Sherlock Holmes and The Nine-Dragon Sigil

Chapter III I am Invited to the Foreign Office to Meet an Oriental Potentate

The newly-constructed Bakerloo Line on the Underground took me to Embankment followed by a short walk along the Thames to the Foreign Office & India Office. The Departments were housed in a vast Victorian Italianate building deliberately designed to impress, like the Royal Courts of Justice, providing a sumptuous setting for affairs of state and diplomatic functions.

I was ushered into the Durbar Court. Doric columns on the ground floor and Ionic on the second were of polished red Peterhead granite, while the top floor Corinthian columns were of grey Aberdeen granite. The flooring was of Greek, Sicilian and Belgian marble. A man in livery greeted me. To my surprise he led me out of the building to a small side-entrance overlooking the Charles Steps and St. James’s Park. Almost furtively Sir Edward was waiting there. We shook hands, the Foreign Secretary greeting me with a polite ‘Good to see you again, Dr. Watson’. Throwing a cautionary glance at a fog-spectacles hawker on the opposite pavement, he said, ‘For the sake of privacy I’d like to hold our chat in St. James’s Park. At Duck Island Cottage on the lake. You’d be astonished at what our friends in the daily Press get up to, to winkle out a story.’

He continued, ‘The War Minister will be there but it’s the other person you’re here to meet, a Chinese potentate, General Yuán Shì-kai. Yuán is the surname.’

Duck Island Cottage was a small gingerbread building of vaguely Swiss inspiration, embowered with climbing plants and trimmed with ornamental barge-boards finials. It was the residence of the Park’s Bird Keeper, though manifestly it served a dual purpose as a Foreign Office place of assignation. As we strolled towards the cottage Sir Edward said, ‘On our one previous encounter you were very much the colleague of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. As the War Minister will make clear, this time you will be acting in your own right.’

My chest puffed out.

The visitor was short and burly, with a pickedevant beard and the stance of a boxer. From the popular Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera The Mikado, westerners easily jumble up Japanese and Chinese. We expect all Oriental men to be clad in a changpao and sporting a moustache drooping to the chin. They would wear woven bamboo hats covered with cream silk gauze, like a lampshade.

The War Minister made the formal introduction. General Yuán and I saluted as befitted men of military backgrounds and stepped up close to each other to shake hands.

The General’s eyes were alive with interest, fine and clear. They fixed me with keen penetration. In stature, facial expression, contour of features as well as in the manner of wearing his moustache (though not his modish Buffalo Bill Cody vandyke beard) he greatly resembled France’s new Prime Minister, Clemenceau.

Far from being attired in saffron-coloured robes or clutching a bejewelled pipe, the man before me was dressed in an expensively tailored hacking jacket and checked cravat as though about to catch a day at the horse races. On the coat-rack behind him hung a more traditional Oriental piece of clothing, a long silk coat slit up the sides to allow horseback riding, embroidered front and back with a white crane, the prince of all feathered creatures on earth. I was to learn later the crane signified a personage of the first rank.

Haldane invited our visitor to open the conversation. The General stepped up to a large map of China on the wall and began to speak.

‘Gentlemen, events of the past fifty years have shown the Army of the Great East must catch up with the Great West. The world has seen how the despised Japanese bandits defeated us. My country has been soundly sleeping on the top of a pile of kindling lying in the midst of a group of strong Powers with a box of matches in their hand. The Russians spy on us in the north, the French stare at us in the south, the Japanese are watching us like pygmy chameleons in the east, and you English are peeping at us from the west. I am not convinced our traditional ways of qi, meridians, and acupuncture points will serve us any better on the battlefields of the future.

The world outside our borders watches like crows on a fence, intent on divvying up my country between them. In their eyes China is a hay cart. Everyone feels free to take from it what they want. Germany hankers after Shantung, France after Yunnan, Japan after Fuhkien, Belgium after Tianjin. The Italians eye the Bay of San Mun. Russia is the worst of all - their Viceroys dream of creating another Muscovite Empire on the shores of the Pacific, such as Rome created on the shores of the Bosphorus.’

A shadow crossed his face.

‘Our people shake at the prospect of the ‘White Peril’ sweeping across our land. Our people fear the white race intends to do to us what you have done to the American Indians and African negroes - impose a humiliating colonial serfdom. Even annihilate us. If we just fold our arms and yield, I shall have no face to see our ancestors after death.’

He paused.

‘This is where you, Dr. Watson, come in.’

‘How can I be of help?’ I asked, perplexed.

