My mission was indeed a difficult one and only by tedious, painstaking
work, observing the life of the city and its character, I succeeded in
isolating the individual who gave me the key to the circumventuous
political life and the government of Constantinople. It took me a
full month of night work to become familiar with the innumerable
demi-mondaines. They were of French, Russian and Circassian birth and
extraction, and were identified with the various Turkish court
officials from the Grand Vizier down to an officer in the
Ganitsharies. This preliminary work is always exhausting, but it is
so necessary on a mission of this kind. One blunder, one step in the
dark, and you are gone. One spends months without any tangible
results, often going on the wrong track. One has to be excruciatingly
circumspect in one's inquiries. To use a hunter's expression, there
is no quarry so wary, sharp-sighted and keen at smelling the wind as a
political demi-mondaine.
In this work Kim was of inestimable value to me. In fact, without him
I would not have succeeded at all. All the households kept by the
Turkish officials and their favorites swarm with negroes of the
various types. A white man has not the slightest chance of finding
the way into their confidences. The universal golden key does not
unloose tongues in such cases in the Orient. But Kim as a member of
the once mighty Zulu nation (he was really a descendant of a prince of
the house of Dingnan) was able, through a mysterious free masonry
still existing among colored races the world over, to obtain most
valuable information.
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