Search for a Sultan

Manning Coles

Description

There may be a grandson of the Sultan living. If so, Hambledon must  find  him. So begins Tommy Hambledon's craziest adventure...

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Thriller
• Fiction
• Espionage
• Thrillers

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 12 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774641057
• Langue: English

Extrait

Search for a Sultan
by Manning Coles

First published in 1961
This edition published by Rare Treasures
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.Search for a Sultan
SEARCH FOR A SULTAN





by Manning Coles

Cast
ACHMED HUSSEIN BIN HAROUN-AL-RASCHID, Prince of Qathusn.
LADY ROSS-CROCKDALE, traveller and journalist.
HASSAN, Prince Achmed’s servant.
THOMAS ELPHINSTONE HAMBLEDON.
CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT BAGSHOTT of Scotland Yard.
SULMAN BIN BOUKHBA, one time Attaché to the Qathusian Embassy in London.
THE QATHUSIAN AMBASSADORS in London and Paris.
SAMPIERO, a Corsican, ex-servant of Prince Achmed.
LA CIGALE (The Grasshopper)—a Sicilian gangster.
LA ROSE BLEUE (The Blue Rose)—a Spanish gangster.
ANTOINE LETORD, Chief Superintendent of the
MONSIEUR AND MADAME GASTON LEBOUCHON, Café proprietors.
MADAME DuBois, mother of Madame Lebouchon.
PROFESSOR DONKELSTEIN and his Elephantine Ballet.
INSPECTOR “TINY” of the French Police, a stout friend of Hambledon.
EMIR ABDUL, leader of the Extremist Party of Qathusn, in exile in Tunisia
WILLIAM FORGAN & ALEXANDER CAMPBELL, model makers of Clerkenwell Road, London.
STEPHANOPOULOS, a Greek, and his two minions.
SAYED, a young French Arab.
YASMIN, a young Arab woman.
HIS MAJESTY THE SULTAN OF QATHUSN.
Police, Civil Servants, Embassy Officials, Arabs, etc.
Scenes: London, Paris, Normandy, Ville D’Avray, Lake Geneva, Tunis, Kairouan.
Time: The present.





