Sherlock Holmes and The Sword of Osman

We Prepare For Constantinople

Letters were being composed and circulated thick and fast. One in Edward Grey’s spidery writing was sent on to me from Holmes’s bee-farm.

I settled down in my armchair to read the final page.

The letter came to a personal and lyrical end:

There was a postscript:

I returned the pages to the envelope. The grandfather clock in my waiting room struck the half-hour. A locum could attend to the remaining patients. I set off for George Street for a first appointment with the military tailors.

On my arrival at Gieves a wave of nostalgia washed through me. Nothing had changed since I visited the warren of stairs and rooms years before, an Army surgeon at Netley. Ahead of me at the time lay a stint in the blistering heat of the North-West Frontier, a succession of punitive expeditions against offending Pathans, the Second Anglo-Afghan War, my disabling wound from a Jezail bullet at the Battle of Maiwand, enteric fever, and a final return to Portsmouth jetty on the Orontes.

An elderly tailor approached. He stopped a few feet away and looked me over carefully, one finger to his mouth. A pair of cutting scissors dangled from a thumb. After a moment he put the scissors down and frowned at the appointment card.

‘Surgeon Lieutenant Samuel Learson,’ he said slowly. He looked back up at me. ‘Learson,’ he repeated. He shook his head. ‘Sir, thick neck, that strongly built man square jaw of yours, length of inside leg, and dropping seven and a half pounds off your weight... if the name Learson was not clearly written here I’d swear you were the young medical officer who came here in ‘79. A John something...ah! Watson, I recall.’

Twenty minutes later he said, ‘Did you know that when Stanley greeted Livingstone he found the Scottish Congregationalist wearing a blue Gieves Consular hat?’ - the very tale he’d told when fitting me out for India twenty-seven years earlier.

Five days and two fittings later the naval uniforms together with the ceremonial swords and two greatcoats were delivered to my premises by a smart coach. The outfits also included a pea coat each - short double-breasted jacket made of coarse wool with six brass buttons inscribed with anchors. I tried on the dress uniform. The trousers were tight, with side pockets and fob pocket on the jacket. On Mycroft’s instructions Gieves had supplied swords dating back to the reign of the late Great Queen when we might first have attained officer rank. The blades were about 30 inches in length, with a slight curve. A good amount of gilt remained to the hilts.

I turned to the working dress. Holmes as Commander had three gold cuff bands with white between them. Mine as a Naval Surgeon had two gold cuff bands separated by the Surgeon’s red distinction stripe. Neither uniform bore the executive curl, the small loop on the top rim of cuff lace or shoulder tab. This insignia would, have put us in the chain of command over the ship or crew, giving us an authority and visibility we didn’t wish for. The absence of the curl would help explain the lack of knowledge expected of an experienced seaman officer while not precluding us from holding the King’s Commission.

To an Army man the etiquette of the Senior Service was deeply confusing. I was going to need guidance in the matter of protocol. A private note from the Commodore of HMS Dreadnought supplied it:

The letter was signed Reginald Bacon.

A few days later, a brevet-major from the India 2nd Battalion by the name of Crum, formerly of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, visited me with a package. Crum was a fine old soldier who had seen much of the world. Among the gifts for the Sultan was a most unusual sniper rifle, a modified, lengthened Short Magazine Lee Enfield produced by Parker Hale in the heart of Birmingham’s Gun Quarter. It came with a dozen boxes of cartridges and a state-of-the-art Karl Kahles Telorar rifle scope. The package had been specially put together by the leading ballistician, Sir Charles Ross, 9th Baronet, owner of vast estates in Scotland. A note said the rounds had been engineered to achieve a muzzle velocity of over 2800 feet per second. Accompanying the rifle was a rubberised ghillie suit, a cloth garment covered in loose strips of burlap designed to resemble leaves and twigs. When manufactured correctly, the suit moved in the wind in the same way as the surrounding foliage.

Our departure was imminent. Holmes and I had already decided to use the pseudonyms we employed abroad once before: Holmes would return to being Naval Commander George Archibald Hewitt, the name of England’s foremost forger. I would be Surgeon Lieutenant Samuel Learson, the country’s most notorious safe-breaker.

Mycroft Holmes had taken charge of our arrangements. He wrote, ‘Dear Dr. Watson, on the day and hour arranged, you will find a motor car brougham waiting at the kerb to take you to the station in time for the Continental Express. It will be driven by a jarvey with a heavy black cloak tipped at the collar with red. Allow time for the journey. The carriage will take you twenty minutes in the wrong direction to throw off any ill-wishers. The second first-class train carriage from the front is reserved for you and Sherlock. I enclose an albumen print by the Abdullah Frères of the Imperial Yıldız palace and the Hamidiye Mosque. At Sherlock’s request, your dragoman will have a photographic enlargement of the sword at the ready on your arrival.’

