Sherlock Holmes and The Sword of Osman (13 page)

‘That Power being?'

‘One which doesn't for the while seek the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.'

‘Ah,' he said.

After a pause he asked, ‘By any chance would it be England?'

‘It's possible.'

Shelmerdine laughed loudly as though relieved.

‘I can see your hands are tied,' he continued. ‘But you say you know who he is, by name even?'

‘We shall never reveal the surrogate's identity, certainly not to Yildiz.'

Shelmerdine held out his hand in a final goodbye. With a comical pomposity of manner he bowed solemnly.

‘It's been,' he said, ‘one of the great privileges of my life to have met you in person.'

Whether he meant Holmes and me or, flatteringly, me alone, I couldn't tell.

As he turned to leave he remarked with uncommon familiarity, ‘Dr. Watson, I admire loyalty to one's friends but I put it to you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes hasn't the faintest idea who this agent is, any more than he can identify the mastermind. The great gumshoe bluffs.'

The impudent use of ‘gumshoe' riled me. When he had taken a few paces I called out, ‘The great gumshoe never bluffs, Shelmerdine'.

I pointed up at the Palace glinting in the evening sun. ‘But don't worry, the skeleton in your closet is perfectly safe with us.'

I stepped on to the loaded pinnace and debouched. Because of the dragoman's unaccustomed effrontery I had broken the solemn vow wrung from me by Holmes barely thirty minutes earlier. Shelmerdine stood alone among the hustle and bustle of the shore. He called out something, his words indistinguishable in the hubbub of evening traffic and the whistling of boats.

***

Early the next morning a steamboat passed close to our battleship. A small package addressed ‘to the Surgeon Lieutenant' was thrown up to a watchful crew member. I opened the parcel to discover a stonepast dish from the Iznik potteries. A beautiful bird, blue, champagne and green, rested on gently swaying plants bearing pinkish-purple carnations, yellow tulips, and cyan hyacinths. There was no note. The colours of the dish's flowers echoed the nosegay Saliha Naciye held to her nostrils when we first caught sight of her through the pavilion window. The Sultan's thirteenth wife had already devised a new line of communication to the outside world.

Led by
Dreadnought
the fleet steamed into the Sea of Marmara on its journey back to Gibraltar. Within minutes we attained full speed. I watched the minarets and domes of the ancient city fast disappearing behind us. As with Alice returning from Wonderland, ‘all would change to dull reality'. The curtain of a past which had swung aside only days before was swinging shut. The brilliance of Yildiz, the kiosks and rooms - the gardens - all would evanesce. The Sultan, the Chief and Second Black Eunuchs, the dead Chief Armourer, the exiled Chiarezza, Saliha Naciye herself, in or out of the luminous ghillie suit, Stamboul and its smells and bazaars and spies and yelps of stray dogs, would tip-toe away to a dark place, like the genii of
One Thousand And One Nights
. It would only be through access to my notes that I would recollect reality from myth.

The British fleet came alive with lights, flags and semaphore, at pains to show the Navy as competent and ready for action.
Dreadnought
's heavy guns thundered. The detonations would make all Stamboul's hermetically latticed windows shake. It was a convincing adieu, a demonstration of England's ability to ‘hit first, hit hard and go on hitting' anywhere in the world. About seven sea miles out we heard a single cannon shot from the direction of the General Staff Headquarters in Tophane. I looked at my pocket watch. It was around a quarter past nine, the customary time for the cannon to announce the death of a traitor.

***

Eight days after we steamed away from Galata Bridge Gibraltar loomed. For the final stage of the journey I assisted the battleship's regular naval surgeon in treatment of the pox from which it seemed half the crew now suffered. On the last night at sea Holmes presented Commander Bacon with a precious First Edition of
The Washing Away of Wrongs
, composed in 1235 A.D. by the Chinese death investigator Sung Tz'u. In return the Commander presented us with the fruit bowl which had set Holmes on Saliha Naciye's trail, now filled with the finest dates, almonds, dried apricots, topped with Rahat loukoum from Hadji Bekir's Lumps of Delight factory near the Galata Bridge head.