General Yuán beckoned me to join him at the table where Sir Edward was pouring the tea. He dipped his finger in a cup and began to draw maps on the dusty table-top.

‘My aim is to build up a modern army. Divisions will be stationed here, here, and here - Manchuria and Shantung, Chihli and Nanyuán, Paoting and Peking - enough to hold all foreign armies at bay, including the Russian Bear. We must standardise the drilling, the equipment, the instruction and finance, and the organization of the Army –but even if I had half a million trained men under my command, their numbers would be meaningless unless they stay in good condition. Napoleon Bonaparte said an army marches on its stomach. I say an Army depends just as much on the health of its soldiery. I plan the establishment of half a dozen Imperial Army Medical companies. That’s where you come in. We need your advice and expertise.’

He nodded at the two attentive politicians.

‘Our friends here brought to my attention your stint as a medical officer with the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers in Afghanistan back in 1880. Sir Edward tells me you are a man of impetuous courage. Come out to High Asia, Doctor. Help me form the first of those Medical companies, a prototype.’

He ended poetically, ‘If you carry out this mission, China’s gratitude will endure until the T’ai Mountain shrinks to the size of a grindstone, and the Yellow River becomes a mere seasonal rivulet.’

‘This request is somewhat of a surprise,’ I stammered hesitantly, darting a look at Grey and Haldane. ‘Where would I...?’

‘...begin?’ the General broke in. ‘The Chinese philosopher Laozi points out a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. It would be best to go to my country overland, by the least likely, therefore the most hazardous route. Once you touch the soil of France follow your nose east for 5,000 miles to Kashgar.’

He nodded towards Grey and Haldane.

‘With the Ministers’ permission, I’ll have orders left for you at the British Mission there.’

He added, ‘You will end the assignment at the Forbidden City. I’m sure you would like to meet our famous Regent of the Empire, the Divine Mother Empress Dowager Cixi, our ‘Good Queen Bess’, our She-Dragon.’

The General continued, ‘Our people say she has a secret army of women hidden in nearby forests. The troops are so numerous they are named ‘the Purple Cloud’. Each is clad in purple hue and carrying a bow and arrows of the same colour. They have bound feet yet move with preternatural speed. It is said they can leap great distances into the air, and rise under the bellies of galloping horses. Their leader is known as Jade Woman or ‘the divine-shouldered bowman’ because of the immense power of her bow and the distance and accuracy she shoots her arrows.’

I needed no more to make my decision. I got to my feet and once again shook his hand, offering my services. Haldane brought him the long silk coat. As the General turned to leave I asked, ‘Where do you go from here?’

‘I’m already late for a chat with Mr. Marconi at The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company. I may have work for him in China. Tomorrow I shall do the rounds of your famous teaching universities, starting with the University of London. China needs teachers, professors. Astronomy, navigation, mechanics, geography, trigonometry, engineering and so on. I shall poach them.’

He nodded towards the watchful Foreign Secretary and smiled.

‘Then Brighton. I have the offer of a tour of a famous palace there.’

Grey intervened.

‘The Royal Pavilion. I want General Yuán to know we have buildings as fine as the ones we hear of in Peking.’

The General resumed, ‘Afterwards I shall take in a performance of a play on the Palace Pier, by your famous Mr. Shakespeare - my first. Then I shall be driven to Sherborne. My three sons are in school there. The eldest is playing in the last cricket match of the season, against their great rivals Canford School. I plan to attend it.’

His expression became serious.

‘Dr. Watson, you will have to arm yourself for the journey. My enemies are many. They will become your enemies too. Any trespasser in the mountain badlands is regarded as fair game by the local tribesmen. You will face physical hardship. The winters are cruel, the summers sweltering. You will need mules and ponies, cooks and coolies. You will cling dizzily to mountain ledges. There are sections where if you stray you will - when you are already past the point of no return - be informed of your drift by a continuous line of bones and bodies.

Above all, until you get to Peking, do not readily reveal you are a member of the medical profession. The only western doctors in China are missionaries. In much of China’s hinterland, if you are mistaken for a Christian missionary, I cannot guarantee your life. I have no idea whether you are a man of religious faith or entirely without, but I simply state the truth when I say the Chinese people suffer as much from the missionary onslaught as from all of Europe’s and America’s standing armies combined.’

