The Eunuch of Stamboul

by Dennis Wheatley

  The news with which he had been greeted on his arrival at the Embassy, that they were unable to put him up owing to an unusually large invasion of important guests, had not distressed him in the least. He was only too glad to escape the usual business of having to dance attendance on the ambassador’s wife and discourse upon the distinguished careers of his innumerable uncles with middle-aged diplomats. At an hotel he would be free to amuse himself and see all that he could of the famous old city until he was called upon to return home with fresh despatches.

  No sooner had he settled himself at the Pera that morning than, having bathed and changed he hastened down from his room in search of a guide-book. The purchase of one could have been effected in about ninety seconds, seeing there was a bookstall in the lounge but, as it happened that Tania was behind it, the transaction occupied some twenty minutes.

  Peter’s knowledge of Balkan history was limited, of the Sublime Porte infinitesimal, and of Byzantine Art exactly nil. It was far more the fact of having arrived in a strange country and the romance of this city of domes and minarets fringed by blue waters which impelled him to rush out and ‘see things.’ He had an eye for colour and the sight of beauty, animate or inanimate, warmed him like a glass of wine; but ten seconds in front of the bookstall were quite sufficient to sponge the fabled glories of the Yildiz Kiosk and the Seraglio Gardens from his mind. What were they after all but a skilfully erected pile of rubble and an open space dotted with cypresses. Tania had beauty—and romance too—as he learned before the full ninety seconds had elapsed, for she made not the least difficulty about telling him her name and that she was a Russian aristocrat forced by ill-fortune to wrestle with fate for a precarious living in a strange land.

  In the eighteen and a half minutes which followed she said to him very much what she had said to Swithin six weeks before. Swithin had not been unsympathetic, but he was an older man, and had seen something of those nightmare conditions which prevailed in the Near East during the years immediately following the War, so he privately considered that she was lucky to have escaped the miserable end which overtook most of her class and more fortunate still to have secured a job which kept her decently fed and clothed. His visits to the Russian quarter since had strengthened his view, for he now knew eighty per cent of her countrywomen to be keeping body and soul together only as the result of working in the sweat-shops and prostitution, irrespective of their pre-War rank or culture.

  Peter’s view of the beautiful Russian girl’s situation was naturally very different. His path had always lain in pleasant places and it had rarely taken him outside peaceful England except for occasional visits to the Continent; St. Moritz, Biarritz, Le Touquet, Juan les Pins, those playgrounds which the British have made so much their own that, apart from the mild exhilaration of being able to gamble in the Casinos, forget their own absurd drink-hour restrictions and the refreshing foreignness of the automatons who sell things in the shops, they hardly consider a visit to them as venturing outside their own island fastness. Even his visits to Brussels, Berlin and Warsaw had been a matter of journeyings with a laissez-passer, to spend a night or two in a British Embassy where all things were ordered with the same decency, decorum, and spacious comfort which characterised his father’s fine house in Gloucestershire.

  The discovery of Tania was as unexpected to him as the holding up of a Hellenic Cruise liner in the Mediterranean by Barbary pirates would have been to a spinster from a cathedral town making her first voyage in a party with the local clergyman as cicerone.

  Tania was lovely, and not with the pale, anæmic beauty of an English miss who knits a jumper while she discusses the merits of the latest Book Society Choice, or the hard, cold, chiselled features of the girls who rode to hounds at home. The red life-blood pulsed beneath the smooth skin of her cheeks and her dark eyes held a slumberous fire. Above all she was beauty in distress. The daughter of a Russian Baron, yet compelled to stand for long hours every day peddling guide-books and periodicals to keep the life in that delicately nurtured body.

  Peter would have remained there longer, listening to her sad story and pouring out a lavish sympathy, had their conversation not been so constantly interrupted by a stream of other customers, but when, with gallant resignation to her fate, she admitted that very occasionally she permitted herself the relaxation of supping with some guest staying at the hotel, he immediately implored her to do him that honour that very night.

