Chapter XXXI: 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.