He paused, then with a slight air of apology explained, ‘If I may speak bluntly, these missionaries are forcing their faith ever deeper into my country. They build their churches all over the place with no heed to our deep belief in Feng-shui. Not even our graves are dug until the geomancer has determined the exact spot, its orientation and design, yet with reference to nothing your Christians erect buildings of stone, with arches and tall spires pointing straight towards Heaven. Are you surprised these outposts of your Empires get blamed when the next outbreak of disease strikes the surrounding peasantry? The next famine? The next invasion of locusts? The next drought? Is it surprising that to the Chinese every foreigner is fair game?’

He continued, ‘They seek the overthrow of our traditional religions, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. They even vilify each other in their scramble for Chinese souls. Do we send our priests wandering over the earth to destroy the gods of other peoples? The foreign prelates seem to believe we Chinese are an immoral, cruel and degraded race; that we are utterly dishonest opium-eaters and in every way depraved; and that only a forcible diffusion of Christianity can save our Empire from speedy and overwhelming ruin. They say our people believe more in ghosts, fox spirits, immortals and demons than a Creator, more in fate and destiny than either heaven or the soul.’

The indignant outburst was followed by a swift grin and pleasant nod in my direction. His eyes twinkled.

‘Dr. Watson, on rather more mundane matters. I ask your advice.’

He gestured at my Morning Suit.

‘It will be my first visit to Sherborne School. I wish to emulate an English gentleman. What attire should I arrive in to attend a cricket match?’

Tongue-in-cheek I replied, ‘If you wish to amuse the schoolboys, a black top-hat, frock-coat, high gaiters and a hunting-crop. However, something quieter might confound the young beggars. The weather’s still warm enough. I suggest flannel trousers and a blazer. Blue, green and red stripes are the fashion.’

I had only the day before purchased a fine boater for summer visits to the Gatwick Races, a ‘skimmer’ crafted from stiff sisal straw and finished with a smart black Petersham ribbon.

I continued, ‘As to a hat, a Panama boater. A stylish fino. Like the American President Theodore Roosevelt. I recommend the cool summer weave.’

‘Where would I acquire such a thing?’ he inquired.

‘Nowhere better than my own hatters, Lock & Co, St. James’s Street,’ I responded. ‘Also, while you’re making Englishmen of your sons, when you’re in Brighton you might pop into Blackwell’s Bookshop and buy the latest Wisden’s, the Cricketers’ Almanack. Wisden’s is the ‘bible’ for every player of the British Empire’s favourite game.’

With a polite ‘I shall pay both Lock’s and Blackwell’s Bookshop a visit, thank you for the suggestions,’ the General turned to the others, bowed, exchanged hand-shakes, turned once more to salute me and made his exit.

Outside, a posse of bodyguards in leopardskin-patterned uniforms came running and fell in around him. Through the window we watched the gaggle progress across the short bridge like the ducks on the lake’s placid waters.

At a nod from Sir Edward Grey, the War Minister turned to me.

‘Dr. Watson, Sir Edward and I are about to take you into our deepest confidence. Indisputably your medical advice will be of great value to the Yuán’s New Army but there would be an additional dimension to your journey. The General’s request is fortuitous from England’s strategic point of view. As Sir Edward will now explain, it could affect the well-being of our entire presence in Asia. Britain’s possessions share a common border with China extending from Sinkiang to Yunnan yet we have no idea what goes on in the deeper reaches of the Middle Kingdom, disposition of garrisons, communications, roads, railways, that sort of thing. Even which mountain passes are kept cleared in the depths of winter.

We know nothing of the interior except along stretches of the Yangtze nor even which Powers keen to rival the British Empire in reach and authority are up to no good there. His Majesty’s Government needs to know a great deal more about the situation from within. We know the Russian Tsar’s soldiers have been raiding and ransacking China’s provinces virtually at will. We haven’t the faintest inkling what the Japanese are up to, and not much about the Kaiser’s shenanigans either.’

Sir Edward stepped in.

‘Dr. Watson, England’s aim must be the containment of Petersburg and Berlin. Our bellicose friend, the German Kaiser, is spearheading a scramble for colonies everywhere. He seeks territorial aggrandisement no matter the cost. If his armies are to succeed, Germany must have access to strategic supplies far beyond those of Europe. We want to discover how China will react to his aggression. We may need to bolster her, guarantee her security.’

‘But surely our diplomats keep you informed?’ I responded.

Haldane and Grey exchanged rueful looks.

‘We have diplomats, indeed,’ Haldane replied. ‘But few diplomats and traders leave their enclaves. They huddle together in Shanghai and other Treaty Ports. As a source of information they are of limited value. Nor are they especially welcome to the locals. The Chinese refer to them as Xi Yang Guizi - western foreign devils.’

