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 over 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.