  She demurred at first, but on his pointing out that he might have to return to England next day or on the following one at the latest, she smilingly consented and named the Grandpère in the Grand’ Rue as a good place to sup and dance.

  When she added that she could not meet him there before a quarter to twelve he pleaded with her to make it earlier but she explained that her invalid mother never went to bed until eleven and that before going out it was necessary to settle her down for the night. Yet with that Peter was content enough and, as he left her to sally forth into the sunlit street, he could hardly believe his amazing good fortune in having secured such a glamorous companion to sup with him within a few hours of arriving in a completely strange city.

  He lunched at the Tokatlian which had been recommended to him by Tyndall-Williams, the first secretary of the Embassy, but his head was so full of this absorbing adventure that he hardly noticed what he ate and afterwards, as he came out into the Grand’ Rue, he would certainly not have recognised Diana had he not run slap into her.

  She asked him to dine at her Uncle’s if he were still in Istanbul the following night but he hurriedly excused himself on the plea of a previous engagement, not wishing to tie himself up, in case he was still there and able to persuade Tania to have supper with him again.

  When Diana hurried away to an appointment he took a taxi down to Galata, across the bridge, and so to the mile-long wooded height which crowns Seraglio Point. There in the lovely gardens which surround the mighty palace of the Sultans he wandered the whole afternoon by lotus pools, down avenues of cypress, and through the seemingly endless buildings ranged about their three mighty quadrangles; the Court of the Janissaries, the Court of the State Receptions, and the Court of Felicity which led to the now empty private apartments and Harem; forgetful that he had meant to inspect the mosaics of Aya Sophia and Museum of Antiquities as well that day and thinking only of the night to come.

  He returned to change and dine at the Pera and as he sipped a glass of Kummel afterwards he caught himself cursing the slowness with which the hours dragged by—then laughed at himself for his stupidity in having allowed a pretty face to create such havoc with his emotions. He told himself that it was absurd to fall so easily for a perfect stranger of whom he knew nothing—or practically nothing, such a thing had never happened to him before—at least, not quite so suddenly, and he had had affairs with scores of girls—that is, certainly a good half-dozen, but perhaps it was the atmosphere of romance and intrigue with which this wonderful old city had been saturated for centuries that had got into his blood. He thought again of those cool fountained courts and arcaded galleries he had visited that afternoon, of the beautiful veiled odalisques who had danced and loved and died in the great haunted echoing chambers, of the curved sharp-bladed scimitars which decorated the walls of the Palace Armoury and the quarters of those almost legendary creatures, the Eunuchs.

  He would have been more than a little startled if he had been aware that one of those very Eunuchs, Kazdim Hari Bekar, who had lived in that palace less than ten years before and actually slain beautiful disobedient odalisques with one of those glittering scimitars, was covertly watching him at that moment. But he did not know that Kazdim was registering his face for future recognition as a British King’s Messenger whom Tania was to pump for any information he might have later that evening, and as the Eunuch was partly concealed behind a pillar of the lounge Peter was not even called on to wonder momentarily who that vast grotesque figure might be, dressed so incongruously in a modern lounge suit.


  Stubbing out his cigarette Peter stood up, suddenly feeling that it was childish to sit there for three hours mooning like an idiot over the delicate beauty of a girl’s face seen for the first time only that morning. His imagination was probably playing him tricks, he feared, and she would turn out to be no more than averagely good-looking when he saw her again. With a long lazy stride he strolled out to the head porter’s desk and made inquiries about the theatres.

  The head Kavass recommended the show at the Théâtre Français in the Istikal Djaddessi close by, so Peter told him to telephone for a seat and went round when the hour arrived.

  It was not a bad performance, about of the standard that one might expect in Lyons or Marseilles but with a faint dash of the Oriental in it, enough at least to enable any Western member of the audience to remember that he was sitting within half a dozen miles of the borders of Asia. Peter left well before its conclusion, for the Istanbul theatres play at later hours than those of London or Paris, and before the real enjoyment of his evening began he wanted to make certain that no message from the Embassy had been left for him at the hotel.

