“Stop it!”
He relented, so far as he could, stepping forward to take my head in his hands. “Russell, once, once only, I was taken and suffered for it. Please, my dear wife, believe me, this is not the same situation. If you want O’Hara free, you and Nesbit must take him and leave me. I will drug Sanji tomorrow night and slip away—one man, alone and unencumbered. If I have not shown up in Hijarkot inside the week, come back. Please, believe me: I shall be safe. After all, as a last resort I need only stand up and declare myself an English citizen to be made invulnerable.”
I turned, reluctantly, to consult with Nesbit.
The blond head nodded. “It’s true. A public declaration like that, Jimmy’d be furious, but I can’t imagine he’d dare take it further.”
A weight far greater than that of Kimball O’Hara settled over me. I turned back to Holmes and hissed, “If you’re wrong, I shall be extremely angry with you.” Then I kissed him hard on the lips, more threat than affection, and let him step back into his cell.
Before the door shut on him, he stuck his head back, his hand on the slim line of hair on his upper lip. “However, Russ? I think that, all in all, given the choice, I prefer you with the hair and without the moustache.”
Suddenly the light in the hall-way shifted as the oil flames ducked and fluttered: A lower door had opened. Aware of Nesbit apologetically slinging O’Hara across his shoulders, I made haste to lock Holmes’ door, then that of the other cell, before dropping the keys back into the tin box and scurrying away on Nesbit’s heels.
Our nice, smooth rescue operation had turned into something out of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, thanks to two hugely reluctant prisoners. Why could nothing in this damnable country be simple?
We had to use the distraction of small stones to make our escape through the gates, but both guards behaved as the first set had, and went to investigate the rattles, allowing us ample time to gain the road outside. Carrying our burden, however, we could not take a short-cut down the hillside, but were forced to keep to the paved surface, and made the main road seconds before the sound of marching feet rang out from the New Fort gates high above us. Six guards started down the hill to fetch the magician for his midnight rendezvous with the maharaja. We huddled behind a heap of stones and waited for them to cross the road and go through the gates of the Old Fort; as he had promised, our reluctant escapee made not a sound. When the guards had disappeared, Nesbit resumed his burden and staggered off across the moonlit landscape.
A mile later, we stopped to let Nesbit tip his burden to the ground and drop down beside him. O’Hara watched the younger man wheeze and rub his legs, a sympathetic look on his face, the beads of his rosary slipping regularly through his fingers. Damn him, anyway.
“How many beads on your rosary?” I asked the monk; my voice revealed my great displeasure with the entire episode.
He turned on me a beatific smile. “One hundred eight. My days of counting paces are over; now I count prayers.”
Stifling a groan, Nesbit stood again and prepared to take up his burden.
“Wait,” I said.
“I’ll take him another stretch, then you can try.”
“No.”
“We can’t delay, we’re too close to The Forts.”
“It’s only five miles to the border,” I noted.
“And three—”
“Three more to the British encampment, yes. But once we get to the border, couldn’t we send Mr O’Hara on under his own power?” I turned to our unhelpful burden, the monk sitting patiently and untroubled. “Wouldn’t that be within the scope of your vow?”
“Oah yes,” he replied happily. “Once outside the borders of Khanpur, I will have already—however unwillingly—effected my escape. The vow would thus be broken, well and truly; I could come and go wherever I pleased.”
I felt another pulse of rage at the absurdity of this escapade, arguing Jesuitical minutiae with an Irish Buddhist spy while Holmes performed conjuring tricks before a mad maharaja—and then I pushed the emotion down: No time for it now.
“I’d like to propose a change of plan,” I said grimly. “I think it might be a very good idea if you and I, Nesbit, were inside The Forts when the sun comes up.”
Nesbit was no longer too winded to argue, but I spoke over his automatic objections.
“I know, the original plan was for us four to make for the border and abandon Khanpur. But thanks to Mr O’Hara here, we are only three. It’s less than five miles to the border, and not yet one o’clock. Eleven miles forced march there and back, you and I could be in our beds before daylight.”
Nesbit’s quick brain considered my words, saw their truth, and picked out the glaring problem. “We can’t manage the pace carrying him.”
“No,” I agreed. So I pulled the fancy revolver out of my belt, cocked it, and lowered it until its gleaming barrel pointed directly between Kimball O’Hara’s arched eyebrows. “He’s going to walk.”
A great silence fell sharply. A pi-dog barked in the distance, a peahen screamed, and I became aware that only one of us was breathing evenly. Then Nesbit gave an uncertain laugh.
“I don’t believe that’s going to work.”
I allowed some of my anger to surface, which was not difficult. “My husband chose to remain in the hands of a powerful and mentally unstable man in order to buy time to get Mr O’Hara free. I, however, have no particular affection for your retired spy, and I have no intention of abandoning Holmes under those circumstances. Mr O’Hara’s unwillingness to carry his own weight delays me and puts my husband into even greater danger. You honestly think I won’t pull this trigger?”
