The Empress of India

by Michael Kurland

  “There’s an outer door and an inner door to the vault,” Colonel Moran told Professor Moriarty, who was lying on his bunk reading as the ship weighed anchor. “The outer door is solid reinforced steel, and the inner is tempered steel bars, like a prison cell. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the vault are half-inch steel plate, riveted every six inches along the seams.”

  Professor Moriarty looked up from his book, Advances in Organic Chemistry by Janifer, and frowned. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

  “In case anything should come to mind,” Moran said. “The outer door’s going to be left open all day,” he continued doggedly, “and only shut at night. Anybody can wander along the corridor on C deck and peer in at the gold through the steel bars of the inner door whenever they’ve a mind to. In the evening, right before the first seating for dinner, the captain and a covey of his officers go down and peer at the gold for one last time and then close the outer vault door for the night. Three of those new electrical lights, and very bright ones they are, have been rigged up in the corridor to keep the corridor and the vault doors illuminated at all times, day and night. And there are two inside the vault itself, lighting up the whole inside so bright that it hurts your eyes to look.”

  Moriarty stared at the far wall for a second, lost in thought, then he closed his book and sat up. “You don’t say?” he said. “How odd.”

  “The Lancers are posting their guards at both ends of the corridor all day,” Moran continued, “and at the top of the stairway, which I understand is called a ‘ladder’ on a ship. And right smart they look, too.”

  “You don’t say,” Moriarty repeated. “How interesting.”

  “You’re mocking me,” Moran complained.

  “Not at all,” Moriarty said soothingly. “I’ll wager this conversation is being repeated in half the cabins on the ship, and most of them occupied by people of a much more, ah, honest turn of mind than you or I. There is something about large sums of gold that brings out the speculative nature in people.”

  “That’s so,” Moran agreed. “The problem as I see it is not so much how to get the gold out of the vault as what to do with it once you have accomplished that. After all, when you’re on a ship in the middle of the Indian Ocean, there aren’t very many places to which you can abscond.”

  “I trust you are considering this merely as an intellectual exercise,” Moriarty said.

  “Even so, even so,” Moran replied. “I may wander by the vault occasionally and stare wistfully through the bars, but I won’t do anything foolish. Not with this other matter so well in hand. It is well in hand, is it not?”

  Moriarty chuckled. “Have faith,” he said. “Your job is to get to know General St. Yves. Befriend him, and fascinate him with your tales of military derring-do, or whatever. Exchange stories of killing large animals. Play cards with him and don’t cheat.”

  “Don’t cheat?” Moran asked plaintively.

  “And do your best not to win. You are a retired colonel of independent means. You play only for the relaxation and enjoyment.”

  “That’s so,” Moran agreed. “But I do enjoy winning.”

  Moriarty peered at him over the top of his pince-nez. “Restrain yourself,” he said. “Think of the larger picture.”

  Moran grinned. “Oh, I know, I know,” he said. “I just like to see the annoyed expression you get when you contemplate my inability to refrain from cheating at cards.”

  It was past four in the afternoon when The Empress of India’s horn sounded a series of low, mournful bellows, and the ship backed away from the dock and started down the river, flanked by the oceangoing tugs Egbert and Ethelred, and accompanied by the steam launch Clive. Behind her, following her closely into the Bay of Bengal, was the torpedo gunboat Sea Lion. Ahead of her, flags and pennants flying, was the Maharaja of Najipur’s paddle-wheel steam packet Maharaja of Najipur, given this position of honor in recognition of the fact that Najipur was one of the few Indian states to have its own navy, as well as the fact that almost a quarter of a ton of the gold in the Empress’s vault belonged to the maharaja.

  Margaret and Lady Priscilla stood forward on the port side of “A” deck with a smattering of the other first-class passengers who weren’t too preoccupied or too blasé to watch the ship’s embarkation. It was a grand sight. The Maharaja of Najipur was about five ship lengths in the lead, with all the sails on its two masts furled, and its paddle wheel churning away amidships. Sailors in spanking-new white uniforms with red hats and sashes stood perched on the Maharaja’s masts, rigging, and yards as though they were frozen in motion, eternally caught at the moment they were about to hoist the sails.

  And, standing at attention at the prow of The Empress of India, facing forward, clad in the gloriously colorful full regimental uniform of the Duke of Moncreith’s Own Highland Lancers, was the Lancers’ piper, Master Sergeant Warren Bruce of that ilk, and the eerie wail of the “Lament for Douglas” sounded even over the throb of the ship’s engines and the slapping of the waves.

  Margaret spread her arms and lifted her head high to allow the wind to blow against every part of her. The skirts of the red silk frock she wore pressed against her knees and billowed behind her. “I can feel the infinite possibilities of the future approaching!” she exclaimed. “I must be ready to grab at life as it passes, and cling to it firmly and with resolve.”

  Lady Priscilla turned toward her companion and wrinkled her nose. “I have no idea,” she said, “what you’re talking about, you know. But I admit that it has a jolly sound to it.”

  “Whenever something comes to an end,” Margaret told her, “some-thing else begins. And one has a very short opportunity to influence the direction this new beginning is to take.”

