Andrew Soutar's 'Kharduni' 1934

 

Crime-Book Society paperback edition - 1936?

Having bought another ten Crime-Book Society paperbacks over the last couple of months, I have decided to read some of them during January, starting with No. 19 - Andrew Soutar's Kharduni.

This is the second Soutar novel I have read, the first being Night of Horror, No. 8 in The Crime-Book Society's stories (Blog 22 July 2025). A reminder that Andrew Soutar (1879-1941) was born Edward Andrew Stagg in Swindon. He married Elspeth Soutar Swinton in 1907, adopting her second Christian name as his authorial surname.  He wrote pulp adventure stories for magazines and at least 24 of his novels were used as bases for movies - nearly all in the silent era.  His novel writing spanned from 1910 until his death in St. Austell, Cornwall in November 1941. Also a reminder that a Reviewer of his The Hanging Sword quoted Soutar as saying that he wrote mystery novels as a relaxation from the strain of writing long and serious novels. He regarded this mystery work as a tonic! 

Kharduni is certainly a 'mystery work' - very strange and highly improbable! Its very first sentence - The drama began in the lonely house of the mysterious Kharduni - is typical of thriller/mystery writers, but is but a traditional curtain call to a most unusual play. Mrs Sophia Brent, a very beautiful  brunette of about thirty-five, had been widowed two years' earlier, when her husband had been shot by - apparently - a young officer, Harold Stratford, who had been acquainted with the Brents for some considerable time. Found guilty of manslaughter, he was sentenced to fifteen years and was presently in Dartmoor. He had been defended by one of the most promising barristers of the day, Mr. Sydney Setch.  Both Sophia and Setch had been invited down to Kharduni's house on the south Devon coast. They were accompanied by two 'bodyguards',  Mellersh and Bradman.  Arriving at the house, they find sixteen other guests there.

They settle in and are summoned for the first meal. The dining room is at the end of a very long corridor: the oblong dining-room was not large, and the ceiling was rather low-pitched (take note readers)...there was only one door - that by which the guests had entered. Mellersh and Bradman are sent to the car to get a crate of drink.  On their return, they find the corridor in pitch darkness; moreover, instead of a door at the end of it there is a blank wall. Accosting the butler, the latter states that there is no-one in the dining-room, which has been closed for a fortnight and that he has never heard of or seen a Mrs. Brent of Mr. Setch. A great start to a mystery story! Mellersh and Bradman, unable to solve the mystery, return to London - to be shown into the private room of one of the most brilliant servants of the Government. 

He is Mr. Ambrose Cruxton, seemingly just a very clever, astute financier as well as being of more importance to the War Office than all the Members of Parliament put together. So, he is a top notch in the Secret Service; moreover, Mrs. Brent has worked for him as a spy for several years. He makes neither head nor tail of the two men's story but, as [improbable] luck would have it, Kharduni himself is about to pay him a visit. Kharduni was indeed a handsome man...it was easy to see that he was possessed of phenomenal physical strength...his hair was as black as the back of a crow; the complexion was that of the Italian; the large eyes held the lustre one finds in those of a Malay woman, than whom there is no more beautiful woman in the world, despite the darkness of her skin (hang on Soutar, old bean, is that a touch of racism there?) As as aside, as the story unfolded, I kept thinking there was a element of John Buchan's Dominic Medina (The Three Hostages) about him.

The two clever men spar cleverly; the upshot is that Cruxton agrees to go with Kharduni for a little ride and finds himself being driven to the South West, passing Dartmoor, to the latter's eerie home. Here he is kept almost under-house arrest. The pages fly past as the reader is drawn into an increasingly unlikely plot but with an unexpected denouement. It becomes clear that not only is Kharduni determined to get Stratford released from Dartmoor, legally or otherwise, but that he is intent on unmasking the real killer of Sophia Brent's husband. We find out the mystery of how Sophia and Setch 'disappeared', how Cruxton finds himself in their position too, and how tables are turned on the usual who is the hero and who is the villain.

Kharduni's character just strays on the side of believability; Cruxton rarely appears to justify the title of being top-notch; and the finale - at sea in the English Channel - needs to be read with a large Scotch or G & T. to hand. We have sympathy with old Cruxton when, near the end, he says to Kharduni: I shall always regard you as an amazing man... It's a wonder he didn't try to recruit him for the Secret Service.