The Eunuch of Stamboul

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘JE SAIS OU IL LE CACHE.’

  He had expected some instruction as to how to aid her when she made her attack, but was thrilled to learn that she had already found out where Ali concealed the Kaka wafer. Perhaps, he thought, she has even managed to get hold of it. To escape and carry that off as well would be a veritable triumph, but he was burning with impatience for her to attempt his release. He blinked violently again and swivelled his eyes in the direction of the guard.

  Jeanette glanced at the man’s back, then she made a little helpless shrugging motion with her shoulders and withdrew as quietly as she had come—closing the door silently behind her.

  With bitter distress Swithin suddenly understood that all his wild hopes had been completely groundless. She had never intended to attempt his rescue, but only to pass on that piece of information in case he could manage to escape on his own. His disappointment was intense, absolutely physical. He felt his heart slip downwards in his chest and his whole body relaxed despondently under this shattering blow.

  Another ten minutes slipped by in silence, then there were voices in the hall. He recognised the high, fluting falsetto of the Eunuch, the door opened and Kazdim came into the room followed by his bodyguards, Malik and Servet.

  For a second all three stared at Swithin with unbelieving eyes, then Kazdim’s little pouting mouth broke into a smile.

  “It is true then,” he piped. “The ways of Allah are surely past the understanding of mankind. I never thought these eyes would behold your face again.”

  “No,” Swithin agreed grimly, “I don’t suppose you did.”

  The footman delivered his master’s message and left the room. The two guards took their positions one on either side of the Eunuch as he seated himself gingerly on the nearest chair. He continued to stare at Swithin with intense interest and a certain admiration in his little black eyes. Then the chair creaked under his great weight as he leaned forward and inquired amiably;

  “How comes it that you survived the waters of the Marmara?”

  Swithin kept a perfectly straight face, and replied seriously; “Because, as I have just been telling Prince Ali, I have nine lives like a cat.”

  “Indeed,” beamed the Eunuch with equal seriousness. “Then we shall have to give you a drink of strychnine, stick a knife into your liver—shoot you through both lungs—impale you on a stake—hang you by the neck—cut your throat—and, finally, burn your body. Thus will we dispose of the eight lives which you have left, and if I exercise some care, you will, I trust remain conscious up to the seventh operation—although each would prove fatal in itself after a lapse of time.”

  “You can’t think of any alternatives, I suppose?”

  “Why, yes. I have not spoken yet of bowstringing—cutting off the head—flaying—suffocation by pillows—starvation—sewing up in a sack with wild cats—snakebite—or feeding you to the rats in one of the old cisterns—another eight, you see—all of which modes of death, with many others, I have witnessed in my time. But some of these latter are lengthy processes, whereas my original suggestions could all be carried out within half an hour—if so Allah will—and in these days I have much business to attend to.”

  “In that case I’m quite agreeable to dispensing with the wild cats and the rats.”

  “I am obliged,” said the Eunuch politely.

  “Not at all,” replied Swithin, with equal courtesy, “you are to be congratulated on your profound knowledge of the subject.”

  “Thank you. I had the good fortune to study under the illustrious ‘Twisted Beard’ Pasha when I was a youth—which accounts for much. His fame as a director of executions may even have reached your ears, perhaps. He was Comptroller of the Household to His Majesty the Sultan Abdul Hamid who now sleeps in the bosom of Allah.”

  Swithin nodded, and his blue eyes twinkled. This fantastic conversation on death did not seem to be a really personal matter, and he thought he had a good one up his sleeve as he remarked; “If you knew ‘Twisted Beard’ Pasha you would also have known His Highness the Grand Eunuch Djevher Agha.”

  “Surely, he also taught me much.”

  “Do you remember the manner of his death?”

  “He was hung with ‘Twisted Beard’ and a number of others above Galata Bridge when the Young Turks deposed the Sultan. By the mercy of Allah I had been sent to Tiflis to make purchases of Circassian concubines at that time.”