In any performance, the key is convincing oneself first, and at that moment, with my fury and frustration welling close to the surface, I could well imagine my finger tightening. My performance certainly convinced Nesbit, whose breath froze completely in his throat; in the end, Kimball O’Hara, too, allowed himself to believe I meant it. He stood, brushed down his clothing, turned his back, and started walking: east towards the border. I eased the hammer down and took a much-needed lungful of air of my own before pushing past the stunned-looking captain.
I kept the gun on O’Hara’s back all the way to the borders of Khanpur, so it could not be argued that he was escaping of his own volition.
And footsore, famished, and exhausted, we made it back to New Fort a good forty minutes before dawn, to find our drugged chuprassi still snoring gently in his corner.
Before we parted, Nesbit caught my elbow and spoke into my ear. “Would you have shot O’Hara?”
I looked at the man’s features, haggard with fatigue but beautiful still, and I saw only Holmes’ face as the door locked him in. The false moustache shifted on my upper lip as I smiled. “If he’d refused? I honestly don’t know.”
I fell exhausted into bed, half dressed, my legs still twitching with the rhythm of the long miles of jog-trot. But as the first wave of sleep came to carry me away, it brought with it a troubling piece of flotsam.
On first seeing O’Hara, I had been struck by the peculiarly open and unshuttered quality of his eyes; now I recalled where I had seen eyes like those before. They had been in the face of a man Holmes had hunted down in the south of France, a man who preyed on gullible women, to whom he appeared an innocent, friendly, open. Up to the moment his hands closed around their throats.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The horrendous clamour of a laden tea tray came through my door what seemed like minutes after I had shut my eyes. I squinted at the white-clad servant from my tumble of pillows, hating him with a deep passion. Him, I would have shot. Joyously.
“His Highness says, the horses will be ready in one hour,” he informed me, and left before I could find my pretty revolver.
I peeled my moustache from the pillow sourly, and went to assemble Martin Russell from the dregs left behind by the night.
After some thought, I thrust the revolver into an inner pocket, just in case.
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Afterwards, thinking back, I realised that I had gone six nights with little sleep, my last uninterrupted rest having been the night before Holmes was abducted. Three nights on the road to Hijarkot, a night with Nesbit preparing to be Martin Russell, and two much-broken nights in Khanpur had left me far from sharp-witted.
Thus it was that I went down the stairs in a fog, walked to the breakfast room and automatically chose foodstuffs from the buffet, wanting only to lean up against a post and go to sleep. It wasn’t until I saw Gay Kaur’s face that I woke up, fast.
“Good Lord, Miss Kaur! What happened?”
The brown face smiled crookedly beneath the swollen lip and the sticking-plaster on her cheekbone. “You sound so like your sister,” she said, and gingerly sipped from her cup of tea.
I pulled myself together. Martin; you’re Martin, I recited fiercely, lowering my voice, resuming my formality, and surreptitiously straightening my spine for its absent uniform. “It’s been the cause of more than one confusing telephone conversation,” I told her. “Seriously, that looks rather nasty. How did you do that?”
“I got in the way of an angry beast,” she said. “Not the first time. I must learn to be more careful.”
The contusions showed no sign of claw, hoof, or tooth; I could not help speculating that the beast had two legs. She changed the subject.
“I understand that you and Captain Nesbit are to be singularly honoured today.”
“Yes? How is that?”
“You didn’t know? Jimmy’s taking the two of you out with him, no one else.”
“I was only told that the horses were being brought out. Pig again?” I thought it slightly out of the ordinary for the maharaja to repeat his sporting activities that soon. Perhaps Nesbit’s presence, and their shared passion, made shooting or cheetah-coursing less appealing.
But Miss Kaur shrugged nervously and said, “I really don’t know. It sounded rather as if he’d got something special arranged.”
With that I recalled the maharaja’s final words to us the previous evening, long hours before. What had it been? Something about the Kadir Cup, and how Britain’s honour will demand that India lose—yes, and it had been followed by the thrown-gauntlet statement, “Let us see what you do with my entertainment tomorrow.”
If we were going ahead with the maharaja’s plans, then it would seem that he had not yet received news of a prisoner’s escape. I ate my eggs without tasting them, trying to envision the details of the cells. Would breakfast have been handed the prisoner, or simply shoved beneath the door? Yes, I decided, the door to Holmes’ cell had certainly been far enough off the stones to allow for a tray to be slid beneath. In which case, O’Hara’s absence might well go undiscovered until the guard went to retrieve the breakfast utensils.
It seemed likely that our day would end abruptly at noon.
Permitting us to creep silently off to our beds.
Slightly cheered by the possibility, and marginally restored by food and coffee, I smoothed my freshly glued moustache and went to face the day’s “entertainment,” my mind not so much forgetting Gay Kaur’s bruised face, as putting it aside.
I walked through the gardens and down the road to the stables, nodding at the guards, seeing no one else, which was slightly unusual. The animals in the zoo seemed restless, the monkeys’ chatter on seeing a human pass louder than usual, their leaps and swings on the high perches nearly frantic. The great African lion loosed its coughing roar every half minute or so, although as I went by its cage, I could see nothing out of the ordinary through the trees. Then at the stables, I found five horses saddled: the white Arab stallion, two bays, and the two nearly matched chestnut geldings that Thomas Goodheart and I had been given the first day. I greeted the syce; he responded with a sickly grin and would neither answer nor meet my eyes.
