She remembered the way he had stared at the door, as if he could see her through the keyhole. And later, when he’d surprised her in his room, how stealthy he had been coming up the stairs. As though he had already known she was there.
Sowerby must find tigers the same way, Elsie thought. With his famous sixth sense.
What Mandeep had been trying to tell Elsie over the walkie-talkie, before it cut out, was that as he was standing by the tiger’s building, about to lift the bar and open the door, he’d had the distinct feeling that he was being watched.
It was almost night. Dark had already swallowed the forest, although there was still a lightness to the sky. Mandeep could see the outline of the clearing and the shape of the building, one shade blacker than the trees.
He stopped still, listening.
He was not alone.
Mandeep wasn’t sure why he felt so certain of this, and it would have been easy to brush it aside as nothing more than his imagination. Yet he’d learned from experience never to ignore his instinct, because it was usually based on real things; tiny signals that he’d registered without even knowing he was doing so.
A certain quality of silence in the forest around him. Darkness where no shadow should rightly be. A shiver in the long grass that might have been no more than the movement of the breeze, except that the air was perfectly still.
Mandeep froze, his hand on the bar of the door.
The last of the light had gone, and the stars were hard and bright. Low in the sky, bigger than all the rest, the fierce spark of Mars burned gold as a tiger’s eye.
Mandeep shoved abruptly at the bar, his heart pounding. He swung the door wide, made sure it was firmly wedged on the uneven ground, then took off across the clearing. The entrance to the path was impossible to make out. He hesitated for a terrified moment, then plunged into the bamboo, finding his way more by luck than judgment, not feeling the whip and tug of branches as he hurtled along.
It wasn’t until he had stumbled over the twisted tree trunk and reached the relative safety of the main track that he allowed himself to stop. He bent, catching his breath, then straightened up and began walking fast towards the turning to the shrine and his hiding place.
The moon had risen, and the air was colder than it had been before. Mandeep hugged himself as he walked. Now that his panic had mostly subsided, he was beginning to regret his decision to hide in the cave. It had been comfortable enough during the day, and when John had warned him on the walkie-talkie about the guests, he’d been able to climb up the rocks behind the shrine and stay out of sight.
How funny Mr Gordon had looked, prodding fruitlessly into the cave with his cane!
Mandeep wished he could have signalled to Kelsie that he wasn’t inside, although she would have probably given the game away. She had the sort of face that showed everything. He smiled to himself, remembering how she had wrung her hands.
He didn’t know what to make of Kelsie. He wasn’t even sure that was her name. John had seemed doubtful about it when he’d introduced her. She was one of the nicest people Mandeep had ever met. And one of the strangest, although he couldn’t put his finger on why he felt that way. Perhaps it was the fact that she was so easy to talk to. Or maybe it was all the peculiar questions she asked.
As if she understood everything – and nothing – at exactly the same time.
Mandeep reached the turning. He looked for the steps, even more treacherous in the moonlight, and thought how cold the cave would be. The outhouse wasn’t pleasant, but there was a blanket there at least, and Mr Agarwal would bring him supper.
Mandeep suddenly felt very hungry. He had barely eaten all day.
The walkie-talkie in his pocket crackled, making him jump. He took it out and continued down the track, heading for the lights of the lodge.
There was a lengthy gap between the clearing of the soup, and the arrival of the main course. Enough time for Gordon to get through two more glasses of wine, and for Charles to start playing with his napkin.
‘Look, Marj,’ he said, placing the knotted lump in front of her. ‘A swan!’
On the other side of the table, Nottle had taken advantage of a lull in conversation to return to his favourite topic: HappyHappy Land and all its various delights.
John and Elsie listened from their perch above.
‘Of course, business boomed during the war,’ Nottle was saying. ‘Nothing better than a theme park to take your mind off things. Worse it got, the more customers we had.’
‘Sounds like you’re sorry it’s over,’ Gordon said, giving him a hostile look.
‘Oh, please,’ Marjorie interrupted. ‘Do we have to talk about the war again?’
John tapped Elsie’s arm. ‘We should go back,’ he whispered. ‘Wouldn’t do to get caught up here.’
Elsie was about to agree when she saw the cook’s assistant emerge, wheeling a trolley laden with platters, each covered by a large, silver dome.
‘In a minute,’ Elsie whispered. ‘Let’s wait until they start eating again and making more noise. They might hear us if we leave now.’
The assistant parked the trolley and began serving the table, his hands shaking, either from the weight of the platters, his own frayed nerves, or a combination of both.
‘What on earth?’ John muttered, as the silver domes were removed.