The War Minister crossed to the wall-map. He pointed to England’s South coast.

‘Start your journey at the port of Dover as though taking an ordinary holiday. To muddy your tracks, put the word out you plan to spend the season in Ostend attending the motor race and the chess championship. You can say you have a posse of rich and famous patients awaiting your ministrations there, hence taking a medical bag and quantities of medicines. We can assure you every dispatch of a sensitive nature telegraphed back to London will be placed solely in Sir Edward’s and my hands.’

As a former Army officer I had my own special interest in keeping to the savage route outlined for me by General Yuán. Ever since seeing a Han dynasty bronze statuette of a Gansu Flying Horse I had wanted to discover the homeland of the famed Ferghana horse. A revered myth proclaimed it a relative of the dragon. Indeed, all wonderful horses, such as the steed of the pious Hsüan-tsang which carried the sacred scriptures from India, were avatars of dragons. In antiquity the tallest horses owned by a Chinaman were called simply ‘dragons’, legendary creatures in Chinese folklore symbolizing potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, typhoons, and floods.

The War Minister left Duck Island Cottage first. A few minutes later the Foreign Secretary and I followed him out. We strolled along the edge of the lake. Two pelicans, the gift of a Russian Ambassador, and a crane with a wooden leg returned our gaze. Sir Edward, a known ornithologist, pointed an arm as though discussing the pelicans.

‘The scramble for Africa is almost over. The scramble for China has just begun. Certain Old China Hands - former tai-pans - will never be satisfied until we have made the Sacred Earth And Divine Land a part of the British Empire, a second India. They say Imperial China is going to pieces anyway. She is the sick woman of Asia who might crumble into dust at any moment. We English should slice up the melon. Every week memorials to this effect pour into my office from our manufacturing towns, from Huddersfield, Leeds, Liverpool, Bradford, Halifax. For them the extinction of China is a fact in the natural order of things. In the British order of things.’

‘Surely you can prevent any such moves...?’

‘Perhaps, but it won’t be easy. For half a century a fundamental clash of opinions has existed between the mercantile and the official British Government policy toward China. Our own citizenry in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Weihaiwei plus an assortment of missionaries, merchants, military, customs officers and journalists want to hitch themselves to a path of imperial glory. To them China is a landscape as much inviting exploitation as the American Wild West. I don’t believe you got as far as China in your army days. They are a singular people, quite different from the peoples of the Indian sub-Continent. We have traded with India since 1600. Underlying that relationship is a mutual respect - the Indian for the power of our guns and ships, the English for Mughal architecture and the kaleidoscope of colour. From the English language to cricket, the legacy of the British Raj will forever be a part of Indian identity.

Not so China. Her scholars pride themselves on treating strangers from afar with courtesy and consideration but despite the politeness of your reception you will sense deep-rooted and far-reaching contempt for the barbarian. Behind our backs China accuses us, rightly enough, of concern solely for material profit or bargaining for our places in Heaven by rummaging around for Chinese souls. They say the British are audacious and treacherous, and that we know nothing of the ‘Five Duties Of Man’: loyalty, piety, harmony, duty and ceremony, wisdom and good faith. They are convinced every Englishman carries crafty plans in his pocket threatening the Chinese Empire with the gravest danger.’

My companion pulled out a pocket-watch. It was time for parting words.

‘We shall of course cover all your costs. You must take care, Dr. Watson. Under the influence of Russian nihilism a period of assassination has begun in China. Haldane was right to say you embark on a dangerous enterprise. England can only wish you well.’

‘I shall take care,’ I assured him. ‘After all, my time in Afghanistan was hardly...’

‘Quite so,’ Sir Edward broke in. ‘We must hope Commandant Yuán builds an army so powerful no more adventurist Powers will try their luck at gulping his country down their maw.’

As though these words broadcast a signal, the six-cylinder Napier drew up at the bottom of the Charles Steps. The same smartly dressed chauffeur saluted even before the great horseless carriage came to a stop. Grey acknowledged the arrival and said, ‘Dr. Watson, one last thing, what do you think of the expression The Yellow Peril or The Yellow Spectre?’

I knew the swaggering Kaiser Wilhelm had coined the phrase ‘yellow peril’ in the 1890s following a dream in which he saw the Buddha riding a dragon threatening Europe. England was not immune to such irrational fears. Punch magazine ran cartoons and poetic stanzas of impeccable offensiveness about high-ranking Chinese visitors: ‘With his eyes aslant, and his pigtail’s braid/Coiled neatly round his close-shaved head...’

