by Tim Symonds
‘But why the disguise?’ I asked. ‘It was a formidable performance even by your standards!’
I knew from long experience Holmes was a master of the false appearance. ‘A good many of the criminal classes begin to know me,’ he told me early in our friendship, ‘especially since you took to publishing some of my cases. I can only go on the war-path under some simple disguise.’
Disguising a face with make-up for the theatre or other in-door setting is far from difficult. It was Holmes’s mastery in ordinary daylight which marked him out as exceptional. As he remarked, ‘Off the stage you can’t get by with a celluloid nose or a tie-on beard.’ It was amazing to see how with a little paste he could alter the shape of the nose and the whole character of his face. His real genius lay not solely in the use of wigs and make-up but in supporting that skill with a suitable manner and voice. At least twice he fooled me (a medical doctor) with his workhouse cough, playing an impoverished old man.
He could probably impersonate a minister of the Church of England better than most genuine ministers except that under English Law it was a criminal offence. Dressing as a minister of a cult different from the official religion of the State, such as his amiable and simple-minded Nonconformist clergyman, was not.
‘But knowing how to find me,’ I continued. ‘How...?’
‘Cathay is not like Africa,’ came my comrade’s response. ‘Henry Morton Stanley was directed village by village to his encounter with Dr. Livingstone at Lake Tanganyika. But here in these turbulent and suspicious regions no local would supply an outsider with information, even though it was clear to me everyone in the whole of the northern region, including St. Petersburg’s and Berlin’s spies, knew exactly where you were and precisely what you’re up to. If I had not assumed the disguise of a Chinese fortune-teller I would have found it impossible to track you down. The locals would deliberately attempt to mislead me, such is their contempt for us long-noses. When I disguised myself and told them I planned to charge you 50 taels to tell you ‘your present lustrum is not a fortunate one but it has nearly expired and better days are at hand’, they split their sides laughing at my little joke. ‘Go to that railway station, he’ll soon be there,’ they said.’
He stood up.
‘From what you tell me, both our missions are urgent. Yours requires another three or four weeks. Mine calls for me to get to the Forbidden City as fast as I can. We can join up there. By then I shall have got my feet firmly under the table.’
***
I went to my room and opened the package. It contained my orders from Yuán. From Kashgar I was to head towards the Yili Garrison in Xinjiang Province, keeping an eye open for bandits. After that, I was to work my way to the Manchu military garrison camps at Ningguta in the Hurka River valley where I would meet up with the General and Staff officers. Ningguta was once guarded by the six grandsons of Möngke Temür. These memories mattered, it seemed. At least to the ruling Manchu.
At lunchtime I walked to Mohammedan City, the old part of Kashgar, the location of the Chinese Civil Administration. With General Yuán’s letter of introduction I obtained the permits needed to continue my journey.
***
Later that evening I went to Holmes’s room. He had finished packing. His hand reached into a cavernous pocket of the Poshteen Long Coat to retrieve several wooden disks which he placed in a pile on a table.
He jabbed at the disks.
‘Take a close look, Watson,’ he said, as jubilant as Little Jack Horner pulling out a plum.
The discs were beautifully crafted from alder, smooth and lacquered, the largest about 6 inches in diameter. Engraved around its circumference were the letters A to Z. The other disks were in descending order of size. Instead of letters, double-digit numerals were cut into their outside edges, from 01 and 02 up to 99 and a double-zero.
‘What are they for?’ I enquired.
Holmes took the largest disk and began slotting the others one on top of the other, up to the smallest disk etched with the final run of numbers.
‘A machine to produce an unbreakable cipher,’ came the gleeful reply.
His index finger began to spin the disks.
‘I’ve not been wasting my time on my bee-farm, I can assure you, my friend. Early this year the Mexican Army - for a substantial fee, please note - asked me to develop a mechanical coding machine which even the most brilliant mathematician would be unable to break, not even one with all the resources of their much-feared neighbour, ‘the Giant to the North’.’
