“Yessir,” Charles the Rodent said.
“For now”—Pin scribbled a note on a sheet of foolscap, folded it, and passed it to Charles—“you know where to find the Twopenny Yob?”
“ ’Is digs is off Bensby Street.”
“Ah, yes, Barnesbury Street it is. Go and find him and give him this note.”
“Yessir,” Charles said, stuffing the note into the pocket of his tattered jacket.
“Very good.” Low reached into his pocket, pulled out a small cloth purse, and extracted a few coins. “Here’s a week’s wages for you and your boys. Be off with you now!”
The Twopenny Yob appeared at the warehouse about two hours later. “I wish you’d send your notes by someone that looks a mite more respectable,” he said. “You never know just whom I might be entertaining. I hope this is important, ’cause you pulled me away from what could be a promising evening with the pasteboards. I found me a mark from Newcastle who thinks he’s hot stuff, and I was aiming to cool him down five or ten pounds’ worth.”
“Have you ever been to India?” asked Pin Dok Low.
“Naow,” the Yob answered, stretching out the vowel until it sounded like a complaining tomcat. “What on this earth would I ever want to go to India for? I went to Paris once; it was raining. I might go back sometime when I hear the rain has stopped. I went to New York once. I was working the ocean liners. Nothing to do but play cards for upwards of three weeks. Bridge, poker, and euchre—the Americans like euchre. A man can make an honest living on the ocean liners, if he knows how to cold-stack a deck and can do a convincing second deal. On this one crossing on the Teutonic the purser was starting to give me the eye, so I got off at New York to wait for the next ship, whichever it might be. Got into a friendly poker game on the Bowery, and narrowly avoided getting shot. Probably won’t go back to New York. But India? I never considered India. I never intend to consider India. What has India got that I might want?”
Pin waited patiently for the Yob to stop talking. “Pack,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Professor Moriarty and a companion just left for Calcutta. The gold is shortly to be shipped out of Calcutta. It could be a coincidence. I don’t believe in coincidences, do you?”
“I’m with you there, Pin, but just what do you want me to do about it?”
“Does Professor Moriarty know what you look like?”
“Well, I’ve never met him formally, but with the professor you never know.”
“We’ll take the chance,” Pin said. “I want you to catch up to him and stay with him. Stalk him like you would a dangerous animal. Observe his every move; read his every thought. At the same time, I want you to remain invisible to him, and keep from him our interest in his whereabouts and his doings.” He tapped his finger on the desk. “You won’t even come close to this ideal, but approach it as nearly as possible. With an emphasis on not letting him know of our interest.”
“I see,” said the Twopenny Yob.
“Keep me informed of your progress by telegraph. Once you have established where he is, where he is going, and what he is doing, let me know and I will send someone to meet you.”
“Oh? For what purpose?”
“All in all, I think it might be wise to alter our plan in one respect. Rather than use the professor as a foil, I think we should find out what his plans are, and, if they conflict with ours, have him eliminated. Perhaps even if they don’t conflict with ours, it might be simpler.”
“Do we not need the agreement of the others for such a move?” the Yob suggested.
“I will call a meeting. But if any disagree, I will be very curious as to why. You have no problem with eliminating Professor Moriarty, I assume?”
The Twopenny Yob nodded calmly, as though Pin had just suggested stepping on a bug. “I wouldn’t want to attempt it myself,” he said. “But as I’m just to catch up to him and follow him, you can do what you think best.”
“Thank you,” Pin Dok Low said, with a slight bow. “And now you’d best be on your way.”
“And just how am I to catch up with him?”
“He and his companion just took the Continental Express to Dover. They’re planning to cross the Channel tomorrow morning. We will hire a special, which should get you to Dover sometime late tonight. With luck, you’ll be on the same ferry.”
“I’ll pack,” the Yob said. “Give me an hour.”
“I’ll see about hiring the special. Meet me at Victoria Station. You will need all your wits if you are to accomplish anything.”
“I’ll be sure to bring them along,” said the Twopenny Yob.