  “You are wrong, my friend, he was not hung. A man I know was in Istanbul then and witnessed the execution. The Grand Eunuch Djevher Agha was a man much like yourself, of royal proportions and many chins. When it came to his turn, the gipsy executioners could not get the rope properly round his throat; in consequence, when they pushed him off, he died neither from strangulation nor a broken neck.”

  “How then?”

  “By the gradual pull of his own enormous weight until the tendons of his throat stretched to breaking-point and choked him with his own blood. It took quite a time—so my friend told me, and when Djevher Agha was still at last his head was nearly a yard from his shoulders and his great carcass suspended by a rope of neck not thicker than my wrist. I hope you will remember that when Kemal sentences you to be hung.”

  Swithin saw from a flicker of Kazdim’s puffy eyelids that he had got home, but the Eunuch suppressed it almost instantly, and smiled again as he said:

  “But tell me please of your escape last night. I am much interested and a little proud of you. The execution of most prisoners is quite dull, whereas yours, the method having failed for the first time, has made history.”

  “I’ll tell you the trick if you will let me throw you down the hole,” Swithin offered.

  “No, please,” Kazdim shook his vast bald head. “All my life I have preferred to experiment on others, and I am too old to change my habits now. It was the woman, I suppose?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “He! He! He!—note that, Malik, it is a joke.” The Eunuch’s enormous sides wobbled and shook as though they were made of jelly. “Surely,” he tittered, “you have not forgotten the tall fair miss with the dark eyes. She who was to have collected that letter from the Pera bookstall?”

  Before Swithin had time to make a denial, Prince Ali came clanking into the room. He was dressed in full uniform, with sword, top-boots, stars and medals, evidently about to attend some official function, and Swithin had to admit to himself that the Prince made a fine figure of a man.

  The Eunuch slipped from his chair and, with unexpected agility, salaamed almost to the floor, so also did his henchmen. This excessive deference surprised Swithin for, although Ali was of Royal blood, such considerations had long since ceased to count under Kemal’s regime, and it seemed strange that the Chief of the Police should actually grovel even to a very highly-placed General; but when Kazdim addressed the Prince as ‘Most Exalted One’, Swithin suddenly understood the true position. Ali came of the line of Sultans—only such were eligible under the religious laws to occupy the Caliphate, he was also a high member of the Kaka—the Kaka meant to restore the Caliphate, and it had evidently been arranged that immediately the Revolution was accomplished Prince Ali was to be proclaimed Caliph of all the Faithful.

  “Is this the man you spoke of?” Ali barked at Kazdim after the barest acknowledgment of the salutations.

  “It is indeed, Most Exalted One—and a miracle that he should have escaped—but the matter shall soon be rectified.”

  “It had better be—he knows too much—he even speaks of having communicated certain things to the Unbeliever. Can there be any truth in that?”

  “None, Most Exalted One, pray accept reassurances from your servant. He was but on the fringe of matters which it were better not to speak of now.”

  “You are sure of that?”

  “Certain, under Allah’s will, O Blessed and Holy Descendant of the Prophet. A young student whose unfortunate demise occurred four nights ago was guilty of certain indiscretions to this fo
reigner. Yet what can he have learnt that could cause a flutter of your exalted eyelids?”

  “I have your word for it that he has had no opportunity to communicate with the Unbeliever—that is the vital thing?”

  “My oath, O Dispenser of Felicity. The posts in that direction are watched with the utmost care and any private message would surely have been intercepted by those who delight to serve you in the Unbeliever’s entourage.”

  The Prince heaved a sigh of relief, then he said quickly: “I have a personal interest in this man, so wish to witness his execution myself. Also, I desire that he should be bastinadoed in my presence before he is put to death. To-night I attend a banquet and after, I have a private appointment, so the matter had best be concluded tomorrow morning.”

  “To hear is to obey,” bleated the Eunuch with a low obeisance.

  The Prince moved as though to leave the room, then he turned and spoke again. “How was it possible for him to survive a visit to the Tower of Marble—even if some fool was careless with the cords that bound his arms?”

