A SERVANT OF THE PUBLIC
Wakeley and I exchanged glances. That Julian Little was actually living
in secret in Cromer he refused to believe. I did not, of course, betray
my own knowledge, but repeated my question to Garnett.
"My dear fellow," he said, "there are sometimes things better left
unsaid--where a woman is concerned, you know," he added, with a meaning
laugh.
"Ah!" exclaimed Wakeley. "A woman at the bottom of it--eh? It's always
so. But I did not believe Little to be at all a ladies' man. He's
essentially a traveller, and travellers never dangle at a woman's
skirts."
"Well," exclaimed Garnett, "if you wait a bit you'll see."
"What--you surely don't mean a divorce case?"
"Oh, no, no, not that!" cried our colleague of the _Pall Mall_. "But
there, that's enough. He's in Cromer, and not in Servia. That's all."
Wakeley sat puzzled. I knew that he was reflecting deeply by the
deliberate way he knocked the ashes from his pipe. A newly-discovered
entertainer, who had made a hit at the Hippodrome, was giving an
exhibition of thought-reading so wonderful that the whole room sat
silent in amazement. Then, when it had concluded and the door was
opened again, I rose and, wishing my two companions good-night, went
out into the purer air of Adelphi Terrace, where the moon shone
brightly and the rows of lights lined the dark and silent Thames. The
theatres were over, and the Strand was crowded with homeward-bound
pleasure-seekers, of people rushing to the restaurants to snap up their
supper before midnight--the closing hour.
Obsessed by my own gloomy thoughts I elbowed my way through the crowd
towards Chancery Lane, and duly arrived home at my silent chambers.
Why was Little in Cromer? At what woman had Garnett hinted? Did he
refer to Daisy Marvin, the woman I had so devotedly loved?
On the following evening I was down at the _Daily Herald_ office, and
from Wakeley, in his shirt-sleeves and pipe in mouth, I received my
instructions and the draft for money for my journey to the Ottoman
capital.
He told me what questions to put to His Excellency and the general
lines of the interview, and urged me to obtain, if possible, some
definite expression of opinion regarding the probability of war with
Bulgaria.
"And remain in Constantinople till I send you word to come home,
Keene," he added. "I may want you to go somewhere else in that quarter.
There seems some little trouble brewing in Roumania."
"Then I may be away some time?" I exclaimed, dismayed.
"Yes. I didn't know about Roumania till this afternoon. We've had a
message from our Vienna man. So you'd better take kit for a month. If
you're away longer we can send some more out to you. The Orient Express
takes parcels nowadays."
And so next morning at nine I left Charing Cross without a soul to wish
me _bon voyage_ on my first trip as special correspondent of, perhaps,
the most influential journal in the world.
At Ostend I entered the train of wagons-lits which two days a week
links West with East, and, travelling for several days by Brussels,
Nuremberg, Vienna, Budapest, and Bucharest, at last reached at night
the port of Constanza, on the Black Sea. Here a fine steamer conveyed
the half-dozen or so of my fellow-passengers and the many bags of
mail to the entrance of the Bosphorus, and then commenced a slow and
delightful steam up a channel which is acknowledged to be one of the
most picturesque and beautiful in all the world. Were this a book of
travel I could describe the many beauties of that journey up past
white Therapia and the tiny Turkish villages at the edge of the calm
blue waters, until on the left in the misty haze rose the tall, thin
minarets and white domes of Stamboul, of Galata, and Pera, which, piled
tier upon tier and looking fairylike from the sea, make up the Sultan's
capital--Constantinople the Unchanging.
From the steamer the whole scene was indescribably delightful. The West
had been entirely left behind, and here was the gateway of the glowing
East, the baggy-trousered, befezzed Turk, in a hundred varying garbs,
and of a hundred different races.
Ashore at Galata, I admit, was a disenchantment, of mud,
scavenger-dogs, corrupt Customs officers, greasy passport officers, and
spies at every turn. But once within the Pera Palace Hotel, high above
the beautiful Golden Horn, all was artistic and full of quaint Eastern
charm.
The Pera Palace is the centre of Western life in Constantinople. Here
in the midst of Oriental life one has an American bar and one can get
a grill. Travellers, diplomats, concession-hunters, and financiers
are constantly beneath its roof, and all Europeans in Constantinople
naturally drift there, to lounge in its Eastern smoking-room or sip
cocktails in the American bar below.
In writing this record of curious circumstances and man's cunning it
is unnecessary for me to describe my life in the Sultan's capital,
save to say that Tewfik Pasha--the white-bearded old gentleman in fez
and frock-coat, who is His Imperial Majesty's right hand--received me
very graciously, and with the inborn courtesy of the Turk answered the
questions I put to him. Noury Bey, the Secrétaire-Général and head of
Oriental diplomacy--a fair-bearded and very charming diplomat--was also
present, and both of them did all they could to render my stay in the
Turkish capital as agreeable as possible.
