Sherlock Holmes and The Sword of Osman by Tim Symonds

the Palace to the assassins to avoid having the noose placed around his neck.’
    â€˜Sir,’ I intervened, deeply attentive to Sir Edward Grey’s wish to keep this creature on his throne, ‘you seem to know who these conspirators are, where they live, how they communicate. Why haven’t you long since accepted the counsel of your advisers - and the admonitions of your thirteenth wife - and rounded up these scallywags? Why haven’t you already put them on trial?’
    The distraught figure before us cried with some bitterness, ‘And perhaps bring about the very events I fear most?’
    He made a grotesque attempt at a smile.
    â€˜I am like the hen who is asked by the cook, “Dear fowl, would you like to be served up with a sweet sauce or a sour sauce - which do you prefer?” In either case I will be throttled, cooked and eaten.’
    His voice dropped to a rasping whisper. ‘They plan to kill me just as they killed my uncle, the late Sultan Abdülaziz. They said the Sultan killed himself! At the Old Seraglio. Can you believe it? Why should a sultan kill himself? When the holy men prepared the body for the tomb they saw a tiny mark above the heart. It could only have been the wound of a stiletto.’
    Tears welled up in his eyes. ‘When I’m murdered they’ll put my brother Reshad on the throne as their puppet. He’ll do whatever they say.’
    He gave us a despairing look.
    â€˜Before you sits a man who doesn’t know which way to turn. It was my misfortune to come on the stage of history at a time the Empire was bankrupt and could not defend itself against its many enemies. What is life? It’s a seed blown hither and thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act. We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Worse than a shadow - misery. In the face of aggression from without and sabotage from within, I wage as valiant a battle as I can and must, to preserve what remains of this once mighty Empire.’
    With a ghastly gesture, as though dangling from a noose, he added, ‘You see before you a man who is at present five feet six inches in your measurement. As a boy I prayed to the ninety-nine names of Allah to let me grow up to be five feet nine at least. One should beware what one asks of the All-Compassionate, the All-Merciful. Soon He may grant me my wish. Have you seen the corpses hanging beneath Galata Bridge, how they elongate?’
    From his trembling lips came loud, vaporous laughter.
    â€˜I ordered my physician to measure the cadavers before and after. A man of my size who dies by the noose lengthens at least three of your inches. My boyhood prayer will come true.’
    A slight signal from the Chief Black Eunuch indicated it was time to leave. At the door I glanced back. God’s shadow on the Universe, the ruler of vast and mysterious dominions stretching from the Caucasus to the Persian Gulf, the Danube to the Nile, sat sessile, shrivelled, as catatonic as the mummy of Ramses the Second.
    The Sultan caught my look. A slight smile flickered briefly around his lips. His melancholy voice followed us out into the garden: ‘Dr. Watson, if word comes I’m to be deposed, they will find me reading your chronicles while their tread grows ever nearer. I shall start on The Return of Sherlock Holmes tonight.’
    In our carriage Holmes declared, as though to himself, ‘Dear me! What a rag-bag of singular happenings! I can see only two things for certain at present. The sword goes missing. In Pera the Chief Armourer dies...’
    He looked at me. His eyebrows tightened.
    â€˜Mehmed meets a violent death during the very hours we know a drama was being enacted in the Palace. Why?’
    â€˜Chance, Holmes, surely?’ I protested. ‘Aren’t you reading too much into...’
    â€˜You suggest the Chief Armourer’s murder so soon after the sword disappeared was mere