  Lady Priscilla nodded and stared thoughtfully at the men on the rigging of the Maharaja of Najipur. They were engaging in an elaborate aerial dance, where they all shifted position rapidly and recklessly and according to some design that was not readily apparent, showing off for the watchers on the Empress and along the shore. “Tell me,” she said to Margaret, “if one wished to ascertain the cabin number of a particular person, how would one go about it?”

  “Ask the purser or the cabin steward,” Margaret told her.

  “Yes, but if one did not wish anyone to know of one’s interest in the, ah, location of this person?”

  Margaret dropped her arms to her sides and turned to look at her companion. “Oh, I see,” she said.

  Lady Priscilla turned faintly red about the face. “No, you don’t,” she insisted. “For there is nothing to see. I asked out of idle curiosity, that is all.”

  “Of course,” Margaret said. “Well, if you will entrust me with the name of this person whom you’re idly curious about, I’ll find out his cabin number for you.”

  “What makes you think it’s a man?” Lady Priscilla demanded.

  “Really!” said Margaret. “And why would such caution and secrecy be necessary were it a woman?”

  “Oh,” said Lady Priscilla. “His name is Welles. Lieutenant Welles.”

  General St. Yves and his two adjutants, a stout, red-faced colonel named Morcy and Major Sandiman, a tall thin man with a thick mustache under a prominent nose, met Captain Iskansen in the corridor leading to the gold vault. The newly posted guard at the end of the corridor snapped to attention and wished fervently that he’d been more attentive in memorizing the special orders of the day as all the well-pressed uniforms pockmarked with brass insignia and entwined in gold braid passed him.

  “You wanted to see us?” St. Yves asked the captain.

  “Yes,” Iskansen said. He was a large man whose face was weathered, his blond hair mostly gray, who wore the stripes of command with an easy familiarity. One felt just by looking at him that he would bring the Empress, its crew, and its passengers through any storm, past any reef, safely to port. “Come.”

  He led them to the door of the gold vault. “This is my responsibility,” he said ponderously, point
ing through the bars of the inner door at the crates of gold that gleamed in the cold light of the powerful electric bulbs in the ceiling fixtures. “The vault is my first line of defense, and you and your men are my second.”

  “That is so,” St. Yves agreed.

  “Go over with me one more time how you’re positioning your men and just what their orders are,” the captain said.

  “Colonel Morcy has made the dispositions,” St. Yves said, indicating his adjutant.

  Morcy nodded. “The watch is divided into four six-hour shifts per day,” he said, ticking off the points on his fingers as he made them. “Each shift contains a corporal of the guard and ten or eleven men. The two posted guards, one at each end of the corridor, are relieved every two hours, the rest of the men staying on call in the guardroom at all times. All the men are armed with the Martini-Henry carbine and bayonet, and carrying a whistle. They also each are equipped with a bull’s-eye lantern to light in case the electrical power should fail. Their standing orders are to allow passage through the corridor but to keep alert for anything untoward or out of the ordinary. If they see anything in the least unusual, they are to blow the whistle and all the men in the guardroom will immediately turn out. One man is immediately sent to the officers’ dayroom, where one of us or another senior officer will always be on duty in case of need.”

  “And the guns,” Captain Iskansen asked, “they are loaded?”

  “Yes, sir. The men are under instructions to shoot if threatened.”

  “But the bayonets? I don’t see the bayonets.”

  “Because of the close quarters,” Morcy explained, “the bayonets are kept in their scabbards, only to be drawn if needed.”

  “Ah,” said the captain. “I see. Is there anything else I should know?”

  “What sort of thing?” asked St. Yves.

  Iskansen lifted his hands expressively. “Any contingency plan, any clever little secret plot to better guard the gold?”

  “No,” said St. Yves, looking faintly puzzled. “That’s all of it.”

  “Good,” Captain Iskansen said firmly. “I want to know everything that’s happening on my ship. I hate surprises.”

  “So do we,” St. Yves assured him. “Let us hope that we don’t encounter any during this voyage.”

  “Then we understand each other,” said Iskansen.

  “Have you any other questions or suggestions?” St. Yves asked.

  The captain thought for a moment. “No, no,” he said. “It sounds quite well done. Thank you.” He nodded at them and walked off.

  “Well,” Major Sandiman said when Iskansen had rounded the bend. “What do you suppose that was about? He surely knew all of that already.”

  “Chain of command,” suggested Colonel Morcy. “He wants us to clearly understand that he’s at the top of the chain.”

  “As long as we’re here,” St. Yves said, “let’s drop in on the guardroom. Make sure everything’s shipshape. Then I’ll stand you both to a drink.”

  “Good plan,” approved the colonel.

  “Very good, sir,” said the major.

  SIXTEEN

  BOMBAY

  SUNDAY, 9 MARCH 1890

  Genius is the ability to see things invisible, to manipulate things intangible, to paint things that have no features.

