by The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer;His Mysterious Disappearance
After a few more fruitless house searches, the commission headed to Mollah Osman, a small village six miles east of Chilkani. Along the way, Tewfik, who was chafing from Sachtleben's refusal to sign papers, took Chambers aside and complained: "Mr. Sachtleben is young and hot-headed, and has not much experience with Turkish law." Reaching the home of Alayee Chavdar, the other Kurd whom Khazar had implicated, they could find no trace of its owner. They proceeded to search the premises and again found nothing.
Over the next few days, the commission conducted several more house searches in the area, all without success. Nor could they find any more witnesses willing to attest that they had seen the "soul-less horse." The party even traveled to Kolah, in search of Lenz's grave. But the Muslim residents all testified that the only corpse they had seen at that time was that of an old man without teeth. No suspicious grave was found.
One evening, by candlelight, the commissioners searched the home of the Kurd in Tchurmouk who had sold the bell to Khazar. Again they found nothing. While in that village, however, Sachtleben met another Kurd, Kassim Agha, who confided to the American that he knew all about Lenz's disappearance. He promised to tell all in return for a decoration from Shakir. The two agreed to meet again when Sachtleben returned from Bayazid.
Heading back to Chilkani, the commissioners reunited with Shakir and his entourage. Sachtleben told the diplomat he was not satisfied with the results of the proceedings. Shakir replied that he, too, was troubled by the failure to unravel Lenz's disappearance. Though they would have to continue on to Bayazid, the Turk promised to leave some of his men in Chilkani to conduct further interviews and also to send secret agents to search for Lenz's grave. When the commission returned to Chilkani, it could act on any new intelligence. Sachtleben accepted the proposal.
As Shakir's entourage resumed its march eastward toward Bayazid, Sachtleben and his men once again tagged along—with the exception of Aram, who remained in Chilkani to conduct discreet inquiries of his own. The American had concluded that he could do nothing more to advance the Lenz case until the commission reconvened in Chilkani. In the meantime, he took in Shakir's curious spectacle, watching with detached amusement as "the natives streamed to the wayside to make low salaams to the pasha." Soon, the procession swelled into a gigantic parade that included more than one thousand men on horseback and "all the brigands of the Alashgerd Plain." Many of the participants were members of the Hamidieh regiment, who were only too pleased to show off their horsemanship to their founding patron.
Reaching Karakalissa, Sachtleben and Chambers quickly discovered that the Lenz case had become a cause célèbre in that city. "In every coffee house and all over the bazaars," Sachtleben recounted, "it was the topic of conversation that two pashas, one Turkish and one American, had come to look for a man who was lost in Alashgerd. Everyone knew and talked about it."
They had barely settled in the home of their host, an Armenian priest named Der Garabed, when a messenger came looking for them. He informed the foreigners that Shakir wanted them to report immediately to the local government building. The men dutifully abandoned their dinners and dashed off to find the pasha. When they arrived at their destination, they found Tewfik preparing to grill a witness. They soon learned that the subject was a Greek doctor of the Hamidieh regiment who claimed to have examined, on May 16, 1894, the corpse of a man who had drowned in the vicinity. They immediately deduced the Turk's objective: to prove that the victim was Lenz, and that he had died of natural causes.
Sachtleben related the doctor's full testimony:
The body had been found in the river Achmet Bey, near Toprakaleh. One foot and one hand were in the water and the head was partly submerged. It was taken out and washed free from sand; no marks of violence were found on it. The hair was cut in military style, and it and the mustache were of a sandy color. The body was about medium height and perfectly white, and the age appeared to be about twenty-two years. On the upper back part of the head was a ridge as if made by a heavy cap. He judged that the body had been dead for four days. He further testified that the river was high and the current strong at that time, and this stream had destroyed many people.
After the doctor had completed his account, Tewfik handed him a photograph of Lenz and asked if the man in the photograph could have been the victim in question. Sachtleben took a deep breath, fearing that the doctor would answer in the affirmative. The witness studied the image "long and earnestly," as a heavy silence prevailed. At last, he answered firmly: "No, sir, not at all. No resemblance whatever." Tewfik winced while Sachtleben heaved a sigh of relief.
