‘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,
‘The Diogenes November 6, 1906
Private & Confidential.
My dear Dr. Watson - You have accepted General Yuán’s invitation to help form a National Medical Corps. To ensure absolute secrecy we have opened a private account for you at Parr’s Bank rather than contacting your own bank, Cox’s. In all Capital cities on your route you will be able to obtain whatever funds you need. You might start by calling on a few pocketsful of Spanish colonial Mexican dollars. They are widely in use in China.
When you reach the Forbidden City at the end of your journey you will be introduced to Cixi, the huang taihou. Do not be taken in by the unassuming title ‘Empress Dowager’ as though she lives tucked away in a small dowager house on the edge of the estate. She is the powerhouse of the Middle Kingdom, the dynamic brain. By her own intelligence and the force of her will she has triumphed over conspiracies, poisonings, arbitrary and whimsical executions, torture and Palace intrigues. All this in a culture which despises the feminine and offers women nothing but contempt.
Once you set off, communication with England will necessarily be slow and increasingly open to misuse. As the capital of our own vast Empire, London is the rumour-monger city of the world. Even I cannot take a step in the tangle-web of Whitehall without tripping over some other nation’s spies. For our peace of mind about your well-being, please route all communications - even personal ones addressed to my brother Sherlock - through the Diplomatic pouches to the Political & Secret Department (L/P&S/20) at the India Office. That will ensure they find their way free from prying eyes!
I hope you will permit me to offer thoughts gleaned from three decades of contact with experienced China Hands, all free trade and Armstrong guns. The species spends a great deal of time on leave at the Diogenes Club.
As you have already been warned, in his heart the Oriental despises the European. Do not expect to be greeted with open arms. Every inhabitant of the eighteen provinces believes China is the centre of civilization and power, his language and customs the only ones worthy of attention from native Chinaman and ‘barbarian’ alike. Few Englishman visit fabled Cathay with any other intent than to convert, trade, rule or fight. From coolie to Mandarin to the ruling High Court every Chinese actively dislikes our soldiers, our sailors, our missionaries, our officials, our merchants, our manner and our style. In return we accuse China of ineradicable Oriental ingratitude.
Regarding your route to Kashgar, I see you are taking a quiet way to cross the English Channel to Ostend, then Brussels, Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, Rostov. Rostov to Petrovsk on the Caspian Sea and across to Baku. Krasnovodsk and Bukhara. Then Samarkand. I know this because my ‘spies’ at the Royal Geographical Society noted your marginal scribbles on their maps (marks now removed).So far so good. After Samarkand, even the Society’s maps are out of date by some decades.
I imagine it’ll seem very much like your Afghan days. A stretch of the trans-Caspian railway to Andijan is the last you’ll see of civilized transport. From then on it will become varied, increasingly horse and carriage, or pony, or for the high passes, yak. After that it’s tarantass or post-cart to Osh. If you make it over the Thian-Shan mountains alive, you arrive at Kashgar, the great Back-of-Beyond, one of the least-visited places on earth and for good reason. To the east stretches Taklimakan Shamo, a desert so hazardous that caravans of a hundred camels have been known to disappear with not a skeleton - human or pack-animal - to show they passed that way. Only the cargoes remain in the sands - iron, ceramics, cinnamon bark and lacquer. The immense mountain ranges of Tian Shan and Pamir cut the miserable town off from the north and west - and to the south lies the Karakoram, the most heavily glaciated part of the world outside the polar regions, home to the highest concentration of peaks over 25,000 feet anywhere on earth. It includes Mt. Godwin Austen (in the Balti dialect, Chhogori), the ‘Savage Mountain’. At 28,251 feet it is the largest pyramid on earth. If you carry the appropriate instruments perhaps you can check whether the accuracy of this height still stands.