The Eunuch of Stamboul

by Dennis Wheatley

“Please,” murmured Swithin, and he followed the Greek through several smaller chambers to what had once been the magnificent reception room of the Palace. Now it contained not a scrap of furniture, but along each wall men and women sat cross-legged on mats, busy grading the dried leaves from the tobacco plants. A great pile of the golden herb was heaped up in front of each worker and these they were rapidly sorting into three smaller piles apiece, while overseers walked silently up and down supervising their labour. Lykidopulous explained the various processes in his queer English and Swithin found the next hour a most interesting one.

  Afterwards they returned to the office for more coffee and cigarettes. Then Swithin took his departure and was rowed back in the caique down the Bosphorus. For half an hour the men swung rhythmically at their oars until they approached Stamboul again, now peculiarly lovely in the evening light, its mosques and minarets forming a tracery like lace above the massed buildings growing each moment more indistinct as the veil of twilight hid them in the mystery of the coming night.

  By the time he reached the Pera Palace darkness had fallen, but in the lounge all was brightness and animation. Travellers of both sexes, business men of a dozen different nationalities, officers of the Turkish Army and smart demimondaines, Greek, French, Russian, Jewish, Bulgarian and Serb, sat laughing and drinking at the rows of tables. Their chatter in a dozen languages filled the great room with a babble of sound and almost drowned the jazz band which played in a far corner.

  As Swithin made his way over to the lift he glanced towards the bookstall. Tania Vorontzoff was there, darkly beautiful. She flashed him a smile of recognition, displaying two rows of small, even, very white teeth, and then turned back to the man with whom she had been talking.

  That night Swithin dined quietly again in the hotel. Afterwards he went up to his room and spent a couple of hours studying a large-scale map of the city. He felt that an intimate knowledge of its topography might prove invaluable in an emergency.

  It was not, of course, that he was definitely operating against the Turkish Government but he was there to nose round and he might well stumble on matters which it would most strongly resent any foreigner finding out. In that event he would find himself up against the organised police of the country and its formidable Chief, the Eunuch, Kazdim Hari Bekar. They would arrest him for espionage if they could and Sir George had made it quite plain what would happen to him then, ten years in a fortress—or worse, he would be knocked on the head one dark night and flung into the Bosphorus.

  Swithin was under no illusion regarding the risks his job entailed and he had already made up his mind that on the least suspicion that the police were taking an interest in his movements he would go to earth. It was either that or getting out at once but he had no intention of throwing in his hand and having to confess defeat before Diana.

  Having undressed he flung wide his window to gaze out on the myriad lights that twinkled from the shipping in the Golden Horn and the houses of the darkened city.

  ‘What secret did it hold,’ he wondered. That he had not been sent there on a wild goose chase, as McAndrew seemed to think, he felt certain. Sir George had filled him with his-own forebodings that trouble was brewing in this capital of bygone Empires which, despite its surface modernity, still held all the beauty, cruelty, romance and intrigue of the timeless East.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE DRUDGERY OF THE QUEST

  All through the latter weeks of July and early August Swithin laboured at his task. The days were sweltering, the nights oppressive, and his only relief from the heat and flies and dust were his frequent trips up the Bosphorus to the Tobacco Depot.

  Always having believed that the secret of successful disguise lay in actually living the part played for the moment, he flung himself as whole-heartedly into the affairs of the Tobacco Company as if he had been a banker’s investigator all his life. He asked endless questions and continually pestered Lykidopulous for lengthy reports, so that the Greek grew to loathe the sight of him. Of the technical side he naturally remained profoundly ignorant but he surprised himself by the quickness with which he came to understand the general situation of the business, and was able to comfort himself with that thought that owing to his activity in it no member of the firm could possibly suspect his stay in Constantinople to have any other motive.

  Moreover, since he was able to read such correspondence as Lykidopulous put before him, and was not dependent on the often deliberately inaccurate translations of the Greek, he soon spotted just how the manager was making a good thing out of it for himself, and it pleased him to know that he would at least have this criminal leakage to report to Sir George Duncannon when his real business was concluded.

  That real business did not prosper however despite the hours he spent both day and night scraping casual acquaintance with a hundred different types in every quarter of the crowded cosmopolitan city. At the Pera he became, for a little time, a daily frequenter of the bar where he rubbed shoulders with Americans, English, French, Italians, Germans, and talked of Turkey to them by the hour. But all seemed convinced of Mustapha Kemal’s pacific intentions, that his break with Islam had been final, and that, Dictator though he might be, his rule was now firmly founded upon a recognition by the majority of the people that he had saved Turkey from final partition by the Victorious Allies and welded the remnant of the Empire into a new and virile nation.

  Obviously these people could tell him nothing so he abandoned the bar for the cafés, which in the old days had been the centres of political discussion, but here he found that McAndrew had accurately assessed the situation. He met many interesting people and they talked freely enough upon stock market quotations, the prospects of the tobacco, maize and wheat crops, chess, football which was now being played in every Turkish village, the broadcasting programmes, food, history, past wars and a variety of other subjects, but immediately the name of Mustapha Kemal was mentioned loud protestations of admiration for his Government were promptly followed by a change of subject.