Previously I had entertained a marked antipathy towards the Turk. I had
viewed him through Western spectacles and adjudged him upon the basis
of the Armenians I had met. But now that I had seen the real educated
Turk at home I could not fail to be fascinated with him, and was
compelled to admit within myself that all my prejudices were absurd. On
every hand I received little kindnesses without thought of reward. The
real Turk is a gentleman of honour, but the Armenian was, I found, the
most unscrupulous blackguard on the face of the globe--notwithstanding
the periodical screeches of our Nonconformist friends at home. Let
those who cry shame upon what they choose to dub "the Sick Man of
Europe" for his treatment of the Armenians in recent years go to Turkey
and see for themselves, as I saw, and they will very soon alter their
opinion. Certainly those who defend the Armenians are not travellers.
I wrote my interview with Tewfik, and it was duly published in the
_Daily Herald_ and quoted up and down Europe by almost every paper of
note. In the Reichstag and in the House of Commons questions were asked
about it, and the great Turkish statesman, the man who directed the
external policy of the great Ottoman Empire, laughed merrily when we
discussed its effect one afternoon at the Sublime Porte--as the Foreign
Office is called.
It is the privilege of a special correspondent to mix with all
sorts and conditions of men, and to know the trend of the political
undercurrent. Many a correspondent is, therefore, of great service to
his Government in furnishing confidential information to the proper
quarter--information which he carefully withholds from the public.
In fact, the foreign telegrams one often reads in one's daily paper
are the exact opposite to the truth, and have been sent with one
object--namely, the misleading of the opponent and the furtherance of
British diplomacy in that particular country. Ambassador and journalist
are always good friends, and many has been the day when the former has
scribbled a fictitious despatch and asked his journalistic friend to
telegraph it to London as the truth!
A whole month went by.
October was creeping on, and the Bosphorus was, I found, delightful
in the autumn. Across at Scutari I frequently went and spent pleasant
afternoons with "Our Own Correspondent," who was resident in Stamboul,
and who often took me to see the sights--the great mosques, the
Imperial Treasury, the Selamlik and the Sweet Waters of the Bosphorus.
I had written to Wakeley twice, asking that I might return, but in
reply I had received the one telegraphed word, "Remain." And so
I remained on from day to day, wondering when I might be sent to
investigate the Roumanian troubles.
Whitlock, in reply to mine, had written me several letters. There was
nothing fresh to report, he declared. All the inquiries we had made had
led him into a _cul-de-sac_. He was still watching, but rather hopeless.
Little had reappeared. His excuse to Wakeley, when taunted with having
been in Cromer, was that he had a very dear friend living there who was
lying ill, and that he had been to visit him.
With the coroner's open verdict the public sensation regarding the
Barnes mystery had now died down. It is amazing what a short memory the
British public possess in these times of the daily "sensations" of the
evening Press. Personally, I was anxious to return home to seek the
solution of the mystery, with which I felt convinced that my lost love
was in some unaccountable way connected. The delights of Constantinople
were all very well and very entertaining, but I was daily longing to
return in order to glean the truth. From Daisy I had had no word. I had
written to her the night before my departure, telling her my address in
the Turkish capital, but her silence showed me only too plainly that
she had given me my _congé_. Ah! in those warm autumn days beside the
blue Bosphorus, how often I walked along the heights, gazing over to
the Asiatic shore and wondering what the future held in store for me.
Broken-hearted as I was, and, held there in exile because of the duty
imposed upon me, I was powerless. I had ceased to take any interest
in the life about me. My one desire now was to get back to London. In
the European papers reaching me I could discover nothing regarding any
rising in Roumania. As far as I gathered, all was quiet. Therefore, why
was I held there and bidden not to move? Was Wakeley himself conspiring
against my happiness?
I wrote again to Daisy, but, alas! without result. All was over
between us. I tried not to prejudge her, but I admit that in the
circumstances it was very hard not to do so. Memory of her sweet,
innocent countenance haunted me everywhere. Sleeping or waking, that
unforgettable face was ever with me, ever taunting me with the past
that had been so full of perfect bliss and of a love that I had, alas!
vainly believed would last always.
And so I lived on in my lonesome exile, fettered, puzzled, unable to
act. Constantly I wrote to Whitlock, asking for news of Stonor, of
Drayton, and of Miss Marvin. But the replies were ever vague, and I saw
plainly that Scotland Yard were gradually disregarding the inquiry, and
relegating the Barnes mystery to the long list of London's unelucidated
mysteries.
I was helpless, with the present a blank and the future hopeless.
I loved Daisy Marvin, but she was now lost to me for ever.