The Eunuch of Stamboul Read online

  DENNIS WHEATLEY

  THE EUNUCH OF STAMBOUL

  To

  GEORGE (PETER) A. HILL,

  C.B.E., D.S.O., M.C., etc., I.K.8. of the British Secret Service.

  MY DEAR PETER,

  Anyone who has had the good fortune to read ‘Go Spy the Land’, your personal account of your adventures when, after Bruce Lockhart left Russia, you became the chief of the silent watchers for our government there, and all those who read your second book, ‘The Hour Before Dawn’, so shortly to appear, will, I fear, find this tale of mine a comparatively dull affair.

  The truth is that I simply would not dare to place before my readers quite such a fantastic fiction of dangers and hairbreadth escapes as actually befell you when the Bolsheviks put a price upon your head.

  However, as this is a Secret Service story, I offer it to you and, if I may, couple with your name those of two other friends of mine, Colonel Charles Davey and Mr. Norman Penzer, both of whom have known the mystery and romance of Stamboul.

  Never having lost the delight in deeds of derring-do which filled my imagination as a boy I can assure you that it gives me a real thrill to possess your friendship and thus be able to offer this tale of mine to the Scarlet Pimpernel of the Russian Revolution.

  DENNIS WHEATLEY.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter I A Royal Invitation

  Chapter II The ‘Incident’ at Maidenhead

  Chapter III A Most Distressing Affair

  Chapter IV The Man Without a Job

  Chapter V The Secret Mission

  Chapter VI The Jealous Lover

  Chapter VII The City of the Sultans

  Chapter VIII The Drudgery of the Quest

  Chapter IX The Impulsive Student

  Chapter X The Tower of Marble

  Chapter XI Old Lamps for New

  Chapter XII The Gifted Amateur Bungles Badly

  Chapter XIII The Old, Old Story

  Chapter XIV For Them There Are Gardens Beneath Which Rivers Flow’ (The Qur’ân)146

  Chapter XV ‘For These Are the Fellows of the Fire and They shall Burn Therein for Aye’ (The Qur’ân)

  Chapter XVI The Stopped Earth

  Chapter XVII Trapped

  Chapter XVIII The Desolate City

  Chapter XIX The Lion’s Mouth

  Chapter XX Cocktails For Two

  Chapter XXI The Cat with Nine Lives

  Chapter XXII Love at the Sweet Waters

  Chapter XXIII The Man Hunt

  Chapter XXIV When the Heart is Young

  Chapter XXV The Plain Van

  Chapter XXVI Two Go Home

  A Note on the Author

  Introduction

  Dennis Wheatley was my grandfather. He only had one child, my father Anthony, from his first marriage to Nancy Robinson. Nancy was the youngest in a large family of ten Robinson children and she had a wonderful zest for life and a gaiety about her that I much admired as a boy brought up in the dull Seventies. Thinking about it now, I suspect that I was drawn to a young Ginny Hewett, a similarly bubbly character, and now my wife of 27 years, because she resembled Nancy in many ways.

  As grandparents, Dennis and Nancy were very different. Nancy’s visits would fill the house with laughter and mischievous gossip, while Dennis and his second wife Joan would descend like minor royalty, all children expected to behave. Each held court in their own way but Dennis was the famous one with the famous friends and the famous stories.

  There is something of the fantasist in every storyteller, and most novelists writing thrillers see themselves in their heroes. However, only a handful can claim to have been involved in actual daring-do. Dennis saw action both at the Front, in the First World War, and behind a desk in the Second. His involvement informed his writing and his stories, even those based on historical events, held a notable veracity that only the life-experienced novelist can obtain. I think it was this element that added the important plausibility to his writing. This appealed to his legions of readers who were in that middle ground of fiction, not looking for pure fantasy nor dry fact, but something exciting, extraordinary, possible and even probable.