Moments later, the beaming American approached the doctor and greeted him in his native tongue, a gesture that "went right to his heart." Sachtleben, in fact, recalled meeting the doctor four years earlier. The investigator coyly asked the man if he had ever seen any bicyclists pass through this city. The doctor's face lit up, once the recognition was mutual. "He described the visit Allen and I had made in '91," Sachtleben would record with satisfaction, "how we had asked in French for various things to eat; how he brought us some honey."
Shakir suddenly emerged, and he asked Chambers and Sachtleben to come straight away to his private quarters. Once the party had settled there, the pasha asked his guests if Der Arsen had given them screws to Lenz's camera. The two men looked at each other in utter shock. How did Shakir know about this? They had sworn to the Armenians that they would tell no one about these compromising possessions until the trial was under way. As it was, they had no choice but to admit to Shakir that they did indeed have those parts.
"I learned afterward that the Kurdish bey of Toprakaleh, Ali Pasha, had played a trick on the Armenians," Sachtleben explained. "He went to Chilkani pretending that the priest Der Arsen had sent him to get all the things that belonged to Lenz. In one Armenian house he found an inner tube belonging to Lenz's bicycle, and in another the ground glass from his camera. He was told that the priest had already given us the screws."
Sachtleben reluctantly turned the hardware over to Shakir, who promised to return the items following the trial. He knew the Turks would now do their utmost to implicate the Armenians. "The Turks naturally tried to make much of the fact that these items were found in Armenian hands," Sachtleben reported to Langhans, "whereas nothing was found in the Kurdish houses. But to me it was a point in the Armenians' favor that they kept these articles which they knew belonged to the murdered man, whereas Moostoe had carefully destroyed the two pieces of the outer rubber casings, and Lenz's revolver was not to be found anywhere."
Shakir also told Sachtleben that the men he had left in Chilkani had learned nothing more about Lenz. "The witnesses strangely told the same story," the pasha lamented. In particular, "the Armenians continued to deny any knowledge of Lenz's fate." For his part, Moostoe had admitted that he had used bicycle tubes as saddle girths, but he vigorously denied that he had had any contact with Lenz. Indeed, he asserted that he had been bedridden the day the cyclist came to town. He maintained that his son Abdal had purchased the tubes from an Armenian, who had found them by the Hopuz River. He asserted that they had worn out about a year earlier, at which point he threw them away.
Shakir was unswayed by the suspects' professions of innocence. "They will not tell the truth until they have seen the inside of a prison," he asserted to Sachtleben. Accordingly, he had ordered the arrests of Moostoe and the five Armenians who had been found with bits of Lenz's gear. The men would be transported at once to a jail in Toprakaleh, and eventually to Erzurum to stand trial.
For Sachtleben, the news of the arrests was bittersweet. He was elated that Moostoe would soon be in custody, but deeply concerned about the plight of the Armenians, whom he judged completely innocent of any wrongdoing. To his mind, the importance of the rendezvous in Chilkani loomed even larger. It was now imperative to gather all available evidence exonerating the Armenians and implicating Moostoe and his men.
The next day, an utterly distraught Der Arsen appeared at
Der Garabed's home in Karakalissa to speak with the foreigners. The Chilkani resident recounted that Shakir's men had accosted him the day before and had tried to make him confess to Lenz's murder, or at least place the blame on the arrested Armenians. Sachtleben revealed that the Turks had discovered the camera parts in his possession and were evidently redoubling their efforts to pin Lenz's murder on the Armenians. But the American insisted that they would all be exonerated—and Moostoe convicted—during the upcoming trial.
Once again, however, Sachtleben stressed that he needed Der Arsen to testify against Moostoe once the commission returned to Chilkani. The priest replied that he and his family would suffer severely if he dared breathe a word against Moostoe or his men. Sachtleben again assured Der Arsen that the American government would see to it that all Armenian witnesses received adequate protection.