At sun-up I packed my belongings and left them at the open cabin door. A rating hurried out from the electric telegraph booth. He stopped when he saw me and held out a sealed envelope.

‘Lieutenant Learson, sir, if you're on your way to join Commander Hewitt, could I ask you to hand this to him? It came this morning.'

He paused.

‘And, sir, any chance you could leave
The Mystery of the Ocean Star
behind when you go?'

I gave Holmes the message. He read it and passed it across to me without comment.

‘Sir Edward Grey to Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

BALMORAL CASTLE

August
3, 1906.

‘My dear Holmes, I have discussed with the King in private your latest endeavours on our country's behalf. You have not only his deepest thanks and those of His Majesty's Government (even though neither's gratitude cannot be openly displayed) but those of His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, who professes to be ‘
touché
jusqu'aux larmes'
by your kindness and concern. Critics may find many mistakes and short-comings in England's foreign policy of the last hundred years but it is at least a tenable view that in this instance the conduct of those affairs has been suited to the development and needs of our Empire.

‘Last week I gathered my courage and returned to “the tin house”. I could not get away from the Foreign Office until the last train and arrived about midnight, after a moonlight drive from Winchester, thinking all the way about the walk with Dorothy along the same road at the same time of night. The following day was filled with her presence beside me, here and there some place or tree lit, as I looked, by a happy memory, like a gleam of light falling on it.'

I read the next sentence and lowered the page. Tears sprang to my eyes. Grey was expressing exactly how I felt about my own dear, dead wife. He wrote,

‘Her life was like a soft white cloud which came out of nothing into a summery, hazy heaven and as softly disappeared'.

Those words would have been entirely appropriate etched on Mary's stone in the tiny Brightling cemetery, adjacent to the church where we were married, in whose nearby wooded valleys we spent our honeymoon. In the event the mason carved the exquisite line from
The Rubaiyat
- ‘The Bird of Time has but a little way/To fly...'

I returned to Grey's letter.

‘The Saturday after your feet touch England's soil once more, I hope you and Dr. Watson will accept an invitation to lunch at Chequers Court, the home of the Clutterbucks at the foot of the Chiltern Hills. I plan to be there. The oak-roofed hall is said to date to the time of King John, a remnant of a former house. It has its own ghost, of course. The Clutterbucks will introduce us to more recent, more tangible residents - an eider duck, a tufted duck, a red-headed pochard, two wigeons, and an elderly Shoveler duck. The Shoveler dines at table with the family, on special food.

‘I have heard you are inclined to refuse honours created by Man. I hope you will accept one from the great Deity who commands our fate. We shall plant a tree on the East Lawn, a specimen of
Quercus ithaburensis macrolepsis
, one of the valonia oaks returning with you from the Dardanelles. For centuries the Sherlock Holmes tree will flourish in the grounds of Chequers in abiding recognition of the many services you have performed for our country.

‘May I count on - and look forward to - your visit?

‘L'un de vos fervents
.

‘E. Grey'

A Most Surprising Letter Arrives From Mycroft

At Chequers on the Saturday a further communication arrived, addressed to Sherlock Holmes. It was deeply scored in red ink and marked ‘Most Secret'. We were clustered in the grounds with Sir Edward Grey and the Clutterbucks, having planted the commemorative Valonia on Coombe Hill. The sapling stood next to an ancient clump of chequer trees after which the house was named. Holmes squinted at the pages of foolscap and handed them to me. I excused myself and moved away from our hosts.

The letter was from Mycroft, penned in duck-egg green ink. It was one of the most stupefying documents I have ever read.