  Swithin then took to wandering in the Grand Bazaar, that wonderful enclosed market with its high domed ceilings and small dust covered windows through which the sun hardly penetrates. The uneven, badly paved streets, if placed end to end would measure several miles in length although all housed under one vast roof, and a thousand merchants displayed their wares there every day; jewellery, hardware, sweetmeats, boots, antiques—mostly from Hamburg or Birmingham with an occasional genuine piece—oriental rugs, ready made clothes and a hundred other commodities. The more wealthy traders had lock-up shops, with glass windows, of their own; the middle sort spread out their goods each morning on open stalls; and the riff-raff hawked tawdry rubbish in the gutters.

  Even on the hottest day it was cool in there and he spent many hours bargaining for small purchases over innumerable cups of coffee and side tracking the conversation from commercial matters when he had the opportunity, but he learnt little.

  Once, when he returned to renew his bidding for a rug over which he had opened negotiations three days before, he found the dealer, an old and bearded man, admiring his reflection in a hand mirror with a worn fez set jauntily on his head. Immediately he caught sight of Swithin he whipped it off, stuffed it guiltily under a cushion, and resumed his bowler. The old chap was so rattled that he let Swithin have the rug for a hundred and fifty piastres less than he had offered on the previous occasion without a word of protest, but it would have been unreasonable to attach any undue importance to the episode except as an example of the fear in which Kemal’s secret police were held owing to the rigour with which they enforced his ordinances.

  On numerous occasions Swithin visited the Mosques of Ahmed, Soulyman, and Saint Sophia. The mighty spaciousness of the latter never failed to fill him with wonder and awe. Built as a Christian Basilica it had been despoiled of its famous frescoes on the taking of the city, but it had been impossible for the victorious Turks to convert it properly to the use of their own religion. It i
s oriented according to the Christian formula, towards the East, and since the followers of the Prophet must face Mecca when they pray, all rugs and Mosque furniture have of necessity to be placed at an angle to the edifice, thus giving to its Mohammedan occupation a curiously make-shift and temporary appearance despite the fact that they have worshipped there for half a dozen centuries.

  He managed to get into conversation with a few of the Mullahs and sought to learn how they had taken Kemal’s attack on their revenues and curtailment of their privileges. They were not communicative on those points, remarking merely that the Gazi had laid no restraint on the continued exercise of their religion, and that the faithful saw to it that they wanted for nothing; he did however secure one piece of interesting information.

  A devotee who had just come from listening to a reading of ‘the word’ one day, boasted how greatly the congregation had increased again of late and Swithin verified that statement by talking to the beggars who sat outside the holy places. With them business was on the upgrade and after lean years they were thriving once more.

  Several times he crossed the Bosphorus to Scutari and once landed farther down at Moda since he thought it as well to find out the exact position of the address that McAndrew had given him.

  The house was a double-fronted, solid looking property set in its own garden, and of a type which is to be found in many of the better London suburbs. Its neighbours were built on similar lines and it seemed highly incongruous to find streets of such houses dumped down on the edge of Asia, but the British merchants of the ‘eighties had built them thus and their successors continued to occupy them, as Swithin was aware. Having made careful note of the quickest way to reach it in an emergency he left it sleeping there, apparently untenanted, in the strong sunshine of the afternoon.

  As the days passed his first enthusiasm began to wear a little thin. This scraping of acquaintance with strangers, accompanying them on sight-seeing expeditions and giving or accepting odd meals here and there, all for the purpose of carrying on interminable conversations which never led to anything, seemed a completely futile waste of time. It irked him terribly that he could not get his teeth into the job and he began to wonder if Sir George had not been barking up the wrong tree after all. Yet somehow he felt in his bones that, hidden under the teeming life of the city, something unusual was going on if only he could get a lead to it.

  At last he decided that, much as he hated the idea of dressing up like some amateur detective, he must do so in order to try and make contact with the lower strata of the population.

  Buying a piece here and a piece there he gradually collected a strange assortment of second-hand clothing at his Tatavla flat and then one evening he sallied forth to parade the streets as an apparently verminous ruffian.

  For a night or two he was content to wander in the streets perfecting his make-up by watching the manner and bearing of other down and outs. Then he essayed the making of a few acquaintances in this new role, and for the purpose went into the poor quarter of Haskeuy, which the thousands of Russian refugees who found themselves marooned in Constantinople after the revolution have adopted for their own.

  He could not of course pretend to be a Turk—his vivid blue eyes would have given him away immediately; so he chose the character of a destitute Austrian who had been captured by the Russians in the latter part of the War, come down with the Whites as a refugee to Constantinople and, learning that he had lost both his money and his family, remained there ever since. His German was good enough to pass muster with a Russian or a Turk and the population of Constantinople was a mixture of so many races that such a story had far more plausibility than it would have done in any other European capital.

  Noticing a low, vaulted, drinking shop which was fairly full of people he went in and sat down at a rough wooden table which was only occupied by one man. A tousled looking woman came up to take his order and he asked for a Raki; then he sat silent for a little.