  There were three key characters that Dennis created over the years: The Duc de Richleau, Gregory Sallust and Roger Brook. The first de Richleau stories were set in the years between the wars, when Dennis had started writing. Many of the Sallust stories were written in the early days of the Second World War, shortly before Dennis joined the Joint Planning Staff in Whitehall, and Brook was cast in the time of the French Revolution, a period that particularly fascinated him.

  He is probably always going to be associated with Black Magic first and foremost, and it’s true that he plugged it hard because sales were always good for those books. However, it’s important to remember that he only wrote eleven Black Magic novels out of more than sixty bestsellers, and readers were just as keen on his other stories. In fact, invariably when I meet people who ask if there is any connection, they tell me that they read ‘all his books’.

  Dennis had a full and eventful life, even by the standards of the era he grew up in. He was expelled from Dulwich College and sent to a floating navel run school, HMS Worcester. The conditions on this extraordinary ship were Dickensian. He survived it, and briefly enjoyed London at the pinnacle of the Empire before war was declared and the fun ended. That sort of fun would never be seen again.

  He went into business after the First World War, succeeded and failed, and stumbled into writing. It proved to be his calling. Immediate success opened up the opportunity to read and travel, fueling yet more stories and thrilling his growing band of followers.

  He had an extraordinary World War II, being one of the first people to be recruited into the select team which dreamed up the deception plans to cover some of the major events of the war such as Operation Torch, Operation Mincemeat and the D-Day landings. Here he became familiar with not only the people at the very top of the war effort, but also a young Commander Ian Fleming, who was later to write the James Bond novels. There are indeed those who have suggested that Gregory Sallust was one of James Bond’s precursors.

  The aftermath of the war saw Dennis grow in stature and fame. He settled in his beautiful Georgian house in Lymington surrounded by beautiful things. He knew how to live well, perhaps without regard for his health. He hated exercise, smoked, drank and wrote. Today he would have been bullied by wife and children and friends into giving up these habits and changing his lifestyle, but I’m not sure he would have given in. Maybe like me, he would simply find a quiet place.

  Dominic Wheatley, 2013

  CHAPTER I

  A ROYAL INVITATION

  If the postman who served the southern side of Belgrave Square that summer had not been a ‘lewd fellow of the baser sort’, many things might have panned out differently.

  It is doubtful if Diana Duncannon would have met a certain distinguished foreigner who was then visiting London. Swithin Destime might have terminated his career, unusually brilliant to that date, as Chief of the Imperial General Staff. The life of an elderly Russian lady, then living in Constantinople as a refugee, might have been considerably prolonged, and a number of other people might not have had the misfortune to lose theirs in the flower of their youth. The Turkish Government would have found itself—but there, the postman was a ‘lewd fellow of the baser sort’ and, strange as it may seem, it is just upon such delicate matters as the glandular secretions of postmen and their moral reactions to the same that the destinies of human beings and the fate of nations hang.

  During the early months of the summer this otherwise estimable minor Civil Servant had felt the urge to toy in gentle dalliance with the under housemaid at number 56. The
young woman had permitted what are legally termed ‘certain familiarities’ and then, one evening towards the end of Ascot Week, learned that the postman possessed a wife and seven sons. If she had wept out her heart upon the broad bosom of the cook all might have been well, but instead, dry-eyed and silent, the poor girl went upstairs, swallowed a quantity of disinfectant and collapsed upon the floor of Lady Duncannon’s bathroom.

  A doctor was sent for, restoratives applied, and the girl’s life pronounced out of danger. All might yet have ended there but for the fact that Lady Duncannon, who was a dear motherly soul, refused to leave her house that night with one of her staff in such a sad condition.