SIX
GOVERNMENT HOUSE
When ’Omer smote ’is bloomin’ lyre,
’E’d ’eard men sing by land and sea;
An’ what ’e thought ’e might require,
’E went an’ took—the same as me!
—Rudyard Kipling
When the red and white carriage carrying Brigadier General Sir Edward Basilberg St. Yves, I.C., and his daughter suddenly pulled to a stop, in the middle of Kalutala Street, right past the Temple of the Seven Winds, St. Yves hitched his dress sword around to a more comfortable position, put his cocked hat carefully beside him on the seat of the coach, lowered the window, and stuck his head out as far as dignity would allow. “Blast and d-damnation,” he said after a few moments, withdrawing his head back into the carriage.
Margaret St. Yves attempted to look shocked. “Father!” she said sternly, suppressing an urge to giggle.
“It’s cows, Peg,” he said. “It’s always b-bally cows.”
“Cows?”
“In the road,” he explained, tapping on the window glass with his knuckle. “Just standing there in the middle of the b-bally road, with no interest in moving in any direction, doing their b-bally bovine-headed b-best to make us late for the viceroy’s dinner.”
“Really?” Margaret considered. “Do you suppose they’re afraid we’re going to eat one of their relatives?”
“There isn’t enough beef on any of these scrawny creatures to be worth eating,” St. Yves said. “Although I suppose if you b-boiled one for long enough you’d get some sort of stew.”
“Well, then,” Margaret suggested, “perhaps they’re trying to save us from having to listen to the viceroy’s speech. If we arrive late enough, perhaps his speech will be over.”
“No chance of that, I’m afraid,” St. Yves said, patting his daughter on the shoulder. This was as close to a show of affection as the general allowed himself.
“Oh, dear,” Peg said, letting her eyes go round. It made her look winsome and innocent, and when she was sixteen she had practiced it in front of her looking glass. “Is Sir George going to be aiming his speech at us?”
“Probably at least a small part of it,” St. Yves told her. “This burra khana is being held, at least partly, for the officers of the Duke of Moncreith’s Own, so it’s not likely that he’ll start without us.”
“Burra khana?” Margaret asked.
“Banquet or b-big feast, or something of the sort.”
“Yes, I know what it means. I’ve learned a little Hindustani, you know.”
“Yes,” St. Yves said, patting his daughter on the knee. “Quite a lot, apparently. And I do admire you for it. You’ve learned more about Indian customs and, er, that sort of thing in the past two years than I’ve picked up in the five years I’ve been here. But I will say that staying up-country with me since you arrived in India has saved you from learning about some of the more unsavory sides of Anglo-Indian life.”
“Like banquets and balls and fetes and the like?” Margaret asked, smiling.
“Exactly,” her father agreed. “Damn nuisances. Overdressed people stuffing themselves with indigestible food and making conversation about matters in which they’re not interested or know nothing whatever about.”
“Yes, Father,” Margaret agreed. “Thank you for saving me from that.”
He looked at her
suspiciously, but she smiled sweetly at him and turned to peer out the window.
The three cows that had been standing in the road with their heads together, as though plotting the overthrow of some bovine autocracy, moved off in single file, in search of greener roadways. The carriage gave a jerk, and another. St. Yves pushed his nose up against the window glass. “Ah! We seem to be moving,” he said.
“Well,” Peg said, holding firmly onto the leather handstrap, “I suppose up-and-down is a form of motion.”
Brigadier General Sir Edward Basilberg St. Yves, I.C., commanding officer of the Duke of Moncreith’s Own Highland Lancers, lately returned from suppressing minor rebellions in Assam and Bhutan, sank, or rather bounced, back into the unyielding leather of his seat. Why, he wondered, was it so bally difficult to have a talk—a real man-to-ah-woman talk—with his own daughter? There were things that a parent was supposed to say to his child—that a father was supposed to say to his daughter—and St. Yves had managed to avoid saying most of them. But over the past two years, since Margaret had come out from England to join him in India, the feeling had been growing on him that something must be said. He might, for instance, say, “Peg, m’dear, we’ll be going back to England shortly. I think I shall open the house in London. Retire my commission. What would you think of that? What would you like to do, that is, with yourself, I mean?”