The day arrived. I checked my watch against the chronopher one final time. A noisy Beeston-Humber Landaulette deposited me at Victoria Station. I was looking forward to the days aboard HMS Dreadnought, during which I might be able to write up a case or two. The choice would be difficult. In the meantime I joined a long queue at W.H. Smith’s to purchase a supply of reading for the journey to Gibraltar.

Half an hour later I settled opposite Holmes into the comfortable First Class carriage aboard The Jewel of the Weald. I was extremely flustered due to an uncomfortable encounter with a clergyman. I have often related how my former comrade changed his colours as readily as the chameleon. Clerics were his speciality - in A Scandal In Bohemia Holmes disguised himself as a simple Nonconformist preacher in his effort to outwit the remarkable adventuress Irene Adler. I wrote at the time:

When I hurried across Victoria station towards our carriage with my bundles and the day’s Globe, Pall Mall, and St. James’s I came across the identical apparition of the Nonconformist preacher with the identical sympathetic smile and general look of peering and benevolent curiosity.

I recalled Holmes saying ‘It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise’.

I determined to unmask my friend there and then, only to find myself obliged to pay a loitering street Arab sixpence to retrieve a genuine prelate’s hat and stick from the railway track to which had I dispatched them, yelling out ‘You can’t fool me thrice, sir!’.

On the dot of 11 o’clock, and much to my relief, the engine driver pulled the air whistle. Doors slammed. Steam was applied to the reciprocating pistons, giving life to the 4-4-0 wheels. With a deafening noise the monster began to hurl itself forward. A helpful Mr. Paul Smith at Thomas Cook’s had told us the journey would last one hundred and four hours. Our first meal would be aboard the Dover-Boulogne ferry. Beyond lay Paris and Madrid. Then Algeciras and the steamer to Gibraltar.

I leaned towards Holmes, mischievously intending to enquire whether he’d remembered to bring his Legion of Honour Grand Croix to impress the Sultan, but was met with one of Holmes’s most remarkable characteristics, the power to throw his brain out of action. With the unusual remark ‘Watson, I’ve had quite enough of Petrarch for one day’, my old friend snatched a pair of black night-spectacles from a pocket sewed inside his cavernous coat and popped them on his nose. He stretched out his long, thin legs, loosened his cravat, and lay as dead.

The train gathered speed, clacking its way across the Thames. Victoria Station fell back. I turned my attention to the outside world. St. Paul’s Cathedral came into view, 365 feet high. A cloud-burst earlier that morning had washed the smoke and dust out of the air so that even at a distance the gilt cross sparkled in the sunshine. Spires, dwarfed by the dome, stood out with unnatural clarity.

I surrounded myself with a cloud of newspapers until at last, saturated with the events of the day, I tossed them to one side and stared at my sleeping friend. Next to Holmes lay a long cherry-wood pipe and his favourite clay pipe, a box of vestas, and a pouch with Grosvenor tobacco mixture (at eightpence an ounce). He had opted for a rare Poshteen Long Coat. He had worn it last in our encounter with the ruthless Empire Loyalists of the Kipling League and their President, David Siviter, in The Case of the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle some two years earlier. No-one would accuse Holmes of foppishness. The bulky piece with its many flaps and pockets was accompanied by a regrettable common-or-garden ear-flapped travelling cap showing signs of savage attack by moths, no respecters of ancient relics.

Beside me was a heavily-sealed document ‘for the attention of Commander Hewitt’ delivered to the train and passed to me by Holmes with the words ‘Do oblige me when you have time’. The succinct address ‘Bankside’ indicated it had been written by Mycroft Holmes in the privacy of the Diogenes Club.

I lit a lunkah and began to read.

‘Dear Sherlock, by now you will be boarding the express train to Dover, engaged in a task as important as any you have undertaken. Your destination Constantinople - often referred to as ‘Stamboul’ - has been called empress of the world, a city of beauty and tragedy, where a man’s ancestry is proclaimed by the colour of his trousers - Turks red, Greeks black, Jews blue, Armenians violet. Turkey is more an Asiatic power than a European one.

‘First, a cautionary word on wearing naval officers’ uniforms. The Civil Service is in the throes of drawing up a new Convention regarding the status of wartime spies. Ch.11, Article 29 will state a person is considered a spy who acts clandestinely or on false pretences, infiltrates enemy lines with the intention of acquiring intelligence and communicating it to the belligerent during times of war. You should, therefore, be aware that if war breaks out during your stay in Turkey, and the Ottomans are on the other side, you will be executed. Now you know of this risk no-one will hold it against you or Dr. Watson if you spend a pleasant hour or two at Dover Castle followed by a six-course dinner courtesy of His Majesty on the next train back to Victoria. Otherwise read on.