  —Joseph Joubert

  The steam sloop Endymion, a thin stream of oily black smoke wafting out of its tall, pencil-thin smokestack, oozed its way into Bombay Harbor at a bit past eight in the morning. Passing Oyster Rock Battery, it glided along the line of piers, basins, yacht clubs, dockyards and a row of large stone elephants, their trunks upraised in eternal challenge, and pulled up alongside a grimy pier at a dilapidated boatyard, whereupon it promptly shut down its engines and coasted to a stop.

  Pin Dok Low, slender and immaculate in a loose white muslin jacket and baggy white pants, stood atop the steering house closely studying the flock of docked and moored ships as the Endymion passed them in the harbor. “It isn’t here yet,” he called down to his two companions waiting on the deck below.

  “How do you know it ain’t been here and left already?” Cooley the Pup yelled back at him.

  The Artful Codger stomped his feet noisily. “Now, wouldn’t that just be something to write home about, wouldn’t it just?”

  “Highly unlikely,” Pin Dok Low said. “But we will, of course, check that eventuality out immediately.” He lowered himself into to the steering house and spoke briefly to the captain, and then leaped like a great bird of prey onto the deck below. “Now, gentlemen,” he said to his two companions, “the adventure begins.”

  “It seems to me, Pin, that thissere adventure begun the first time I run’d acrost your name,” said Cooley the Pup. “It’s been nothin’ but ups and downs ever since.”

  “Don’t mind him, Pin,” the Artful Codger said. “He’s suffering from mal of the mer, which makes everything shine in a baleful light.”

  Dr. Pin Dok Low smiled at the Codger, showing an uneven row of yellow teeth. “Why, Codger,” he said. “That’s almost poetry. ‘Shine in a baleful light.’ However did that occur to you?”

  “I think I read it somewhere,” said the Codger, determinedly not looking embarrassed.

  “I didn’t know you could read,” said Pin.

  “It don’t come up offen,” the Codger said. He squinted at Pin in the morning light. “You know, Pin, when you ain’t dressed like a Chinee, you don’t look hardly Oriental at all. You could almost pass for a white man.”

  Pin smiled broadly, the gold caps on two of his teeth flashing in the sun. “What a compliment,” he said. “I am honored to almost resemble a member of your uncultured and barbaric race.”

  “This ain’t getting us nowhere,” said Cooley the Pup. “Here we are in Bom-bloody-bay, and it seems we got here before The Empress of India pulled in. What I wants to know is, what does we do from here? After we make sure that the Empress ain’t been and gone already, o’course.”

  “Yes,” Pin agreed. “Always making sure of that, of course. We find the booking office and book passage on The Empress of India. Whereupon we set about watching the gold in the ship’s vault as though it were our own—which it shortly shall be.”

  “Oh, great,” groaned Cooley. “More pitching and tossing about.”

  “The Empress is quite a bit larger than the Endymion,” said Pin. “You shouldn’t get sick.”

  “I’ll get sick,” said Cooley.

  “Why didn’t you think of that before you come with us?” asked the Codger.

  “Well, I didn’t know I was going to get sick, did I? I mean, it ain’t like I ever been on a bloody boat before.”

  The captain of the Endymion, a corpulent giant of a man who said his name was Georgidios and claimed to be a Greek, thumped down from the steering house to the deck. “We are tied off now,” he boomed. “You can go ashore.” He slapped Pin on the back. “Did I not tell you that I could get you to Bombay in ten days, if the blessed boilers did not burst?”

  “Indeed,” Pin admitted.

  “And the blessed boilers did not burst, and so here we indeed are.” Georgidios beamed and patted the ship on its cargo hatch. “The Endymion, he is a good, speedy little craft, he is.”

  “I thought all ships were called ‘she,’ ” said the Codger.

  “The Endymion is a boy,” Georgidios said. “Named for a Greek shepherd, a lad who was so beautiful that the goddess Artemis, whom you call Diana, fell in love with him and bestowed many kisses upon him.” Georgidios blew several kisses into his plump hands and bestowed them onto the air in front of him.

  “We’re going to leave you now, Captain,” Pin told Georgidios “Many thanks for your prompt and efficient traverse of several seas and a rather long canal.”

  “Yes, yes,” Georgidios said. “And thank you for your more-than-adequate payment.”

  “I told you we should have argued him down a bit more,” said the Codger in an undertone. Captain Georgidios heard and
glowered at him, and he glowered back.

  “Have one of your deck hands bring our luggage from the cabin,” Pin told Georgidios. “We’ll send a runner for it as soon as we locate a hotel.”

  “Aye, aye,” said Captain Georgidios. “Good luck on your venture, whatever it may be.”

  SEVENTEEN

  ALL AT SEA

  Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, he wants to reestablish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.

  —Henri Frederic Amiel

  On the third day at sea Colonel Sebastian Moran was invited to join General St. Yves and the officers of the Duke’s Own at their table at the last seating for dinner. His stories of hunting man-eaters in the Himalayas and fighting the Mahdi and his dervishes in Egypt—basically true and told with even more than the usual British understatement—made him a desirable dinner companion for these professional soldiers. After all, they had been together for many years, and had listened to their own stories many times.