  Having visited the desk at the Pera again, he heaved a sigh of relief on hearing that nothing had come for him, and just at the moment when Diana, in a room upstairs, was imploring Swithin to leave the hotel without a second’s delay he passed out of its imposing portals on pleasure bent.

  Five minutes later his taxi set him down at the Grandpère. A brawny Kavass ushered him through a thickly-carpeted foyer where men and women were drinking together at small tables or waiting solitarily for others to join them. Tania was not there so he passed through into the restaurant and took a quick look round. It was newly and lavishly decorated but old-fashioned in construction and of a type quite new to him, although familiar enough to anyone who has travelled east of Vienna. For a moment he thought it was a theatre from its loftiness and the fact that two tiers of boxes ran right round its walls, but it lacked a stage, and what would have been the well of the auditorium consisted of a wide dance-floor surrounded with tables. A cabaret was in progress at the moment and a couple of dozen semi-nude girls pirouetted in the green rays of a searchlight.

  As the turn ended the girls dispersed and instead of retiring to their dressing-rooms, joined various male companions at the tables on the floor. The lights were turned on, a jazz band struck up, and about fifty couples moved out into the centre to dance. Peter looked round the tiers of boxes. A few held parties, but most a couple or only a single woman. Suddenly his eye fell upon one of the latter. It was Tania, occupying a box in the lower tier.

  He was just about to wave a greeting when a big blond man, a Swede perhaps, dressed in the uniform of an officer in some mercantile marine, got up from a table on the floor, walked over to just below her box, and called up to her. She shook her head and turned away, then catching sight of Peter smiled and beckoned to him. He lifted a hand to show that he had seen her, then walked round behind to join her in the box, but his smile had given place to a worried frown.

  The Grandpère was obviously quite a gay spot, although few of the patrons were in evening dress, and Peter felt that it might have been good fun to visit it for a rag with half a dozen other men or, as something a bit out of the ordinary, with a mixed party, but it was certainly not the sort of night club in which a decent girl like Tania should be allowed to sit by herself for even five minutes. He was a little surprised that she should have chosen it but thought that perhaps she had never visited it before.

  Immediately he arrived in the box he apologised that she should have had to wait there alone but excused himself on the plea that it was still nearly ten minutes before the time of their appointment.

  She smiled up at him. “No matter, I have been quite happy here watching the dancing.”

  “But that sailor chap,” he protested, “wasn’t he troubling you—or perhaps you know him?”

  “No,” she laughed. “It is nothing—he only asked me to dance with him—please do not distress yourself—let us order supper.”

  A waiter had entered unobserved behind them and he now produced the menu. Tania ordered a long and elaborate meal, the waiter tactfully persuading her to add dish upon dish while Peter smiled and offered further suggestions. He was a little amused that so sylph-like a person should require so large a supper but anxious she should have enough for ten if that would please her—for, he reflected, the poor child probably did not get a decent spread once in a month. At last the selection was completed and the waiter drew a table from the back of the box, already laid for two, with a bottle of champagne in an ice-bucket at its centre.

  Peter pulled out the bottle and eyed its label askance, then told the waiter to bring a bottle of whisky.

  “But it is a good wine—the best,” Tania protested quickly.

  “Is it—” he replied a little dubiously. “I’m afraid I don’t awfully fancy drinking Turkish champagne—hadn’t we better stick to whisky?”

  “If you wish,” she shrugged, “but I prefer to drink wine—and that is French, specially imported.”

  “My dear, of course, by all means if you like,” he agreed hurriedly although he was doubtful if the sort of champagne the French shipped to Constantinople would be much better than the local variety—only about five times as expensive.

  “Oh you are nice!” she exclaimed gratefully and placed a small hand on his knee. “I knew that I was going to enjoy myself this evening.”

