden pocket. He raised it into the air.

‘Gentlemen, this arrived before you. Please tell your King his gift is much appreciated. When I lie awake consumed with all my cares, I shall command my Chamberlain to read these cases to me.'

Even while he spoke, the Sultan's eyes continually wandered around the room as if seeking a hidden foe. The slightest sound from outside the room, such as the snap of a dry twig, was enough to make him shy backwards as though it were the crack of a Mauser rifle. His gloved hand darted towards a gold and ivory automatic on the table before falling back once more to his lap.

‘Does the Sultan's thirteenth wife take an interest in my friend Watson's tales?' Holmes asked.

The Sultan's face twisted into a smile.

In his excellent French he said, ‘She is familiar with one or two but she and the Ikbals prefer Parisian gossip from the
Jardin Mabil
or the
Café chantant
and the romances of Paul de Kock - all those grizettes, guinguettes and cabarets.'

He tapped ‘
The Return'
and said, ‘But I assure you, Mr Holmes, Dr Watson's chronicles will be translated into Turkish one by one, and they will be read to me one each night. I shall relate them to her word for word.'

He put the chronicles down.

‘I must thank Sir Edward for sending you to my country to enquire into some presumed conspiracy against my throne. Nevertheless, the idea the Sword of Osman can be stolen is quite preposterous, as you will discover when you meet my Chief Armourer Mehmed. His men guard it with their life. I hope you have a very pleasant week here in Stamboul before returning to your country.'

‘Your Majesty,' Holmes asked, ‘to assist our endeavours I wonder if you could supply us with a plan of this remarkable palace?'