‘My dear Sherlock, I must immediately thank you for returning with a good supply of saffron and allspice and am pleased to welcome you back intact. By now you will have deduced that my views on matters Ottoman differ in kind from Edward Grey's more absolutely than I could ever describe in words. He may be standing next to you as you read this but I do not hold it uncharitable of me to say the Foreign Secretary lacks every skill a diplomat requires, social brilliance, the smiling falsehoods, the cunning to move gracefully among traps and mines, the ruthless outlook.

You solved the riddle of the Sword(s) of Osman in short order. In doing so, I hold you have, single-handedly, made a great war in Europe inevitable. If the British Government should have had the intention to embroil the political situation and lead towards a violent explosion, they could not have chosen a better means than to send you to Constantinople. You and I came up against each other for the first time, and you came out in front.

I do not absolve myself from a charge of deviousness. I knew the Sword of Osman had been shanghaied before your arrival. I hoped the Sultan would awaken from his torpor and eradicate his most dangerous enemy, the Young Turks and their Committee of Union and Progress, root and branch. A badly weakened CUP could ensure the sultanate would fall instead to their rival, Prince Sabahedrinne. It was my calculation and those of other members of the Diogenes Club (several of whom sit in the Cabinet alongside Grey) that precisely because the Prince fully intends to implement reforms and espouses liberal principles the edifice of a fractious Empire would collapse - on the proven principle of give an inch and an invigorated populace will take a mile. Within months, like Russia's reformist Tsar Alexander, Sabahedrinne would in turn be assassinated.'

‘So that's what they really get up to at the Diogenes,' I breathed.

Mycroft continued,

‘As with Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg last year, economic paralysis and disorder would incite large-scale political demonstrations. The Ottoman Empire would shatter. The chaos would open up access to untold quantities of oil and once-in-a-half-millennium pickings in the Near East for the Empires of Europe. Germans, Arabs, Kurds, Russians, Armenians, French, Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians, Italians and Israelites would fight for the scraps. There would be rich spoils for the French in Lebanon and Syria, for the Italians in Libya and the Dodecanese islands. Britain would take effective control of the lower Red Sea littoral and the island of Tiran, the only good anchorage in the Gulf of Akaba. The last vulnerabilities on our routes to the Far East would thus be closed, and with Abd-ul-Hamid's departure his fiddling among the Mussulmen of British India too.

‘The Prussian mischief-makers will allow Grey to keep the peace only as long as it suits them. They hunger for a full share of the mastery of the world. Far from intimidating Germany,
Dreadnought
has rather backfired on us. Telegraphs went immediately from Constantinople to Prince Henry, the Kaiser's younger brother, commander of the High Seas Fleet. He has ordered the Wilhelmshaven Imperial Shipyard to construct half a dozen identical battleships for the Kaiserliche Marine. Henceforth we must converse upon how we should conduct ourselves in a European war, no longer how a war can be avoided. It will bring in the whole of our Empire and shake it like a terrier shakes a rat in a wheat-field. The much-feared East Wind has begun to blow. I doubt if England will spring out from it the wiser and better.'

I turned to the final page.

‘Inadvertently, Sherlock, you have put me to work. I am to piece together a plan, a War Book, at the instance of Haldane, the Secretary of State for War. This War Book will be a first in our Island nation's long history. As yet no-one has the slightest idea what happens if a major European war breaks out. Which branch of the Royal Navy will, within minutes of the Declaration, slice through the German undersea cables and cripple their communications to the outside world? Can we blockade Germany in the face of the gathering might of the Kaiserliche Marine? What if the Sauerkraut eaters use their Zeppelins as bombers and scouts? What if they drop poison gas on French and English cities - do we retaliate in kind? I don't believe Lloyd George or Winston Churchill will hesitate a moment. When do we start cutting down iron railings to melt down for our munitions factories? When do we introduce rationing? Should we prepare an evacuation plan for coastal towns? How do we coordinate our railways so that cram-f trains carrying troops south from Scotland and the North to the coasts of Kent and Sussex don't collide with trains hurrying our imports of food west to east, from the docks at Bristol and Liverpool to London? How do we raise a million men in short order - equip them, supply them, transport them to the Continent? How soon should we think the unthinkable - get the fairer sex out of their kitchens into the factories to replace men lost fighting for King and Country? Where do we find tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of horses? What if the harvest season approaches when the guns begin to fire? It takes three good horses to pull a single harvester. We can hardly remove every horse from every small-holding and still bring in the size of crop we need to feed a country of forty-five million human-beings, surrounded as we shall be by German mines floating on our seas and German boats like grey sharks beneath them, and German airships above. The loss of a horse will become of greater tactical concern than the loss of a human soldier.