  He covered the hand with his own and pressed it gently. His heart was pounding with the realisation that he had not been daydreaming in the Seraglio Gardens that afternoon. She was every whit as beautiful as he had imagined her to be and a faint delicious perfume played havoc with his senses as he leaned towards her.

  “Shall we dance?” she asked abruptly, but she withdrew her hand from his very gently, almost as though she did so with reluctance.

  “Let’s!” He stood up promptly and followed her from the box. It was then he noticed for the first time that her afternoon frock and smart little hat were hardly in keeping with the income which a young woman might be expected to derive from working behind a bookstall. They had a cachet which definitely spoke of large sums expended in the right places. Her shoes, he noted, were handmade, for he was rather a connoisseur of such things, and her silk stockings the sort his own sisters could not afford to wear except on State occasions; but a moment later they came out on to the dance-floor, she turned, held up her arms, and as her body closed against his in one supple caress he let the problem of her expensive clothing fade from his mind.

  They danced, and danced again, and yet again. Never, he thought, had he met anyone possessing such a sense of rhythm, her limbs moulded themselves against his own and she swayed to his every movement with the most perfect timing.

  He would have gone on once more as the band broke into a fresh tune but she seized his hand with a delightfully impulsive gesture and, pulling him from the floor, cried with a shake of her dark head: “No, no—I am starving—let us have supper.”

  Yet, back in the box, after she had accounted for two large helpings of caviare, she did little more than toy with the elaborate dishes which succeeded one another and the champagne in her glass remained untasted.

  However, the sudden disappearance of her appetite did not seem to have any ill-effects upon her spirits for she talked and laughed with an animation that Peter found enchanting. Actually, with a skill acquired from considerable practice in handling men she was leading him on to talk about himself without appearing to do so. She already knew from her chief, Kazdim Hari Bekar, that Peter was a British King’s Messenger, and within a few minutes of sitting down to supper he had quite openly given that as his reason for being in Constantinople himself; so it was easy for her to ask him about his other journeys and those northern cities which she had never seen.

  Tania had no wild idea of coaxing world-shattering State secrets from the breast of her tall, fair-haired young host. She knew quite well that
such things are not entrusted to junior Foreign Office officials and that actually he was little more than a glorified postman. Her job was purely a routine one of collecting scraps of information, and she would have practised it equally assiduously with a commercial traveller or the purser of a liner, providing that they had just arrived in Turkey from a foreign State. The Press being so rigorously censored in many countries under various forms of dictatorship, the constant tapping of visitors to Istanbul provided the principal means by which the Turkish Government could keep itself correctly informed as to the true thought and feelings of foreign populations. Tania was just one of many agents employed for that purpose and Peter having, as she soon learned, visited Brussels, Berlin, and Warsaw in the last few months was, from that point of view, an object of interest to her.

  “What did he really think of Hitler?” she wanted to know. “And how did those private citizens whom he must have met on his trips to Berlin regard the Führer? Say anything happened to him, would the Socialist propaganda merchant Goebbels come out on top or General Goering seize power for himself?

  “Marshal Pilsudski’s death had been tragic—hadn’t it? Who would succeed him as Dictator of Poland? What had the Poles whom Peter had met in, Warsaw said about that?

  “Poor little Belgium had had a nasty shock financially in the spring—hadn’t she? How did the business people in Brussels view their country being forced off gold?”

  They were all simple questions such as any person with wide interests might have asked and Peter replied to them frankly. Even if he had suspected that he was being pumped he would have said much the same for he was only airing his personal views and in any case had nothing of importance to give away.

  He did eventually remark what a serious person she was and how strange he thought it to find anyone so young and lovely with such a wide knowledge of international politics; but she laughed that off quite easily by explaining that sometimes there were long periods when she had no customers at the bookstall in the hotel, so she relieved her boredom by reading all the foreign papers, and knew as much about Hore-Belisha and his beacons as any English girl.