He pointed.
‘This is it.’
He had ensured complete secrecy by commissioning different engravers unknown to each other.
‘There are only two complete wheels in the world right now, this one and the other I have lodged with my brother Mycroft.’
He looked up, his eyes aglow with satisfaction.
‘I challenge anyone alive to break the ciphered messages we concoct using this device.’
‘It’s certainly a beautiful object, Holmes,’ I said warily, ‘but how does it work?’
‘It uses numbers to represent one letter.’
‘But haven’t such ciphers have been around for thousands of years?’
‘They have - but in seconds I can set this for over 450,000 unique key codes.’
He pushed the assembled device towards me.
‘Those rotating disks convert any letter of the alphabet on the lowest disk into double-digit numbers on the upper discs, based on an agreed key. Once I let Mycroft know the key, any sequence of numbers in the message will quickly point to ordinary letters of the alphabet on his wheel. It’s completely impossible without this exact machine and whichever key we choose each time for anyone to decipher a message.’
***
Holmes left Kashgar before I awoke, taking the direct road to Peking. I would begin a zig-zag route to the Capital via the garrisons. We would meet up in about a month’s time. At the heart of the Forbidden City.
‘By then,’ I told him, ‘human blood-hound that you are, I expect you to have sniffed out any so-called plot against the Kuang-hsü Emperor or Cixi.’
Over breakfast, Macartney briefed me on my journey ahead.
‘The whole of the north of China is a power vacuum. Marauding bands of up to 250 Chinese and Mongol brigands roam far and wide, sometimes stopping for a few hours, other times only for a few minutes to avoid attack by the authorities. In many cases the brigands are enlisted soldiers who desert with their arms and ammunition after being left without food or pay for many months.’
‘And what if I’m captured?’ I asked.
‘The food won’t be good. They won’t kill you, you’re worth much too much alive. The going rate to ransom a European is 150 rifles, 50 automatic pistols, 4 machine-guns and 1000 British pounds. Americans cost more.’
I asked Macartney why he chose to stay in the back of beyond. He laughed. ‘Needs must,’ he replied. ‘You get used to it. It isn’t so bad. The town wasn’t always so derided. My wife and I spend our evenings reading about its past. There has been a rich history of over 2,000 years. It’s China’s version of Timbuktu. Art, the sciences, music and literature flourished. Hundreds of world-renowned Uyghur scholars emerged. Thousands of valuable books were written.’
Chapter VI
I Leave Kashgar
November 6. Kashgar is now well behind me. A stream we are following disappears and reappears, part of its course being below the ground. The weather is turning. The mules and horses are finding the long uphill gradients at these heights very trying. I spent last night at a settlement even more forsaken than Kashgar. I couldn’t even discover its name. At one time it was a gateway to the Silk Road, then travellers switched to another route and the town was abandoned. The small garrison is all that’s left of human habitation, guarding against any unlike
ly sudden attack from the western barbarians. A two-handed pole weapon would be better than the weapons they possess.
We camped in a lonely spot by a small river. The mafoo (syce) tells me we are being watched. One of the hired donkeys carries 900 taels of silver, a worthwhile amount to commandeer. Two mounted men came over the crest of the hill, looked down at us, and, when we sent a boy to investigate, disappeared again.
I have taken to carrying my Webley-Pryse revolver under my jacket. I regret not employing a half-dozen armed convoy-bodyguards for this 24 mile stretch. I plan to take the donkeyman’s advice and strike camp in the dark to gain a mile or two on any miscreant before day-break.
Something Holmes said has left me deflated. I keep wondering why General Yuán didn’t tell me he had first gone to meet Holmes on the bee-farm. It seems despite Sir Edward Grey’s assurances I was an after-thought after all.