‘Childer's shocker
The Riddle of the Sands
predicting a German plan to invade our green and pleasant land has frightened the general public beyond all rationality. Who will neutralise the German spies around our Docks and Army bases and seaside towns like Hastings? The parish peeler? The
Daily Mail
reports there are 65,000 German spies in Britain, mostly waiters and hairdressers, each hiding a monocle in his back pocket. We can't fit them all in the Tower. Do keep a close watch on the bushes on your walks on the South Downs.

‘I start work on the War Book in the morning - the last first, what shall we put in the precautionary telegram to send around the Empire, that within days, perhaps hours, England will be at war?

‘Shall we say lunch soon at the Automobile Club? They are thinly populated at this season.

‘I remain, even more, dear Sherlock, your admiring brother.

‘Mycroft.

‘P.S. - Ironically I have been offered a KCMG for ‘services rendered' to foreign affairs. I shan't refuse. We must celebrate. I have a bottle of Imperial Tokay said to be from Franz Joseph's special cellar at the Schoenbrunn Palace.

‘P.P.S. - Pity about Shelmerdine. Have you heard?
Mortuus est
. An hour after your departure, at exactly a quarter past nine, a cannon was fired. Shelmerdine was on Galata Bridge. At that instant a deadeye as skilled as a Boer sniper hit him in the head. According to a nearby fisher (who seems now to have fled the city) the shot was fired from the slopes on which Yildiz sits. What remained of Shelmerdine's head would have fitted in a coffee-cup. The fellow was spared
peine forte et dure
at least.
Tarik
, the official organ of the Ottoman government, mourned the passing of a “well-known Stambouli from deadly Syrian malaria”. You would be in error if you assume Shelmerdine was a double-agent. He was, strictly speaking, not. He adopted the religion and ways of his targets but acted separately on different issues for different masters.

‘His Imperial Majesty has sent condolences to the widow and four children. It means the flow of completely fake expressions of loyalty telegraphed to Abd-ul-Hamid from every quarter of the Ottoman Empire has come to a juddering halt, at least for a while. Shelmerdine was originally commissioned by the Sultan Valide to write them as from ordinary citizens. The practice continued upon her demise with the patronage of the Sultan's Ministers.'

According to Shelmerdine's successor, newly appointed as Mycroft's agent, hardly two hours after I presented the Sultan with the powerful Ross military binoculars the gift had been put to use. A deaf eunuch lip-read my conversation with the dragoman at the landing-pier while the cases and cages were being loaded on the boat. Every word I spoke was relayed to the Palace. The instant I called out, bitingly, ‘But don't worry, the skeleton in your closet is perfectly safe with us' I had inadvertently betrayed his true role to the Palace. Shelmerdine was doomed. The death of Mycroft's paid agent - and my central role in it - horrified me. Had I not felt so overwhelming an urge to prove the man had failed to bamboozle the greatest ‘gumshoe' in Europe, Shelmerdine would have survived. Even reading my lips would have been more difficult if the custom for medical officers at sea hadn't obliged me to shave my moustache.

***

The party by the lake dispersed. My comrade rejoined me. The Foreign Secretary and the Clutterbucks went back to the house to change for Dinner. Holmes pointed at the letter.

‘Did you notice Mycroft had the misfortune to get a smear of ink upon the outer side of his right
digitus minimus
?'

I passed the pages back to him to read and waited in silence. He cocked an eye at me.