‘The Sultan is a bottomless pit of falsehood and fraud who will fulfil nothing except under force or the proximate use of force. The East is, and ever was from times immemorial, the land of the most striking contradictions. Venice in its darkest days was light and freedom compared to the cesspool of vice, decay and blood which is the Stamboul of today. Across the Ottoman Empire provinces which were once rich and fertile have returned to nearly the desolation of the desert, in parts a howling wilderness.

‘Europe waits with bated breath for Ottoman rule to collapse. St. Petersburg and Vienna bide their time like crows on a fence post. Berlin maintains a ship anchored for months at a time in the harbour at Stamboul full of political and commercial spies masquerading as archaeologists and engineering geographers. We have good reason to believe the Kaiser signed a secret military convention with the Sultan when Abd-ul-Hamid hosted him in Constantinople eight years ago. If war breaks out between Germany and England, we will find the Turk on the other side. Why should this be of concern to London? Because when the Sick Man does collapse England must have her share of the spoils. Our power extends to the boundaries of even the farthest ocean. In Kipling’s words, England holds Dominion over palm and pine. Our world-empire is an octopus with gigantic feelers stretching out over the habitable globe. Many economies including China and Siam are under our control.’

The letter went on,

‘The Foreign Secretary is not the most sensitive barometer by which to read tendencies in foreign policy. His attention is fixed too hard on France, a corrupt and traditional enemy which to my mind remains of interest but no longer consequence. England herself is in urgent need of a Metternich, a Talleyrand, a blood-and-iron Bismarck, which Sir Edward is not. History may show the King’s recent Entente with Paris was England’s first blundering step to war with Germany. There is not enough dissimulation in Grey for a politician. Rather, he is an unpretending Englishman of country tastes, simple in word and thought, good at fishing and learned in sparrows. Perhaps I’m being unfair - there is in great affairs so much less in the minds of the chief actors than in the minds of the event. In emergencies we discover we are the puppets of the past which, of a sudden, pulls the unseen wires and determines the action.’

I resented Mycroft’s mild contempt for Sir Edward’s ‘country tastes’. The Foreign Secretary was a man after my own heart.

A chilling analysis unfolded.

‘When the next crisis comes we shall find the war-chariots’ reins not in Whitehall but Wilhelmstraße. There is a good deal of gunpowder lying about in Berlin waiting for a spark, its ruler keen to settle differences sword in hand. The mischief-makers’ time is coming, ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast - without haste, but without rest. The gifts of patience, forbearance and tact may be invaluable for the conduct of delicate negotiations but Germany is not a wilting lily. She is a walnut which it will require a hammer to crack. Grey will be powerless to prevent the shipwreck which is now inevitable It only takes one to make a quarrel; it needs two to preserve the peace.’

The above is expressed in the deepest confidence that it will find a place in your and Dr. Watson’s minds and not an inch further. This was followed by the cautionary words, ‘I need not remind you, dear brother, I have a comfortable chair here in Whitehall. With time and usage it has taken on the curvature of my back (and rump) and I hope to remain in it for many moons to come. After you have fully absorbed its content burn this document.’

‘Burn this document’was heavily underlined.

The last of London was now behind us. We were puffing towards the forbidding bulwark of the White Cliffs and, beyond, the English Channel and France. I put Mycroft’s letter away and pulled my tin box from the rack, riffling through case-notes yet to see the light of day.

I smoothed out the pages and spread them on the seat beside me.

Days and nights passed. We rattled through France at forty miles an hour aboard a succession of wind-splitting ‘pig-nosed’ trains. A hundred hamlets passed by in a blur. Restaurant cars serving hearty food and fine wines ameliorated the long evenings. I picked up and put down and picked up The Best Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Diary of an Idle Woman in Constantinople. I alternated staring out of the carriage windows with seizing the chance when Holmes dozed to continue my transcriptions. Finally we were within shot of Algeciras. Beyond lay Gibraltar. Soon we would be sailing through the Mediterranean into the Aegean Sea.

Hundreds of miles into our journey, irrevocably committed to our new adventure, I returned to the final paragraph of Mycroft’s letter.

‘I think Sir Edward and I have covered the politics enough. You will be received by the Sultan at Yildiz Palace in your guise as naval emissaries acting on requests from the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Zoological Society Gardens. You will not be shown the Sultan’s Harem, the Harem-i Hümâyûn. English feet have stamped their mark on much of the world, Whymper’s on the peak of the Matterhorn, Speke’s at the source of the Nile, but along with the North Pole and the summit of Everest the Harem remains among the few places on earth no English (or American) foot has yet trod.’