Or then again, no beating about the bush. Perhaps the more direct approach: “Peg, m’dear, you’re eighteen years old now. Don’t you think it’s time you considered getting married?”
He might say that, but he couldn’t even imagine the words coming from his mouth. Then again he might say to his beautiful, blond, gray-eyed daughter, “Peg, every young unmarried officer in my command is under your spell. I do wish you would do something about it.”
But then, could he bring himself to say that, she might well answer, “But, Daddy, what would you have me do?” And he would have no reply, since, as far as he could see, she was not casting any spell beyond bland indifference to the lot of them.
“M’dear,” he said.
She turned in her seat to face him. “Yes, Father?”
“What do you think . . . you know . . . I mean, as a father . . .” He could feel himself getting red in the face. Why should talking seriously to his beloved daughter be worse than facing a board of inquiry from the War Department? He didn’t know, but there it was. “That is, d-dash it all, how do you think I, as a father, am doing? That is, with you, as a . . . er . . . daughter?”
Seeing by his expression that he was in earnest and a humorous response wouldn’t suffice, Margaret thought about it seriously for a long moment. That was her way: Humor sprang to her lips unbidden, but when a serious reply was required, a serious reply was forthcoming. Sometimes all too serious.
“I haven’t had much experience, you know, with other fathers,” she told him, patting his knee gently. “But from what I can tell, you’re right up there, bung-ho, a top-drawer dad.”
“Is that good?” he asked.
“The best,” she assured him, and leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
“Well,” he said, with a feeling that he’d accomplished something, although he couldn’t have said what. “Glad to hear it. I do my b-best, you know.”
“I know.” Margaret adjusted the bodice of the green satin dress she was wearing, and straightened the pink silk flowers that decorated her shoulder. Then she took a small hand mirror from her purse and carefully examined her face. “I just wish we’d arrived in Calcutta a week earlier, so I would have had time to go to the dressmaker’s before this evening. I’ll probably be the only woman there in last year’s dress.”
“M’dear,” St. Yves said, “there won’t be a man in the room who won’t think you’re the most b-beautiful woman for ten leagues in any direction. And they’ll be right.”
Margaret laughed. “Thank you, dear Father,” she said. “But you must surely know that women don’t dress to please men; they dress to impress or annoy other women.”
The carriage pulled up in front of Government House, a massive hundred-year-old building in classical Anglo-Roman style, somewhat grander than the average palace; the sort of structure that the British nobility back home had been building as country houses through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
A native footman standing by the oversized front entrance popped over to the carriage, popped the carriage door open, and popped the steps into place. St. Yves adjusted his dress sword and his jacket, tucked his hat carefully under his arm, and descended from the carriage before helping his daughter down onto the wide green carpet that had been laid from the curb to the large double doors.
The majordomo, who awaited them at the entrance, was a splendid personage from his ornate gold-laced tan turban and short, thick, black beard to his long, thin, pointed-toed shiny black shoes. Over his puffy tan pantaloons he wore a green and white dress jacket with oversized gold buttons and a pair of tails trailing almost down to his ankles. “I greet you with much gladness, General sahib,” he said, eyeing St. Yves’s uniform. “Welcome to Government House. The viceroy would speak with you ever so briefly before the dinner gong is struck.”
“The viceroy wants to see us?”
“That is so.” The majordomo gestured and a short, dark footman detached himself from a line of waiting footmen and trotted over. The majordomo whispered something in the footman’s ear.
“Pliz to follow me,” the footman said, making a small but expressive come-along gesture with his right hand.
The footman trotted confidently ahead, and they followed in his wake. “Well!” Margaret said. “Why does Sir George want to see you?”
“Haven’t the slightest,” St. Yves told her. “We’ll know soon enough.”
Margaret hitched the skirt of her dress up slightly to negotiate the steps of the wide marble staircase. “It will be quite a conversation-stopper when we’re back in England,” she said. “I can say, ‘Shortly before I left India I was at Government House and the viceroy told me—in confidence, of course’—oops!”