‘You look mournful, Watson.'

‘Aren't you dismayed by the news about Shelmerdine?' I asked with some asperity. ‘After all, he was an excellent companion. So what if he was involved in a plot to overthrow the Sultan
– if
he was.'

‘I might normally be disturbed,' came Holmes's enigmatic reply. ‘Except...'

‘Except what?' I interrupted.

‘Except for the fact he met his fate on Galata Bridge.'

‘Galata Bridge?' I echoed. ‘How would it matter if he was shot crossing a bridge or climbing the Mountains of the Moon?'

‘Not any old bridge.
The
bridge. Also, if you return to the letter, Mycroft doesn't say he was shot crossing the bridge. It only says he was
on
the bridge when he was shot.'

‘I know this will shake your confidence in me to the very core, Holmes,' I retorted, ‘but I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. What difference does it make if he was crossing the bridge or just standing on it?'

My comrade's thin fingers tapped at the letter.

‘We are told the shot came from ‘the slopes on which Yildiz sits', a distance of several hundred yards.'

‘So?'

‘Even for a rifle with a state-of-the-art scope and chamber pressure of 20 tons a square inch it's a considerable range.'

Holmes was right. It was a very considerable distance to hit any sort of moving target. My years in India hunting the occasional man-eating tiger had taken place in the jungle, invariably at close range, where jungle-craft and steady nerves were more important than long-range marksmanship.

‘For the bullet to strike someone in the head he had to be standing as motionless as a pillar of salt - and for several seconds,' Holmes continued. ‘But you saw the fishermen jerking about as though they suffered from Saint Vitus Dance.'

‘So?' I pursued.

‘Why would our dragoman be standing so still?'

‘How do
you
explain it,' I demanded.

‘Cast your mind back to the newspaper photograph which revealed our presence to the whole of Stamboul.'

‘What has that to do with Shelmerdine?'

Holmes laughed, delighted at my perplexed expression.

‘Watson, your bafflement is a perennial delight. In a word - everything! The revelation of our true identity has everything to do with Shelmerdine. How many people knew we were disguised as Royal Naval officers?'

‘A good number. I counted Grey and the Prime Minister, your brother Mycroft. Fisher at the Admiralty. The Commodore. Three or four of the most senior officers aboard
Dreadnought
. The Sultan's close entourage. And, yes, Shelmerdine.'

‘Excellent, Watson! Fifteen at least. Now tell me, who knew we would choose to go ashore when the entire crew from Commodore downwards was on deck awaiting the arrival of the Royal barge? Which of them knew we would be stepping off the ship
at that moment
? Someone was ready and waiting with a camera. Only one person other than Mycroft and the Commodore knew
in advance
both our assumed naval ranks and that you and I would quit the ship at that exact time. That person was...?'

‘Shelmerdine!' I exclaimed, my certainty badly shaken. ‘We'd arranged to meet him at 8 o' clock.'

‘I'm surprised you didn't note the state of his boots that first time we met him. If he'd taken the carriage straight from his dwelling why would they have been so covered with dust and horse-droppings? I'll wager he was shot taking a photograph of
Dreadnought
's departure exactly where he took the newspaper photo of us jumping into the
Haroony
. The Sultan's spies would have been well-acquainted with Shelmerdine's custom of setting up his tripod at that very spot.'

I stood in silence while my companion tapped tobacco into his briar.

‘Poetic justice, Watson,' Holmes resumed. ‘He told us he'd converted to Mohammedism. If he'd benefit by it he would switch to any belief - Gnosticism, Yarsanism, Samaritanism, Shabakism, Ishikism, Ali-Illahism, Zoroastrianism. Even Buddhism. A man of such expediency can have many masters and will take many sides, sometimes simultaneously. Nevertheless he is due our thanks. By revealing our presence he enabled us to catch Saliha Naciye. The news that Sherlock Holmes had arrived in Stamboul panicked Saliha Naciye into snatching the sword before the engraver could complete his work.'