From a distance, it was hard to identify the forlorn items that lay beneath, only that they were virtually colourless and seemed to consist of nothing but tiny bones. And judging from the diners’ expressions, it was no easier to tell up close.
‘Some kind of small fowl, I believe,’ Gordon announced finally, poking gingerly with his knife. ‘Boiled, by the look of it.’
‘I must apologise for the cook,’ Sowerby said. ‘He is new.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ Gordon said. ‘I’m sure it’s delicious, old chap. I must say,’ he added, in a smarmy rush to change the subject, ‘we’re all looking very much forward to the hunt tomorrow. Isn’t that right, Mr Nottle?’
‘It certainly is. Can’t wait.’
‘I guarantee it’ll take your mind off that theme park of yours,’ Gordon said, smirking slightly.
‘Unlikely,’ Nottle said. ‘Tiger Terror-tory is going to be huge. Our biggest draw yet. Nothing like pulling them in, eh, Sowerby?’
‘Indeed,’ Sowerby said.
There was nothing unusual about Sowerby’s voice. He merely sounded bored. But Elsie’s body suddenly stilled. She had the overwhelming sense that something significant had been said, by Sowerby, or perhaps by Nottle, only she couldn’t work out exactly what it was. She frowned, trying to concentrate. What had they been talking about? It hadn’t been anything important, simply idle conversation…
Marjorie’s knife rang against her plate as she flung it down.
‘I can’t eat it. I simply can’t!’
‘Perhaps we can find you something else.’ Sowerby gestured to the cook’s assistant. He scurried away. There was a moment of silence, then a thump from the kitchen, as if something had been flung against the ground. Another thump, followed by a volley of words, each louder than the one before.
‘The cook’s blown his gasket!’ John whispered, grinning. ‘He’s gone round the twist!’
Elsie wasn’t listening. She had just realised what it was she had heard, and why it had seemed significant. And then, so rapidly that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it before, everything that she’d been puzzling about fell into place. She rose to her knees in excitement.
‘I know how he does it!’
‘Who does what?’ John was still grinning, his eyes fixed on the diners.
‘Sowerby. I know how he finds them.’
She should have worked it out ages ago. There had been clues all along. Gordon in the jeep, talking about Sowerby’s mysterious powers of communication. Sowerby with his tiger-skull clock: ‘I’ve studied them for years using the very latest technology.’ The conversation she had heard through the keyh
ole, about a ‘sixth sense’ and sounds too low for the human ear to hear.
Elsie had wondered how Sowerby managed to find every one of the released tigers, without giving the game away, or spending days combing the forest. And now she knew. It had been Nottle’s talk about ‘pulling them in’ that had done it.
Sowerby didn’t go looking for tigers. He made them come to him.
‘He uses infrasound,’ Elsie said, tugging John’s sleeve in her agitation. ‘We can’t hear it, but tigers can. He calls them, don’t you see? It’s like those whistles that only dogs can sense, only those are high pitched…’
John looked at her in alarm. ‘Why are you talking so loud? Do you want them to hear you?’
‘But you have to listen!’
Sowerby’s voice drifted up from below.
‘It seems the cook has abandoned us. Left the kitchen in a temper.’
‘Disgraceful!’ Gordon exclaimed. ‘I hope you sack him on the spot.’
‘Since he’s left already, I hardly see the point.’
‘But what about pudding?’ Charles said in a plaintive voice. ‘I was rather looking forward to pudding…’
Elsie tugged John’s sleeve, even harder than before. ‘You have to listen,’ she repeated. ‘I don’t know what he uses to do it but—’
She broke off, struck by a terrible thought.
‘The walkie-talkie!’ she gasped.
It had to be that. On the day of the hunt, Sowerby would have one walkie-talkie. His bearer, back at the lodge, would have the other. It was how the bearer knew when to unlock each of the cages. But the walkie-talkies weren’t the same, as Elsie had noticed when she first found them. One of them, the one she had kept – the one that Sowerby must surely use – was different.
It had a large red dial on the front.
Without speaking, without even thinking, Elsie lunged for the walkie-talkie that John was holding.
His fingers tightened reflexively. ‘What are you doing?’
For a second, both of them had it in their grasp, each trying to wrest it from the other. Then it shot from their hands, straight through the banisters.
What was strange about the next few seconds was how slowly they seemed to pass. Elsie had time to notice how the walkie-talkie spun as it fell, and the precise point where it landed on the dining-room table, sending a glass flying in one direction, and the salt cellar in another. She tried to turn, but she was part of the slowness too; before she could move an inch, it was already too late.
The eyes of every single person in the room below were fixed in her direction.
