‘Childer’s shocker The Riddle of the Sands predicting a German plan to invade our green and pleasant land has frightened the general public beyond all rationality. Who will neutralise the German spies around our Docks and Army bases and seaside towns like Hastings? The parish peeler? The Daily Mail reports there are 65,000 German spies in Britain, mostly waiters and hairdressers, each hiding a monocle in his back pocket. We can’t fit them all in the Tower. Do keep a close watch on the bushes on your walks on the South Downs.
‘I start work on the War Book in the morning - the last first, what shall we put in the precautionary telegram to send around the Empire, that within days, perhaps hours, England will be at war?
‘Shall we say lunch soon at the Automobile Club? They are thinly populated at this season.
‘I remain, even more, dear Sherlock, your admiring brother.
‘P.S. - Ironically I have been offered a KCMG for ‘services rendered’ to foreign affairs. I shan’t refuse. We must celebrate. I have a bottle of Imperial Tokay said to be from Franz Joseph’s special cellar at the Schoenbrunn Palace.
‘P.P.S. - Pity about Shelmerdine. Have you heard? Mortuus est. An hour after your departure, at exactly a quarter past nine, a cannon was fired. Shelmerdine was on Galata Bridge. At that instant a deadeye as skilled as a Boer sniper hit him in the head. According to a nearby fisher (who seems now to have fled the city) the shot was fired from the slopes on which Yildiz sits. What remained of Shelmerdine’s head would have fitted in a coffee-cup. The fellow was spared peine forte et dure at least. Tarik, the official organ of the Ottoman government, mourned the passing of a “well-known Stambouli from deadly Syrian malaria”. You would be in error if you assume Shelmerdine was a double-agent. He was, strictly speaking, not. He adopted the religion and ways of his targets but acted separately on different issues for different masters.
‘His Imperial Majesty has sent condolences to the widow and four children. It means the flow of completely fake expressions of loyalty telegraphed to Abd-ul-Hamid from every quarter of the Ottoman Empire has come to a juddering halt, at least for a while. Shelmerdine was originally commissioned by the Sultan Valide to write them as from ordinary citizens. The practice continued upon her demise with the patronage of the Sultan’s Ministers.’
According to Shelmerdine’s successor, newly appointed as Mycroft’s agent, hardly two hours after I presented the Sultan with the powerful Ross military binoculars the gift had been put to use. A deaf eunuch lip-read my conversation with the dragoman at the landing-pier while the cases and cages were being loaded on the boat. Every word I spoke was relayed to the Palace. The instant I called out, bitingly, ‘But don’t worry, the skeleton in your closet is perfectly safe with us’ I had inadvertently betrayed his true role to the Palace. Shelmerdine was doomed. The death of Mycroft’s paid agent - and my central role in it - horrified me. Had I not felt so overwhelming an urge to prove the man had failed to bamboozle the greatest ‘gumshoe’ in Europe, Shelmerdine would have survived. Even reading my lips would have been more difficult if the custom for medical officers at sea hadn’t obliged me to shave my moustache.
The party by the lake dispersed. My comrade rejoined me. The Foreign Secretary and the Clutterbucks went back to the house to change for Dinner. Holmes pointed at the letter.
‘Did you notice Mycroft had the misfortune to get a smear of ink upon the outer side of his right digitus minimus?’
I passed the pages back to him to read and waited in silence. He cocked an eye at me.
‘You look mournful, Watson.’
‘Aren’t you dismayed by the news about Shelmerdine?’ I asked with some asperity. ‘After all, he was an excellent companion. So what if he was involved in a plot to overthrow the Sultan – if he was.’
‘I might normally be disturbed,’ came Holmes’s enigmatic reply. ‘Except...’
‘Except what?’ I interrupted.
‘Except for the fact he met his fate on Galata Bridge.’
‘Galata Bridge?’ I echoed. ‘How would it matter if he was shot crossing a bridge or climbing the Mountains of the Moon?’
‘Not any old bridge. The bridge. Also, if you return to the letter, Mycroft doesn’t say he was shot crossing the bridge. It only says he was on the bridge when he was shot.’
‘I know this will shake your confidence in me to the very core, Holmes,’ I retorted, ‘but I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. What difference does it make if he was crossing the bridge or just standing on it?’
My comrade’s thin fingers tapped at the letter.
‘We are told the shot came from ‘the slopes on which Yildiz sits’, a distance of several hundred yards.’
‘So?’
‘Even for a rifle with a state-of-the-art scope and chamber pressure of 20 tons a square inch it’s a considerable range.’
Holmes was right. It was a very considerable distance to hit any sort of moving target. My years in India hunting the occasional man-eating tiger had taken place in the jungle, invariably at close range, where jungle-craft and steady nerves were more important than long-range marksmanship.
‘For the bullet to strike someone in the head he had to be standing as motionless as a pillar of salt - and for several seconds,’ Holmes continued. ‘But you saw the fishermen jerking about as though they suffered from Saint Vitus Dance.’
‘So?’ I pursued.
‘Why would our dragoman be standing so still?’
‘How do you explain it,’ I demanded.
‘Cast your mind back to the newspaper photograph which revealed our presence to the whole of Stamboul.’
‘What has that to do with Shelmerdine?’
Holmes laughed, delighted at my perplexed expression.
‘Watson, your bafflement is a perennial delight. In a word - everything! The revelation of our true identity has everything to do with Shelmerdine. How many people knew we were disguised as Royal Naval officers?’
‘A good number. I counted Grey and the Prime Minister, your brother Mycroft. Fisher at the Admiralty. The Commodore. Three or four of the most senior officers aboard Dreadnought. The Sultan’s close entourage. And, yes, Shelmerdine.’