On reaching the shores of the Bosphorus I found, as I had anticipated, that I was wanted to disentangle a miserable intrigue of the harem, the kind of work more suited to a private detective than to a man in my unique position. Under any other circumstances I should have declined the task without more ado; as it was, I turned Muzaffir’s difficulty into my opportunity. ‘Listen to me,’ I said to the trembling eunuch, as soon as he had finished confiding his tale to me, ‘I can save you, and I will save you, but only on one condition. And that is, that you procure me a private and confidential audience of the Sultan, and that you use your influence with him to make him grant the request I have to make.’ Muzaffir, who, like all his tribe, was a miser, seemed overjoyed at this cheap method of rewarding me. Of course, he wished to know the object I had in view. ‘I am going to ask the Sultan to employ me on a secret political mission outside the Turkish Empire, a mission from which you have nothing to fear. Your business is to persuade the Sultan to trust me--let that be enough.’ Twist and wriggle as he would, the eunuch found he could get nothing more out of me. He gave in, and his influence over the mind of Abdul Hamid being unbounded, I quickly found myself face to face with the lean, dark, gaunt-eyed Asiatic who styles himself Commander of the Faithful and Shadow of God on earth. Abdul Hamid proved to be in a more suspicious mood than my friend in Paris. As soon as I mentioned the Peace Rescript he interrupted me. ‘I am not going to disarm. I know what the Christian Powers are by this time. They always begin to talk about peace when they are secretly preparing to attack somebody.’ ‘I am afraid your Majesty is right. The question is, what is the real design underlying this particular piece of hypocrisy?’ ‘I know that, too,’ was the unexpected reply. ‘The Russians have decided to turn their attention to China. There they can do all that they want with a hundred thousand men. So it is to their interest to get rid of the burden of a great army which will not be wanted for a generation.’ This was an ingenious idea, but it did not satisfy me, any more than the semi-official one had done. I ventured to object-- ‘If that were all, sire, there would be no occasion for this melodramatic appeal to the other Powers. There is nothing to hinder Russia from reducing her armaments by one-half to-morrow. No one dreams of attacking her. Her army is kept up for offence, not for defence. She is the one Power that could afford to set the example of disbanding, and such an example would carry more weight than any number of professions on paper, however well meant.’ The Sultan appeared struck by this reasoning. ‘Then what do you say is the object behind this rescript?’ he demanded. ‘I do not know. But I undertake to find out if your Majesty will furnish me with the necessary means.’ Abdul Hamid gave me a distrustful glance.