November8. For a week I have been thrown together with a party of other travellers. We passed through wild mountainous country covered with dense scrub and bamboo, uninhabited except for a few visiting wood-cutters. The only fuel is yak-dung purchased from a nomad encampment. All the cooking has to be done in the open and everything tastes of the smoke from the abominable stuff.
Last night we pitched tents in a sheltered spot at 13,900 feet, some 1700 feet below a knife-edge pass. A penetrating cold wind blew non-stop. The traffic over the pass is mostly carried on by coolies bearing long bamboo baskets on their backs, at the hire of traders in pelts, pine seeds, ginseng and horses from the northeast. A passing mafoo on a shaggy pony sold me a Mongolian cap, a huge thing of red flannel, wadded and trimmed with fur, with ear-flaps which can be tied under the chin. The cap has already proved of great value.
I have covered 519 miles in thirty-six stages since Kashgar. The sooner I reach some kind of place with four walls and a roof and a good fire for warmth and cooking, the better. In my Afghan days we had a saying, ‘the best bivouac is not equal to the worst billet’. Things are not helped by my latest donkeyman’s fondness for short cuts worn down by the feet and the rains of centuries, bridle paths which defy my compass bearings and more often than not result in unnecessary and intensely arduous hours of travel.
We are passed by British-Indian merchants constantly on the move from the Province of Xinjiang over the Himalaya and back, their horse caravans laden in the one direction with Indian spices and Manchester cotton prints, and in the other with Turkestan merchandise such as gold, jade, khotan carpets, Kirghiz felts, and above all a narcotic extracted from the hemp plant Cannabis sativa, known locally as Nasha but to Europeans as Hashish. For a few pence a time, the smugglers provide any master with a near-perfect communication system across these vast and difficult regions. The traders are as eager as I to avoid interception by bandits or opportunistic Chinese authorities.
Despite another arduous 12-hour day on foot I’m having difficulty sleeping, possibly because of the high altitude.
November 9. After-thought in Yuán’s mind or not, I am taking my commission seriously. I’ve started mapping outlying garrisons and their settings at 4 inches to 1 English mile, identifying approaches as ‘fordable’, ‘wall-broken scaleable’, ‘buttress cracked’, ‘wall about 10 feet high 3 feet thick’, ‘buildings suitable for billets’& c.
Roads. Even in such a remote region as this there once existed great imperial highways, arteries of Empire paved with stone and bordered with trees. Now badly neglected, the ruins of the ancient tracks present serious impediments to travel. For difficult stretches the muleteer takes on a local horseman to act as road finder. Farmers have turned long stretches of highway into the narrowest of strips by an extended system of banks and ditches. If heavy summer rains wash away a part of the farm into the strip, the farmer digs his land out again, a process which, combined with natural drainage and incessant dust-storms, has resulted in transforming the road into a canal. At the coldest time of the year these arteries freeze, making it easier to move along, like canals in Amsterdam.
I shall put it to General Yuán the New Army could gain the affection of the people if it put these former roads into good repair, to his own advantage if military demands arise.
November 14. A two-mile tramp has brought us in view of a torrent below. On steep cliffs opposite, clinging to bare, wild, rocky moraines, perches an isolated temple. Behind and to our left is a great mountain where thunderstorms are gathering. We face a descent of 1500 feet to the river-bank. Chocolate-brown waters passes under the bridge, eddying and swirling in great whirlpools. Flooded by rain far upstream, the river roars on its way, making the mules difficult to hold. This mighty river with a course of over 2,000 miles is apparently crossed only by the one bridge, a suspension bridge with boards resting on two pairs of six chains. From a military perspective, its principal virtue lies in the ability of just a handful of men to hold up an army - and break the chains if certain defeat looms.
I have been mapping every step of the way up hill and down dale using a Service Prismatic oil-filled compass. The half-a-crown boiling-point thermometer, so useful for gauging altitude, has disappeared, possibly stolen. I have to make a good fist at estimating altitudes, partly by triangulation when unobserved, or (especially in suspicious company) by noting the boiling point of water for our tea. By this method I reckoned the height of one pass to be 15,600 feet, almost three hundred feet higher than estimated by a trigonometrical survey some fifty years earlier. Unfortunately my last bottle of methylated spirits fell from a mule and broke. I shall have to make do with candles to heat water.