  Her husband, Sir George, knew her too well to argue with her decision despite his annoyance; they were both expected at a Foreign Office dinner in honour of His Serene Highness the Prince Ali, a nephew of the late Sultan, within the hour and, as Sir George was the head of a famous international Banking House and many of his most important interests were in the near East, it was certain that his wife and he would be placed at the top table. It was unthinkable that any seat so near the illustrious visitor should be left unoccupied; there was no time to telephone to the Foreign Office and suggest a re-arrangement of the tables so a substitute for Lady Duncannon obviously had to be found. Sir George, his dress trousers bagging about his knees and such hair as remained to him feathering his polished skull, came out upon the landing in his shirt sleeves and called loudly for his daughter.

  Had Diana Duncannon lived in Queen Anne’s day she would have been a reigning toast. As it was she was just known as ‘a pretty decent looking girl.’ But when she ran downstairs from the floor above to answer her father’s summons, she was hardly decent and, had they seen her, the beaux of the early eighteenth century would have been shaken to their buckled shoes.

  She also had been dressing, since she was going that night to dine with a party at the Guards’ Boat Club at Maidenhead and afterwards to participate in the Ascot Dance. A dressing-gown disguised her slender figure but failed to conceal certain portions of her delicious limbs. Her hair had been pushed up under an ugly net and her delicate complexion was smothered under a hideous coating of grease.

  Her father stated the position briefly and after a momentary frown of annoyance she shrugged her slim shoulders, blinked through the shiny mask and said:

  “All right Daddy. I’ll telephone to Peter and you’ll have to send me down later in the car. I suppose I’ll be able to get away about ten.”

  And so the die was cast. Three quarters of an hour later Sir George was announced at the Foreign Office reception with a very different Diana on his arm. Tall, slim, sheathed in glittering satin, her aureole of pale gold hair swept back and curling upon her small fine head, she was presented by Mrs. Hazeltine, the wife of her father’s friend, the Foreign Office official who was responsible for the function, to a tall dark muscular gentleman in quite perfect evening dress, upon whose breast glittered a great diamond star and a constellation of miniature medals; General His Serene Highness the Prince Ali, Emir of Konia and Grand Commander of the Star and Crescent.

  The dinner was the usual affair of its kind, brilliant to look down on from a balcony but dull for the majority of the guests. An English diplomat made a charming speech in which he said all sorts of nice meaningless things about Turkey, and Prince Ali responded in excellent English saying, with equal charm, all sorts of nice meaningless things about Britain.

  After the banquet the Prince was escorted back to the reception rooms. Sir George and his daughter, having been seated near him, were among the first to follow, and Diana was just thinking that she would soon be able to slip away when the royal guest flashed a quick smile at the woman to whom he was talking, broke off the conversation, and strode over to her and her father.

  He bowed to Sir George and murmured affably; “Your name figures so frequently in our financial counsels that I am delighted to have the pleasure of meeting you now.” Then, adjusting his monocle, he turned immediately to Diana. “Permit me to compliment you Miss Duncannon. You are I think, the loveliest woman I have seen during my visit to London.”

  Diana was well aware that her dark eyes beneath long, narrow eyebrows gave her a distinctive beauty, contrasting as they did with her fair complexion and pale gold hair, but it was embarrassing to be told so quite so brazenly. Her glance fell from the haughty, well-marked olive features of the Turkish Prince to his waistline, so narrow that one might almost have suspected him of wearing corsets, and a long cigar that he was holding. Half unconsciously she noticed that for so tall a man his hand was surprisingly small—plump, sensitive, womanish—and that the index finger was distinctly crooked.

  Without waiting for her to reply he turned back to Sir George and went on smoothly in his well-modulated voice which only held the faintest trace of foreign accent; “The round of official engagements makes private arrangements difficult during my short stay, but I should like to see more of you, and a little private party to-night would be a pleasant relaxation to me. Mr. Hazeltinel—Mustapha!”

  The Foreign Office official and the Turkish Equerry hastened up, and although as the Prince addressed the Englishman his words were couched in a form of a request, his tone had all the imperiousness of a command.

  “Would it not be possible for us to go somewhere from here—to the Embassy or the Florida perhaps. Sir George Duncannon and his daughter will, I am sure, honour me by being our guests.”