  “By a chance in a thousand, Most Exalted One. His confederate must have known of our intent and waited below the Tower in a boat—again a hardly conceivable coincidence, but he must have risen to the surface within a few yards of the boat’s position—and so was hauled to safety while still alive.”

  “This confederate you speak of—what of him?”

  “It is a woman, O Blessed of Heaven! We intercepted a letter from him to her three days ago.”

  “Has she been dealt with?”

  “Not yet, Descendant of Divinity.”

  “Who is she? Have you discovered her identity?”

  “She is Miss Duncannon, Most Exalted One, who stays with another of that name at Bebek.”

  Swithin’s heart almost stopped beating. It was an appalling shock to him that the Eunuch should have discovered Diana to be the woman to whom the letter left at the bookstall had been addressed, and next moment his fears for her were increased a hundredfold by the sudden interest that leapt into Prince Ali’s eyes.

  “So,” murmured the Prince, “this is extremely interesting,” then he smiled maliciously at Swithin.

  “Would you like to see her flogged—you may, perhaps, after I have done with her—if it does not mean delaying your own execution too long. I have not forgotten that she, as well as you, displayed insolence towards me when I was in England.”

  Swithin bit his lip and remained silent, half-stunned by the ghastly mental picture which had risen before his eyes.

  Ali turned back to Kazdim. “Why—if you knew this woman—has she not been arrested?”

  “I did not think it necessary or diplomatic at the moment, Most Exalted One. She acts only as a post-office for this man, so without him she is harmless. Also she has many friends in high places and there would be immediate protests to the Unbeliever if I sent my men to the Duncannon house. However, if it is Your Felicity’s desire it will be simple to arrange that she disappears when next she goes abroad.”

  “Arrange it,” snapped the Prince, “and see that it is done to-night. I hold you responsible for her safe-keeping and immediately she is taken see that she is sent at once under guard to me.”

  “To hear is to obey, O Flower of Holiness,” cringed the Eunuch, bowing again almost to the ground. “And the execution of the prisoner here is to take place at my police-barracks at nine o’clock?”

  “The time is to stand, but take him to your own house. He will be equally safe in the private cell there if he is well guarded, and that will be more convenient for me tomorrow morning. Allah be with you!”

  Among a murmur of answering salutations Prince Ali left the room and the Eunuch’s men immediately began to unlash Swithin from the chair.

  Ten minutes later, with his arms still tied behind him, he was hustled into the Eunuch’s car and they drove off towards the Bosphorus. Kazdim was in a conversational mood and tried to joke with him again, but all the nervous resilience which had sustained him in the last hour had now drained away. He could think of nothing but Prince Ali’s hideous threat concerning Diana.

  The journey was a short one, little more than half a mile down the hill to a big villa behind the Dolma Baghtche Palace. When they arrived Swithin was bundled out, marched through a side door in a high wall, across a good-sized garden, down a few steps to a semi-basement entrance which had a balcony running the whole length of the house above it, along a few yards of passage and so to a bare, stone-walled room. Malik and Servet pushed him through the door, then slammed and locked it behind them.

  He looked round desperately. The place boasted two chairs, a table and a plank bed. It was about twelve feet square, but little more than seven feet in height, so that the sill of its one window was on a level with his shoulders. He ran to it and peered out. It was heavily barred and faced on to a blank wall opposite, but by thrusting his head as far as possible between the bars he could just see that below the window there ran a cobbled alleyway. Owing to the house being built on the slope of the hill, the alley was at a lower level than the floor of his room, so no passer-by could look in, and from the window-sill to the cobbles was a ten-foot drop. The bars were thick and solidly set in the ancient stone.

  Evening sunlight still flooded through the window at an oblique angle and he guessed it to be about eight o’clock. Diana might be going out to dine or dance at any moment and the Eunuch’s men would already be lying in wait for her. The thought was agonising.