The priest appeared little relieved by Sachtleben's promise. "He asked me what I was going to do with him," the American would later recall. "I told him that his presence was needed as a witness in Erzurum, after which I hoped that the reforms would have been instituted so that he could be reasonably safe when he returned to his home."
Recognizing that he had little alternative but to cooperate with the American, Der Arsen agreed to testify against Moostoe at the next opportunity. In the meantime, the priest promised to assist Aram in a search for more evidence against Moostoe and the Kurds. The two men would meet up with Sachtleben when he returned to Karakalissa and brief him on their findings, just before the commission reconvened.
Over the next few days, Sachtleben and Chambers continued to travel with Shakir's entourage. Upon reaching Bayazid, they decided to take a relaxing hike up Mount Ararat. Mrs. Chambers was glad to learn of the expedition. "Mr. Sachtleben has been urging Nesbitt all summer to climb Ararat," she wrote her brother, "and it is a thing Nesbitt has so much desired to do. I am very glad he should have the trial." In her next letter to Talcott, she would reveal the somewhat disappointing outcome: "The ascent of the mountain was enjoyable, but they did not have good weather and a snow storm prevented their reaching quite to the summit."
On October 9, the pair rejoined Shakir's entourage and followed it back to Karakalissa. There, as planned, Aram and Der Arsen met up with Sachtleben. Alas, the investigators had found no more traces of Lenz's bicycle, baggage, or body. The local Armenians had no idea where his remains were buried, or even if they were indeed buried. The Kurds, in contrast, knew all—or so the men believed—but they refused to divulge the dark secret.
Their inquiry, however, had not been entirely fruitless. On the contrary, they had gathered testimony against Moostoe. Parsegh's wife confided that about a month after Lenz's visit, she saw Moostoe's son wearing a coat strikingly similar to the one the cyclist had worn. Other villagers affirmed that they had seen, at about the same time, foreign clothes on Moostoe himself. Still others claimed to have overheard Moostoe quarreling with his men about how to split the money found on Lenz's person. The wives of Moostoe and his servant had allegedly alluded to Lenz's murder during a fight. "Your husband murdered an American," snapped the former, to which the latter supposedly retorted: "Well, if he did, your husband gave the order."
Aram had even visited the prison where Moostoe was being held, to interview the Kurd himself. The suspect had said that he would tell all, including the location of Lenz's grave, for $500. Sachtleben was certain that the miserable Kurd would sing for half that sum, but he was loath to offer the murderer any reward at all. After some reflection, he decided to pass on the offer.
For his part, Der Arsen had procured a testimonial signed by himself and twenty-two fellow Armenian residents of Chilkani. It not only implicated Moostoe but also identified his alleged accomplices and even offered a motive for the murder. It read:
The American cycler, the day he halted in our village, passed the night in the house of Parsegh Avakian. In the evening, Moostoe and his men visited him. These were Dahar, the son of Gallo, Simbelzor Mamoud, the [two] sons of Avdele Niseh, the brother of Moostoe, whose names are Nabone and Hodo. These criminals examined one by one the revolver, the watch, and all Lenz's other possessions, and with rude oaths returned them to their possessor, saying "These things suit us and not you." Although at this moment they made movements to strike the American, because of the beseeching of us, the villagers, they did not accomplish their design. That same night the criminals mentioned met the sons of Alayee Chavdar of Mollah Osman, who had followed the American to Chilkani, evidently with the purpose of harming him and robbing him if a favorable opportunity presented itself. On the morrow, before the American started, all the mentioned criminals had already disappeared from the village. Some time after this event, we saw several times the revolver and watch, which we had seen and recognized in the hands of the American, in the possession of Moostoe, who had not yet found out how to open the revolver. The shepherds of our village found the worthless goods of the murdered American, since found in Armenian houses, by the abundant waters of the spring, in the sands of the river Hopuz.
We have carefully kept concealed these things in order to produce them when necessary with the idea that innocent blood should not go unavenged.