  Diana could not help feeling just a little flattered that the royal visitor should single her out for his special attention. It was obvious that he wanted to dance with her. He would never have selected a night-club if he were anxious to talk with her father on finance. But the blatant admiration in the Prince’s dark, intelligent eyes warned her that she might be taking on a little more than she could handle and she had already caught an uneasy glance from Sir George so she said quickly:

  “Your Highness is most kind, but I must ask you to excuse me. I already have a party expecting me at the Guards’ Boat Club Dance, so I am leaving almost at once for Maidenhead.”

  The shadow of a frown darkened Prince Ali’s rather heavy features for a second and he passed a plump hand over his thick, smooth, black hair. Then his face lightened and he turned again to Hazeltine.

  “I heard this dance mentioned when I was entertained by the officers to lunch in the mess at Aldershot yesterday. The Club is a charming place with gardens by the river—is it not? Perhaps this evening they would extend their hospitality to myself and my suite?”

  Hazeltine bowed slightly. “I am sure sir, that the officers would be honoured to have you as their guest.”

  “Would you be good enough to arrange the matter please.” Prince Ali gave a little wriggle of his neck above the stiff white collar and glanced again at Diana. He was smiling now and his smile said many things.

  “We shall meet later then,” he announced affably. “The night is fine, so there is every promise of a pleasant evening, and you will be so kind as to show me your beautiful Thames.”

  CHAPTER II

  THE ‘INCIDENT’ AT MAIDENHEAD

  For once the English climate had really favoured Royal Ascot and no more perfect setting could have been found for a dance that night than the Guards’ Boat Club at Maidenhead.

  The lawn and gardens were illuminated by the soft glow of chains of fairy lamps strung from tree to tree. Here and there shadowy patches, where couples might conveniently linger, had been discreetly left unlit, and at the bottom of the gardens the waters of the Thames, rippling only under the prow of an occasional boat seeming to glide out of a land of dreams, flowed gently on their way.

  When Diana arrived the dance was already in full swing. A number had just ended, the crowd was streaming out of the lighted windows on to the lawn or congregating in little groups about the entrance of the ball-room.

  Her father and Frank Hazeltine were with her. Both had considered it their duty to put in an appearance as Prince Ali was com
ing down and, since the banker and the Foreign Office man were often confronted with similar problems regarding policy in the Near East, neither was displeased at the prospect of a talk over a brandy and soda in a quiet corner while the younger people danced.

  Peter Carew, with whom Diana had been going in the first place, had judged the time of her arrival and was waiting in the doorway to meet her. He was a tall fair young man, an ensign still, having only been with his regiment a little over a year. Not overburdened with brains, he possessed charming manners and a delightful personality.

  Handing her a programme, he secured a few dances for himself and led her inside, where she was soon surrounded by a little group of men, most of whom she had met before. Her programme was nearly full when Peter thrust his way back through the press with a short wiry little man of about thirty-five.

  “Diana,” he said. “May I introduce Captain Swithin Destime, the Adjutant of my Battalion? He saw us talking together in the enclosure on Gold Cup Day and when he heard you were coming to-night he was terribly keen to meet you.”

  “That’s perfectly true,” Swithin Destime admitted with a quick smile. “And I’ve been on tenterhooks all the evening because it looked as if you weren’t going to turn up after all. May I have a dance?”

  As Diana handed him her programme she glanced at him again. He had a bluish chin which could obviously have sprouted a passable beard in a week if he had stopped shaving, a dark moustache brushed smartly upwards, a pair of the bluest eyes that she had ever seen, and a thin, hawk-like nose set below a wide forehead and curling black hair. There could be no doubt that he was English, but his quick restless movements and smiling dare-devil eyes, in addition to his name which was obviously a corruption from the French, made her certain that he had quite a bit of Latin blood in him.

  “Number seven—that’s the next,” he said swiftly. “And may I take nine as well? There doesn’t seem much else left does there?”