  For a quarter of an hour he paced frantically up and down, no longer conscious of his hurts, but suffering a far greater mental agony as he bludgeoned his tired wits for some way to break prison in order that he might get a warning to her.

  In a fresh wave of distress he suddenly realised that he was personally responsible for having given her away. Kazdim had traced her easily of course through Lykidopulous. By his own stupidity in asking her to meet him at the Tobacco Depot he had laid the perfect trail for the police to investigate and follow up. The Greek had known who she was from the beginning, so what could have been easier than for Kazdim to check his description of her with that of the woman who had been going to call for the letter at the Pera bookstall—and draw the obvious conclusion? Swithin came near to raving when he fully understood just what his folly in appointing the Tobacco Depot as a place to meet Diana had involved her in. He could easily have selected a dozen other places where no one who saw them would have known her identity and address.

  The door opened and Malik came in, bringing a platter of food and water which he set down on the table. Then he unbound Swithin’s arms and bade him eat.

  For a second Swithin thought of grappling with him, but he knew that he had no chance. His arms were still so stiff that it pained him abominably even to move them, so how could he hope to overcome the wiry little Turk, even discounting the fact that the policeman’s automatic reposed, handy in its holster, by his side. Then into the chaotic welter of Swithin’s thoughts came the forlorn hope of trying bribery. There was no time to weigh the chances of success as Malik was already moving to the door.

  “Hi! one moment,” Swithin called, and unbuttoning his coat groped with stiff fingers in a pocket of his money belt for a biggish note. It rustled as he pulled it out.

  Malik turned and his face showed a quick cupidity as he saw the money. Then, before his prisoner had a chance to parley with him, he drew his gun and snatched at the note.

  “Hands up,” he rapped, “or there is going to be an accident.”

  Livid but helpless, Swithin painfully raised his arms shoulder high while the Turk, still covering him, unbuckled his money belt and, seizing one end, wrenched it from his waist with a violent jerk.

  Swithin made one grab at it and broke into furious protest, but Malik only laughed, jabbed him savagely in the ribs with the barrel of his gun and, having momentarily winded his prisoner, turned contemptuously away. When Swithin got his breath back the Turk had left the room, locking the door again behind h
im.

  With blinding fury in his heart, Swithin collapsed upon a chair. He felt that he had behaved like an utter, senseless, weak and stupid fool. It had been sheer madness to expose his money to a man whom he was far too weak to tackle—absolutely asking to be robbed—and he had got his full deserts.

  His body ached dully from the beating he had received in Prince Ali’s house, his head was a whirling nightmare of impotent rebellion. ‘Diana and Ali—Diana and Ali—Diana and Ali’ was the one thought which beat like a hammer in his brain. He knew that he had got to do something—do something quickly, not sit there like a senseless imbecile—or he would go stark staring mad. He must hang on to himself and think! think! think!

  Only one sane memory emerged from that stupendous effort to concentrate. It came to him that Kazdim’s men had not bothered to search him, so he still had the paper giving the list of the Kaka’s ammunition depots on him—and the Kaka wafer signed by the members of Arif’s cell, yet altered now so that the signatures were unrecognisable. Could he make use of that?—it was just a chance.

  Cell organisations work two ways, as he was swift to see, once he thought of it. There were seven thousand people, or more, who were now members of the Kaka and the majority probably lived in Constantinople, the ex-capital which had been robbed of its dignity and importance by Kemal. None of them knew with any certainty more than eight of their fellow-conspirators and few of them would even suspect that Kazdim Hari Bekar, the Chief of the dreaded Secret Police, was himself one of their number.

  Swithin got out the wafer and gazed at it fascinated. The odds were long, but it held an outside chance. He snatched a crusty piece of bread from the table, and hurrying over to the window, began to scan the alleyway as far in each direction as he could see with straining eyes.

  Few people had passed it when he had been peering out before, only two women, a man with a laden ass, and a small boy, in the ten minutes or more that he must have stood there. Now it was silent and empty.