Sachtleben was elated to have all this new evidence against Moostoe and his men. With the Kurd already in custody, however, the American deemed it best to keep these findings under wraps for the time being. He did not want to tip his hand to Turkish authorities in advance of the upcoming trial, so as not to give them an opportunity to tarnish his evidence in the interim. In particular, he did not want Der Arsen to say much after all. "I directed the priest to keep his mouth shut until the trial in Erzurum," Sachtleben would later reveal. "Shakir was given only the names of the culprits, and I demanded their arrest."
Before leaving Karakalissa, Sachtleben revisited Kassim Agha, the Kurd who had claimed to know all. Although the American could not as yet produce the promised decoration, he extended a fistful of coins to get the Kurd to talk. Kassim proceeded to name the same Kurds the Armenians had cited in their testimonial, with the exception of his relative Dahar, whom he insisted had played no part in the ambush. The Kurd also revealed that Lenz was not buried in Kolah after all, but by the Hopuz River, near the spot where he was killed. He could not, however, give an exact location.
Sachtleben was now satisfied that he had unlocked the secret of Lenz's death, even if the grave had yet to be identified. He was eager to arrest any of Moostoe's alleged accomplices that he could lay his hands on. Shakir obligingly furnished the American with a party of twenty-five guards, assuring the American that they "will do anything you order and arrest any man you may point out."
Stopping in Mollah Osman, on the way to Chilkani, Sachtleben sought out two residents said to be Moostoe's accomplices: the sons of Alayee Chavdar. Alas, both men had already bolted. The investigator took the opportunity to recall the local witnesses who had been mum the first time around. "This time they told the truth," Sachtleben related, "saying that Lenz had passed, did not stop, and that every man, woman, and child had come out to see him from their house-tops." Chambers would later comment in his autobiography: "The village notables did not seem to think there was any inconsistency—not to say moral obliquity—between the villagers' solemn oath that they knew absolutely nothing about the matter and ten days later their declaration under oath that they knew all about it."
"On reaching Chilkani," Sachtleben reported, "we found that the other Kurdish suspects had also bolted. It was evident that the murderers had made themselves scarce." His soldiers did manage, however, to nab one of the suspects in the nearby village of Tchurmouk: Dahar. "He was a young Kurd between twenty-six and thirty years of age," Sachtleben recounted. "He swore that he had not seen or heard anything about Lenz, and that he did not know where the grave was." Sachtleben decided to arrest him anyway, despite his previous assurances to Kassim that his relative would be spared. If nothing else, he might prove a valuable bargaining chip.
As planned, S
achtleben reexamined the Armenian witnesses of Chilkani. This time, their testimony reflected the account given in the Armenian testimonial. Yes, they had seen Lenz and his bicycle, and they had reason to believe that Moostoe and his men did away with the wheelman shortly thereafter. Evidently, concern for their co-villagers in captivity, if not Sachtleben's promises of protection, had loosened their lips.
Although Sachtleben continued to offer the Armenians assurances of protection, he privately doubted that he could deliver on his promises once he had left their presence. "The homes of Armenians in Chilkani are in danger of being wiped out of existence," he appealed to Terrell,
and it is the prayer of all these poor people that you protect them from the accursed Kurds. The Armenians besought me on their knees with tears in their eyes. The honour of the American name is at stake and something must be done and lively threats made if a single Armenian of that village is harmed. I am keeping close watch on what occurs and will report right away. If something is not done in such a case, I'll appeal to the English power whose influence I know I can rely on.
Sachtleben, who was growing increasingly homesick, was not even sure that he would stick around Turkey long enough to participate in the trial. He nonetheless prepared a final account of Lenz's murder, incorporating all the information he had gathered during his tour of Alashgerd, to serve in the eventual trial, even if he would not be there himself. It read:
The 9th of May, 1894 was a rainy day. Lenz had passed Mollah Osman late in the afternoon, probably an hour before he arrived in Chilkani where he went to a house on the main road and sat down to make a few notes in his journal. Moostoe came along and said "Get up and leave that place." So Lenz arose, asked for a lodging, and was led to Avak Parsegh's house. He was not well. He asked for a chicken and gave the priest Der Arsen some money to buy it for him and have it prepared with a little butter. Lenz also wrote down the priest's name and promised to send him a photo. He divided with the priest some raisins he had in his pocket.