“Oops?”
“I almost tripped. Do you suppose, Father, that you could get Sir George to tell me something in confidence? Some slight, unimportant thing of little consequence?”
“You must ask him,” St. Yves said. “I’m certain he will oblige.”
“Pliz to come this way,” the footman said at the top of the staircase, pointing down a long corridor to the left with dark wood doors evenly spaced along the green walls. He promptly trotted off in the direction of his pointing finger.
“You were at Boxley with him?” Margaret asked.
St. Yves looked at his daughter. “B-Broxley. Yes, sort of. He was three years ahead of me.”
“So you weren’t close?”
“No, that’s so.”
“But you call him ‘Messy.’ ”
“That’s so. And he calls me ‘Tubs.’ But we weren’t close.”
“Tubs?”
“Yes,” St. Yves said, looking slightly embarrassed. “I wasn’t always as, ah, slender as I am now.”
“I see,” his daughter said, having the wisdom not to laugh, or even smile.
The doors along the corridor had small brass plates with names on them: “Mr. Ffaulks,” read one; “Mr. Abernatty,” the next; “Sir Toby Bentham,” after that, and across from them one that said “Customs,” and one that said “Writers,” and then an unmarked one, in front of which the footman stopped.
He knocked on the door, three precise knocks, and then pushed it open. “Pliz,” he said, standing aside for them to enter.
The room was a good-sized library, with walls full of books, a long table down the center, a small desk at the far end, a pair of red damask-covered easy chairs, and a scattering of wooden chairs with tooled-leather seats and backs. Sir George Demassis Montague, Her Britannic Majesty’s Viceroy for her Indian Empire, in a fluffy dress shirt, chalk-white trousers, and high black boots, was sunk dee
p into an easy chair, his feet up on a wooden chair he had pulled over for that purpose, reading a book. The rest of his viceregal regalia, a red jacket with gold braid, a wide plum-colored sash, and a chest full of medals, was hung carefully over the back of another chair. A dress sword with several large gemstones in the pommel rested in its gold scabbard on the desk.
A ruddy-faced man of average stature, with reddish brown hair, a prominent nose, and wide sideburns that almost met at his chin, Sir George had the knack of commanding loyalty from his subordinates and respect from those he dealt with; a fact that came as a continual surprise to him. As St. Yves and his daughter came in, he put the book aside and pushed himself to his feet. “General St. Yves,” he said. “Tubs. Good to see you.”
“Messy,” St. Yves said. “It’s been a while.”
The viceroy reached for his jacket. “Djuna!” he called. “Where is that boy? Ah, well.” Philosophically, he struggled into his jacket by himself.
“No need to dress on our account, Your Excellency,” St. Yves said.
“Only polite,” Sir George said. “Besides, it’s almost time to go in.” He beamed at Margaret. “Your daughter, I assume.”
“My daughter Margaret,” St. Yves affirmed. “Peg, Sir George Montague, my old schoolmate, who has made something of himself since leaving B-Broxley.”
“It all comes of having the right parents, don’t you know,” Sir George said, struggling to fasten the sash over his jacket. “Hard work and a certain flair for the diplomatic”—he let go of the sash, and it promptly bounced up to his chin—“combined with a tendency to tell other people what to do, are all very well, but arranging to have a father who is an earl, even an Irish earl, can make all the difference.”
“Here, allow me,” Margaret said, stepping forward and pulling the lower end of the sash into place.
“Thank you, young lady,” the viceroy said. “I don’t want to give the impression that I can’t dress myself, but this fancy dress costume I’m called upon to wear requires assembly and construction. One can’t simply get into it, one has to build it around oneself. There’s the sword that goes with it, but I absolutely refuse to wear the sword this evening. It will bang and clatter about my legs, and serve no useful purpose, and probably trip me up at some inopportune moment. If there’s to be any swordplay, I’ll let your father defend me. He’s much better at it than I am, no doubt, anyway.”
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