Shelmerdine dropped his voice. ‘Doctor, I hope I’ve been of some help in your endeavours...you said there was a second plot. The schemers must fear imminent exposure. As you and Mr. Holmes may never grace our shores again, kindly tell me - in the utmost confidence - what about this other conspiracy?’
I looked up at Yildiz. In my mind I could see the rose and tulip and fenugreek gardens, the bowers with ivy and wisterias, the lion statues, water pouring from their mouths, in whose proximity you could talk confidentially. Here too, at the water’s edge, we could talk in safety, our voices drowned by the constant roar of harbour traffic and the shouts of people selling their wares on Galata Bridge.
I answered, ‘The moment we recognised a forgery it was clear there was a second plot, organised with great care and brilliance. One which was at the very instant of being sprung. The real sword had already been stolen - but by whom? Had we not arrived when we did, I’m confident the conspiracy would have succeeded. The Sultan would be in exile. Or dead.’
‘Yet you have no clues at all to the malefactors’ identities?’
‘Regarding the head conspirator, no. Nothing,’ I replied. ‘Unfortunately, when Saliha Naciye poisoned the Chief Armourer, she killed off the trail. However my comrade has deduced the identity of the principal agent.’
‘The principal agent!’ Shelmerdine exclaimed.
His eyes, unblinking, were fixed on mine.
‘The mastermind’s agent,’ I affirmed. ‘You see, there was one critical difference between the plots.’
‘Which was?’
‘One conspiracy could only have been conducted from within the Palace. That was clearly Saliha Naciye’s.’
‘And the other?’
‘By a collaborator quartered outside the walls of Yildiz.’
‘Why certainly, we know the Young Turks...’
‘Nowhere near as far off as Salonika,’ I replied.
‘Then where?’
‘In the very heart of Stamboul.’
Shelmerdine looked shocked. After a short while he asked, ‘You say Mr. Holmes has worked out that villain’s identity?’
‘He has.’
‘If that’s so,’ Shelmerdine responded, ‘why doesn’t your colleague reveal his name to the Sultan?’
He gestured towards the Bosphorus. ‘So His Sublimity can wreak his customary revenge.’
‘Because the agent may well know where the true Sword of Osman lies concealed,’ I replied.
‘And that could be of value to you?’
‘To Holmes and me personally, no. To a certain Imperial Power, yes.’
The dragoman cast a speculative eye at HMS Dreadnought.
‘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.