I replied that Sherlock Holmes and I were well acquainted with the opium dens beyond the Tower of London and there were no more than a dozen such smoking establishments in the whole of Limehouse. As to a Trojan Horse, ‘the enemy within’, I doubted if there were more than 800 Chinese in the whole of England.

‘Good,’ he returned. ‘Such nonsense. Three years ago when the Kaiser met King Edward in Kiel he ranted on about the Yellow Peril. He termed it ‘The greatest peril menacing Christendom and European civilization’.’

The chauffeur had stayed seated in the Napier with the engine running. He jumped out to hand me a letter accompanied by a small package. They were, he told me, from ‘Mr. Holmes’. The writing seemed familiar though it was not Sherlock Holmes’s but his brother Mycroft’s. The envelope bore the imprimatur ‘The Diogenes Club’. The Diogenes was located in London’s famous ‘clubland’ - Pall Mall and St. James’s. To readers who are not conversant with this unusual and secretive gentlemen’s club, I can best offer Sherlock Holmes’s own words:

‘My brother Mycroft was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere. It is named after Diogenes the Cynic. There are many men in London who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest journals and The Times. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started. It now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger’s Room, under no circumstances is talking allowed. Three such offences render the talker liable to expulsion.’

For those unfamiliar with Mycroft Holmes, it will serve to describe him in the terms I used in The Sword of Osman:

‘The elder by seven years, Mycroft Holmes holds an important if ill-defined position in His Majesty’s Government. He dwells in the self-contained world of Whitehall, his office within an isosceles triangle bounded by Whitehall, Pall Mall and the Diogenes Club. His reach as puppet-master is immense.’

I recorded Sherlock Holmes’s description of him in The Bruce-Partington Plans:

‘Mycroft has the tidiest and most orderly brain, with the greatest capacity for storing facts, of any man living. The same great powers which I have turned to the detection of crime he has used for this particular business. The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearinghouse, which makes out the balance.’

I placed Mycroft Holmes’s letter and the small package in my pocket and bid the chauffeur goodbye. I walked back to my medical practice by a circuitous route past Buckingham Palace. I would be returning to the furthest reaches of Asia after a gap of more than twenty-five years. The blue beret of the Army Medical Department was tucked away in my old tin-box, the cap badge with the regimental motto In Arduis Fidelis still attached.

En route I stood a while on the Serpentine Bridge contemplating the task ahead, staring down at the placid waters of the boating lake, the surface covered with the eager heads of a hundred waterfowl looking up to me for bits of bread - Mandarin, Gadwall, Shoveler, Pochard, Tufted and Ruddy, and Little and Great Crested Grebes. I murmured the words of Rudyard Kipling’s Kim: ‘Now I shall go far and far into the North, playing the Great Game...’

Alas, those who helped Kim were long up in the Great Beyond - Mahbub Ali, Ghilzai Pashtun, horse trader and spy for the British, Lispeth, the Woman of Shamlegh, Huneefa, the sorceress who performed a devil invocation ritual to protect Kim. Nevertheless I would cross Kim’s path along the Great Trunk Road, and seek out the River of the Arrow.

At the Wigmore Street Post-Office I sent a telegram to Sherlock Holmes suggesting I pop down to his farmstead. I didn’t want to set off for what could be my last journey on earth without some sort of farewell. I would refrain from mentioning my impending adventure. I would merely say I had newspaper clippings for him.

A package from the War Department awaited me at the surgery. It contained a T-square, a pair of dividers, a military protractor, a calliper-gauge, a supply of cartridge paper, and a fine Gibbin’s horseman’s folding Combination knife with saw blade, corkscrew, a hoof pick, a pair of tweezers and a pin. At the earliest quiet moment, I reached into a pocket and took out Mycroft Holmes’s sealed envelope and the accompanying small packet.

The letter commenced,

‘Yours ever truly’ followed.

I folded Mycroft’s letter back into its envelope, turning to the package, and stripped off the covering paper. It contained a first printing of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. In green ink on the fly, without comment, Mycroft had transcribed The Spider and the Fly, a poem well remembered from my childhood.

‘Take care’ was valued advice, especially coming from Mycroft Holmes, the greatest spider of them all, tucked in the silken den, The Diogenes Club. In a few weeks I would be in Cathay, a fabulous land ruled by one of the most capricious, debauched and cruel courts ever recorded in history, Orient or Occident, where flattery and charm were not pleasantries but deadly traps, the Imperial throne at the centre, a pole star about which the whole world revolved.