I am recording the local names of rivers when I can discover them, not made easy by the fact big rivers in China, except the Yellow River, have different names as they pass through different districts. The name on a chart may be unrecognisable to the local population. Small rivers have a different name in each village they pass.
Today I took a small boat and went fishing. The waters were full of shih-hua fish. They taste fresh and delicious, difficult to describe in words.
November 17. Spent much of the day inspecting a trio of garrisons along the length of a strategic all-weather pass. At 10am I inspected the first fort. After lunch I was conducted with proper ceremonial to the site of my second inspection, the middle fort. The roll was called, the men answered their names, and I expressed my same satisfaction at the condition of the post. After a delay for tea, I was transported to the westernmost fort. Returning to my encampment I have grown the more certain the men at the three forts did not just look alike, they were the exact men from the first fort hurriedly transported to the second and onward to the third. Otherwise there must be three entirely different men with the exact same scar on their cheek as though they’d all been members of a Prussian duelling club. Padding out three forts this way enables the officers to fleece their government for supplies and money for triple the true number of men under their command.
I have started jotting notes on preparation needed for battles to come between any outside Powers and the Middle Kingdom. The first step must be to build a proper corps of stretcher and dooly bearers for the carriage of sick and wounded from the battle fields. The equivalent was singularly lacking around my position during the Battle of Maiwand. If my bearer Murray had not been a reliable - and strong - companion, the bullet from an Afghan Jezzail which struck me would have done for me from exsanguination alone.
Nationally there are about 200,000 enrolled bannermen and some further thousands in the Peking gendarmerie. Many of them have courage but there is no tradition to render them fruitful. No martial spirit. No disgrace for the coward. No honour for the valiant. Devising training for these souls is not going to be easy. Heaven help them if they come up against a modern army of 10,000 men, even the Russian infantry.
Banner garrisons were designed as internal Manchu colonies responsive only to Peking’s commands, strategically-dotted to forestall the emergence of regional armed satrapi
es. Matchlock guns had been distributed among the garrisons I inspected three weeks ago. Each soldier stored his ration of gunpowder in a small bamboo case strapped to his torso, on the grounds this permitted easy reach for reloading. The habit persisted even after I remonstrated on my visit. My fears were quickly justified. When to demonstrate their prowess the men threw themselves to the ground to aim, their matches set fire to the packages of gunpowder strapped to the waists and chests of the cotton-padded uniforms. Three of them burned to death before our eyes.
Another practice needs urgent attention. It has been the norm in the less-trusted non-bannerman units to keep artillery and rifles in a locked arsenal. The soldier selects his weapon anew every time its use is called for. Drills consist of one soldier after another lining up and firing a single shot. The soldiers often do not know how to load or fire the weapons issued to them on any particular day, therefore they fail to adjust to the peculiarities of individual weapon.
November 20. We have halted for the night under the shadow of a great mass of grey rock. Nearby is an unnamed village of about 100 families. The ‘dibao’ - headman - is a woman. The villagers’ principal income comes from growing vegetables and fruits, and grains, especially rice and barley, and from mercury sulphide mines. I plan to purchase a supply of pomegranates, grapes, turnips and rice.
At sun-up I asked for permission to photograph the dibao and her private chaplains, amidst their butter-lamps and cups of wine.
A Japanese archaeologist-cum-spy camped nearby presented me with a wide-brimmed hat made of bamboo plait. It looked like the top of an enormous white mushroom. The light frame inside fits around the brow, leaving a space of about one-and-a-half inches between the head and the hat for the free circulation of air. It’s proving quite the most perfect travelling hat I’ve ever owned, even better than the red-flannel Mongolian cap.
