by Tim Symonds
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 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the 99th 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 ove
r 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?’
The Sultan replied, ‘I can do better than that, Mr. Holmes!’
He gave a signal. Nadir Aga brought over a large album from a side-table. It contained photographs showing the many pavilions and the cultivated gardens and pathways that make up the Yildiz.
‘An American visited us. He was an expert on photography from the air,’ the Sultan explained. ‘He sent a camera skyward aboard a silk-string kite from a ship in the Golden Harbour.’
The Sultan pointed out places of interest including the gate where we were to meet the Head Gardener after our audience, and the Harem garden, the Prince Garden and the Sultan gardens. The American’s visit must have been in spring. The pathways were edged with a profusion of crocuses and daffodils. Sycamores, olives and lilacs, limes, elms, hackberries, laurels, the cercis, were picked out in sharp detail.
In addition to the aerial views, photographs of the interior of the Palace had been shot at ground level - exquisite rooms with apple green walls, friezes tender rose in colour, the background of the medallions light blue and lilac or rose.
The Sultan gave another order. The Second Black Eunuch returned carrying the most beautiful object I had yet set eyes on, a gift from fellow Sultan Abdul Aziz of Morocco upon our host’s marriage to Saliha Naciye. It was an Adams quarter-plate De Luxe with red-leather covered body and 18 carat gold fittings. ‘The most expensively produced hand cam
era in the world,’ the Sultan informed us gleefully. ‘It contains 130 ounces of the purest gold. See - each fitting, every screw and plate sheath is hallmarked.’
Observing our host’s delight in his photographic apparatus, I was relieved I had asked Shelmerdine to take my precious new camera with him.
The Sultan rose from his throne and beckoned us to observe the fine view over the three seas surrounding the Sarayburnu peninsular. A telescope was brought into the room and erected near the window. We could see the powerful British fleet amid a dozen or more Turkish ironclads dating from the past Century and the swarm of smaller craft. Several miles out I recognised the obsolete HMS Devastation. On the principle of the tortoise and the hare she must have plodded on while we engaged in gunnery and torpedo practice during the many sea miles from Gibraltar.
A grandfather clock chimed the hour. The Sultan looked at the hands of the clock and pointed to HMS Devastation, remarking ‘Her crew has been taken off’.
As he spoke one of Dreadnought’s heaviest guns roared. Every window shook. An immense shell soared upwards, dropping down towards the hapless ironclad, hitting the water just beyond her. This was followed a minute later by a simultaneous salvo of three followed by another ranging shot, and a salvo of four separated by 16 seconds. The gunnery crews had got the range. A mighty explosion threw debris and water high into the air. When it settled, Devastation was no longer to be seen. To the watching eyes of the world’s ambassadors in Pera and the Kaiser’s spies aboard the S.S. Grosser Kurfürst, it was a deliberate reminder of the length and destructive power of England’s arm.