My skin began to prickle with uneasiness.
Minutes passed, and the gabble of monkeys heralded the approach of Geoffrey Nesbit, his perfect features looking older in the morning sun.
“Jimmy’s not here yet?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I told him, keeping my voice cheerful in the proximity of servants. “I was just going to have a smoke and watch the birds.”
We strolled around the stables to the rise overlooking the great tank, and settled on a half-wall in view of the swans and exotic fowl. A snowy egret picked its way through the reeds, perusing the water, and my companion held a match to the end of my cigarette. I filled my lungs with as much appreciation as act.
“If I’m not careful,” I said, “I’m going to find myself liking these things.”
Nesbit was not interested in my bad habits. “Have you any idea what’s going on?”
“None. But the maharaja’s cousin has a badly bruised face, and the syce won’t talk to me. Something’s wrong. You think he’s discovered O’Hara missing?”
“I went to borrow a stamp from Trevor Wilson. He told me that Jimmy had a letter yesterday, from Delhi. No one seems to know what was in it.”
“If it came yesterday, it could explain his evil temper yesterday night.”
“And if he then found O’Hara gone . . .”
I was suddenly glad for the weight of the revolver against my leg.
“How will that change things?” I asked him.
“Impossible to say. However, if he decides to make another all-nighter of it with me, I don’t think we ought to wait. You play ill. An attack of malaria should do it, you can start looking flushed over dinner and excuse yourself. As soon as it’s dark, make your way over to Old Fort and wait for them to bring Holmes out. The two of you should be able to overcome the guards—I can give you another vial of morphia, if you like, so they stay unconscious for a while, although I haven’t another syringe.”
I stared out over the lake, the forgotten tobacco burning down towards my fingers as I pushed the various parts of the puzzle about in my mind. Would Holmes use the syringe and drug his guard as soon as darkness fell, or would he wait until after the maharaja’s midnight matinée? He had no way of knowing that, with the current turmoil, the call might never come. In which case, how long after midnight would he wait, before having to risk the dawn? No, better if I ventured again into the prison fortress and brought him out. Nesbit would simply have to watch his own back.
My tobacco had burnt itself out; Nesbit ground his out under his boot and said, “It’s possible he’s forgotten—oop. Spoke too soon.”
The clamour from the monkey-cage rose as they spotted someone coming down the path. We stood to see, over the roofs of the stable; in a moment I could make out three men, the first bareheaded, the two taller figures behind him topped with red puggarees. The monkeys screamed and bounced around their trees wildly, the men came down the path, and then the three stopped, directly adjacent to the high, noisy cage.
The maharaja seemed to be speaking to his two guards, although at this distance, I could not even make out the gestures, just that they had stopped and were facing each other. Then the smaller man flung his right arm out at the monkey-cage, and one of the guards seemed to move slightly back, the sun briefly glinting off the barrel of the rifle he carried. I saw his free hand, too, raise up in a weak gesture, and then the maharaja stepped forward, snatched the long gun, and brought it down, butt first, in the guard’s face. The red puggaree staggered back; the maharaja brought the rifle to his shoulder and pivoted ninety degrees towards the cage. The barrel spat flame, and the sound of a shot rolled across the landscape, startling the lake birds into sudden flight. A dark shape dropped from its high perch, and the other monkeys went crazy. A second shot flashed and sounded; with the third, terror sent the creatures cowering into the corners, silent at last. The maharaja flung the gun back at its owner and continued on down the hill.
“Christ Jesus,” Nesbit murmured into the shocked air. The three men disappeared behind some trees, and Nesbit set off for the stables at a run.
The stable-hands were furiously tightening girths and polishin
g saddles, their faces pale and taut, when their lord and master swept into the yard with the two armed guards on his heels, one with blood streaming from his smashed nose, the other gripping his gun with white knuckles. The maharaja marched straight over to the white stallion; the syce ran for the mounting block, but he was too slow, and received a kick from the spurred boots for his delay.
Up in the saddle, kerbing the stallion with hard hands, our host glared down at us, his face terrible in scorn and rage. “My ancestors ruled this land when yours were squatting in grass huts picking for lice,” he shouted. “My father and grandfather made treaties with the British Crown, and we have remained loyal to those treaties. And now your government thinks it can summon me—me, the king of Khanpur—to stand before them like a schoolboy answering for his petty crimes. They threaten me—threaten! With what? Next they will be sending men to spy upon me. I swear, before that happens I will disembowel their stinking sudra of a Viceroy and leave him for the vultures.”
I was more than prepared to dive for cover, but my companion was made of the stuff that had built an Empire. Nesbit stood his ground as the horse jittered and turned under its enraged rider, and even took a step forward into range of those spurred boots, looking up at his friend.
“Jimmy,” he said, and, “Your Highness. What has happened? I don’t understand. Tell me what has happened.”
“A letter! From London, telling me—not asking, telling!—that I am to report to Delhi immediately to answer questions concerning some damnable woman. What woman, I ask? Who am I to care if my neighbour has lost one of his daughters?”
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