  After an interval the man turned a pair of lack-lustre eyes upon him, asked the time in bad Turkish and, on being told, got up to leave. Swithin sat on, hoping that other customers would come in to share his table and presently three new arrivals sat down at it. They were a cheerful trio and soon drew him into their conversation. Two of them were Russians but, in deference to the third, they talked in Greek. Swithin discovered that all three were employed in the Naval Arsenal nearby. The two refugees made no pretence to nobility; they had been simple soldiers at the time of the revolution with a belief in God and the Czar; in consequence they had remained loyal to their officers and eventually been driven out of Russia with them in 1920. Life in Constantinople was no harder for them than in any other place and as long as they retained their jobs they were content with such simple pleasures as they could afford.

  For a week he went to the same drinking shop nightly, met his new friends again, and through them a number of others. It was dreary work sitting for hours in the heavy smoke-laden atmosphere and, in order to conform with the habitués of the place, eking out a single drink, or at the utmost two, until closing time, because few of them could afford more in one evening. The talk was mostly of their chances in the lotteries, boastful references to their occasional successes with cheap women, bawdy stories, and now and then the resurrection of some oft told episode in the War which had been the outstanding period in all their lives. They were vaguely Socialist but their grievances were more against the petty tyrannies of foremen and low scales of wages paid by the masters than against the existing Government, and they were almost entirely ignorant of conditions in any country outside Turkey. One man maintained that Hitler was the Kaiser’s son, and another, that Egypt was a part of India. Naturally Swithin refrained from drawing attention to himself by any display of knowledge and risked no more than a casual word now and then to keep the conversation upon politics whenever they spoke of them.

  One thing he noticed in these weary sessions was that when these émigrés did speak of Turkish affairs they talked far more freely than the Turks and on three occasions different men stated vaguely that they thought a change was coming. He tried to draw them out but it was soon obvious that they knew nothing and could not even suggest what form the change was likely to take. Whatever happened could make little difference to their wretched lot and they all seemed to regard the future with hopeless apathy.

  After a time, convinced that he could learn nothing of importance from these simple Russian working men, Swithin abandoned his evenings with them and turned his attention to the Jewish Quarter round Galata.

  Here he met with greater difficulty since he could not possibly pass himself off as a Jew and the fact that most Constantinople Jews are of Spanish origin provided an additional handicap. Had they been German Jews he might have understood fragments of their conversation but as it was their gibbering was completely meaningless to him except when they used Turkish or Greek.

  He managed to make a friend of one however, a half Italian and half Jewish bar-tender who had spent some years in the United States. The man was undoubtedly a bad hat and the place a shady haunt, but he had a sense of humour and delighted in airing his broken English. Swithin dressed slightly better on his visits to this place and posed as a commercial traveller left stranded in Constantinople because his firm had gone bankrupt.

  One night the Italian-Jew got drunk and confidential. The gist of his maudlin meanderings was that “Somebody was up to something as Swithin would very soon see. Every one of his Jewish friends was selling—selling-selling, and prices were coming down—down—down. They were unloading their goods now at stupid prices but still they continued to sell, and, what was more, all the money was being smuggled out of the country.”

  Outwardly Swithin’s expression never altered but inwardly he began to get excited. It really looked as if he were on the verge of finding out something at last. Casually, in a low voice, he led the conversation round to Kemal and suggested that the Turks might be about due to revolt against his dict
atorship, but the drunken Jew solemnly shook his head.

  He agreed that plenty of people would like to slit the Dictator’s throat, particularly those of his own race who had always used Turkey as a milch cow in the past and were now no longer able to do so except at considerable risk to their skins; but maintained that the Jews were far too shrewd to finance a rising. “Kemal, miles away in Angora, is safe enough from assassination,” he said, “and has troops, machine guns, airplanes at his disposal. He would smash any attempt at revolution as easily as you could kick the top out of an old hat, so it would just be chucking money down the drain to try anything against him—no, it certainly is not that.”

  At this juncture the Armenian-Jew proprietor of the place arrived on the scene, cursed the bar-tender for his condition with truly oriental fluency, and told Swithin to “get out!” When he returned the following night, in the hope of renewing the conversation, he found a gazelle-eyed youth with greasy black curls behind the bar and learned that his drunken friend had been given the sack. The man’s departure without leaving an address was unfortunate since it prematurely closed this promising line of investigation.

  Within a few days of his arrival Swithin had sent in his first report to Sir George, giving a précis of McAndrew’s view of the situation, his own first impressions of the Tobacco Depot, and the information that he had secured extra accommodation which made him independent of his room at the Pera.

  In his second report, a fortnight later, he had little of interest to tell except that a quiet but steady religious revival was in progress, and that vague rumours supported Sir George’s own suggestion that a big change of some kind was impending. Swithin gave full details of each episode upon which these general statements were based because he knew from his military training that small happenings which may be practically meaningless to the observer can sometimes confirm important conclusions at headquarters when collated with reports from other sources, but he was far from satisfied with his work.