Chapter I. Embassy Reception
SOME two thousand years ago the people of Qathusn, in common with most of their neighbours in the Middle East, worshipped the sun, offering up to him on the longest day of the year countless sheep, cattle, virgins and other hapless livestock, on vast bonfires which the Solar God—if deigning to accept their sacrifice—ignited himself (though not without the help of numerous quartz crystals cunningly concealed among the faggots by the High Priests).
Today, the Qathusians are no longer sun-worshippers (though Prince Achmed, heir to the throne, may frequently be seen offering his own torso up to the Solar Deity on the beaches of Cannes and the Venice Lido) but they still celebrate the 2ist of June as their national day.
In Qathusn itself this is observed with twenty-four hours of feasting and fireworks, but abroad the manifestations are more modest. In London, for example, a cocktail party at the Embassy is all that Qathusn’s accredited representative to the Court of St. James permits himself, and between 6 and 8 p.m. he receives those favoured with the requisite gilt-edged invitation card at a Kensington house, which, by virtue of the coat of arms over the door and a gaily striped flag on the roof, has ceased to be a part of the Royal Borough and become instead a corner of Qathusn in a foreign field.
Here, in spite of the flag and coat of arms, the atmosphere is not very Qathusian. As a function indeed, Qathusn’s reception is depressingly similar to all other minor diplomatic entertainments, which is not surprising since the same caterers supply the same waiters to serve the same sort of drinks and canapes at every one of them.
In one respect, however, the Qathusian cocktail party does differ from other such affairs—it is distinctly colourful. Although of course the European guests mostly come in dark suits and formal dresses, always excepting the occasional Ambassador, on his way to a levee, whose full Court Dress (knee breeches, silk stockings, lace jabots, Orders and all) adds an 13th Century touch to the proceedings, the African and Asian visitors have no such inhibitions. Some of them, it is true, try to show their emancipation from the bonds of any formality, eastern or western, by turning up in sweatshirts and jeans, but the majority of them are clad in the gorgeous raiments of their own colour-loving homelands.
Richly embroidered robes, saris, and burnouses, with feathered headdresses, jewelled turbans and an occasional turkey red fez to match, give an air of carnival gaiety to what would otherwise be a distinctly dull gathering, and on the occasion with which this story is concerned, a further touch of splendour was added by the costume of a picturesque figure who has already been mentioned, the son of the reigning Sultan. To students of contemporary social documents, such as gossip columns, or fashion journals, Achmed, Most August Prince of Peoples, the Chosen of the Great Ones, The Descendant of Royal Blood, Brilliant by the Most Conspicuous Virtues, Emir, Shaikh, Dey and Bey of the Mamlekilite Kingdom of Qathusn, (just to give him a few of his titles) needs of course no introduction. Monte Carlo, Ascot, Longchamps, Deauville, Nice (for the Carnival), Cowes (for the sailing), Cowdray (for the polo)—all these and many other fashionable resorts and occasions might exist without him (though he rarely gives them the opportunity) but they would be distinctly less colourful, not to say glamorous.
For Prince Achmed never makes the mistake of cloaking his oriental resplendence in drab European clothing. On the contrary, he glories in demonstrating his direct descent from Haroun al Raschid, the Caliph of Bagdad, by appearing in costumes which even that exotic character from the Arabian Nights might have envied. And at this particular reception he excelled himself.
His silken gown. was so woven as to give it the appearance of chased gold, and it fell loosely about his shoulders, to reveal around his neck a sort of gorget richly set with sapphires and diamonds; the handle and the sheath of his Turkish scimitar were also of gold and decorated with the same jewels, but it was unquestionably his turban which attracted the most attention. Not because it was made up of a remarkable amount of fine lawn, nor even because of its immense height; but because of the great ruby which was its sole decoration, a jewel as big as the legendary auk’s egg of the Thousand and One Nights.
Many a female heart fluttered as this glamorous figure climbed the broad staircase of the Embassy’s main reception room, to join the Qathusn Ambassador for the Royal toast; and many a memory, male as well as female, was later cudgelled to recall the least detail of his proud ascent.
For at that moment the assembled guests were in fact witnessing the last but one conscious action which the Prince of Qathusn would ever perform. His last was to drain his glass to the health of his father the Sultan.
He then fell headlong to the foot of the grand staircase, and was already dead before the nearest bystanders could reach him. There was a horrified silence, an unnatural pause, before anybody made a sound; and then, as all stood gazing at the crumpled body lying there like some exotic bird slain on the wing, a woman spoke:
“Blimey!” she said, “they’ve done him in!”
“What do you know about Qathusn?” asked Hambledon’s Chief the next morning as Tommy arrived in answer to an urgent summons from the headquarters of M.I.5.
“Is it Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?” he enquired cautiously.
“Your flippant response is more apposite than you intend,” said the Junior Assistant Secretary to the Foreign Office who was also present. “Qathusn was, until recently, mere animal and vegetable—a poor desert country with sparse pasture for a few half-starved sheep. Just after the war, however it became Mineral, with a capital `M’. Oil was in fact discovered there, oil of good quality, in large quantity, and at that moment Qathusn ceased to be an insignificant, though probably happy, strip of sand and cactus, and became a storm centre of Middle-Eastern politics.”
“I see,” said Tommy vaguely, and would like to have added “so what?”
“We are at present,” went on the Foreign Office man crisply, “in. special treaty relations with Qathusn, which is an independent Arab Sultanate with pro-Western sympathies.”
“We provide an Advisor, run the Post Office and Telegraph Service, a British-American firm exploits the oil, and the Sultan does everything else,” explained Tommy’s Chief.
“Ah—the Sultan,” said Tommy, remembering dimly. “Isn’t he rather a playboy?”
“No, that’s his son,” said the other. “Or rather was …”
“Was?” queried Hambledon.
“Prince Achmed died suddenly last night at a Reception in the Qathusian Embassy here,” said the Assistant Secretary—
“… and has put us all into a pretty pickle,” added the M.I.5 Chief.
“I—I’m sorry,” said Tommy vaguely, wishing he knew what they were talking about.
“No doubt,” snapped the F.O. man. “But you are also singularly ill-informed, as it seems to me. I will therefore explain why we are in ‘a pickle’ as my colleague expresses it. Now that the Sultan’s son is dead, the next heir to the throne will be his nephew, the Emir Abdul.”
“And Abdul is leader of the Ultra-Extremist Party,” put in Tommy’s chief, seeing that he was still at sea, “whose expressed intention it is to nationalise the oil wells and ally Qathusn with the United Arab Republic as soon as he gets the chance.”
“Which means,” said the representative from the Foreign Office, summing up, “that when the Sultan, who is over eighty, dies, we shall not only be thrown out of Qathusn lock, stock and barrel, and the British-American capital which has been sunk in developing the oil fields, lost, but also that we shall have a rabid enemy at the very gates of Aden, who may well succeed in alienating the whole of the Trucial Coast and all the other oil States in the Gulf.”
“I see,” muttered Hambledon wondering how he personally could help to avert this calamity.
“There seems to be just one faint hope,” the other went on. “Your Chief here has received an extraordinary message from Chief Superintendent Bagshott of Scotland Yard which suggests that