‘What the devil?’ someone shouted. It was Gordon. He opened his mouth as if to shout again, but whatever he was about to say was lost, the words drowned by an eruption of noise from the kitchen. A series of ear-splitting screams filled the air, the clang and thunder of metal pans, a frenzied pattering of feet as if a multitude were on the move. Sowerby rose from the table with a look of fury.
‘Monkeys!’ John cried. ‘The cook must’ve left the door open!’
A grey horde – too fast and too many to count – burst shrieking into the dining room, chairs tumbling in their wake. One monkey seized a handful of Marjorie’s hair as it bounded off her shoulder, three more hurtled down the table, sending plates and glasses crashing. Others took to the air, leaping from deer head to deer head, their shadows crazing the walls.
The guests flailed their arms, trying to protect themselves. Nottle had fallen to his knees and was trying to squeeze under the table. Marjorie simply stood and screamed. Only Sowerby retained his presence of mind.
‘Open the door, man!’ he shouted.
The bearer on the far side of the room hadn’t needed to be prompted. He was already swinging it wide. At once, the horde poured through into the hallway beyond.
The bearer slammed the door, his face grim.
‘Something scared them,’ John said. ‘What on earth could have frightened them like that?’
Silence had fallen below, as if everyone was asking themselves the same question. Even Marjorie had stopped whimpering. She lifted a dazed hand to pat her hair, as though checking it was still there.
‘Oh no,’ Elsie muttered. ‘Oh no!’
Something had appeared in the doorway leading to the kitchen. A broad face, with ears pressed flat and whiskers at a wary slant. It paused. Then, with a roll of its massive shoulders, it stepped into the dining room.
Out in the open, the tigress would have looked big. Indoors, among the scattered dishes and flimsy chairs, she had the size and presence of a tank.
The drink that Gordon was holding slipped from his hands with a tinkle of breaking glass. Someone gasped, and Marjorie, still clutching her hair, began to moan softly.
‘Oh-oh-oh-oh.’
Yet the tigress seemed oblivious of the guests. She came on steadily, in an almost trance-like fashion, looking neither right nor left.
‘Nobody move.’ Sowerby’s voice was hard as ice. His eyes met those of the bearer.
The bearer, showing extraordinary courage in the face of the animal bearing down on him, reached for the door a second time, ducking behind as he swung it open.
The tigress paced through and was gone.
John stared speechlessly at Elsie.
‘That’s what I was trying to tell you,’ she said. ‘It’s the walkie-talkie. I turned the dial by mistake. It’s calling them here.’
‘Oh crikey!’
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when they heard a high-pitched shriek. A second tiger, closely followed by a third, had entered the dining room. As Elsie watched, it leaped on to the table, the wood creaking ominously under its weight, its paws sliding on the tablecloth, sending the remaining plates and cutlery tumbling to the floor.
A muffled crash came from the kitchen, and the sound of growling.
Panic seized the guests. With one tiger cutting off their exit to the hallway, and escape via the kitchen impossible, they pressed themselves against the walls of the dining room, all dignity abandoned. Gordon grabbed a chair and tried to brandish it in a threatening manner and hide behind it at the same time. Nottle bellowed for a gun. Marjorie cowered on the floor, biting her own hand.
Only Sowerby hadn’t moved.
‘Stay calm,’ he ordered. ‘If you stay calm, they won’t hurt you.’
‘They’re bally tigers, aren’t they?’ Gordon shouted, still dodging behind his chair.
Marjorie removed her hand from her mouth. ‘We have to stay calm!’ she screamed.
A tiger crept under the table on its belly, peeled back its lips and hissed. In the kitchen, the growling had become a deep, panting groan.
John grabbed Elsie’s arm. ‘Come on!’
They ran to the landing at the top of the staircase and stopped. There was no sign of the monkeys. Going by the distant racket, they must have fled down the corridor and into the rooms beyond. Yet Elsie barely registered the fact.
The first tigress had left the hallway and was coming up the stairs straight towards them, moving so smoothly and so silently that she seemed to glide.
‘Steady, steady,’ John said, taking Elsie’s hand. ‘Whatever you do, don’t run.’
They took a step backwards, and then another.
‘No sudden movements,’ John said. ‘Nice and easy…’
Elsie didn’t know how he could stay calm. She was gripping his hand so hard that she could feel every bone in his fingers.
The tigress reached the top of the stairs and paused, making a panting sound, her mouth half-open, saliva glistening on her black gums. Then she advanced.
Elsie felt her legs start to tremble.
‘Steady,’ John repeated, although there was a catch in his voice.
They kept going, still walking backwards, their eyes fixed on the tigress. As they passed the door to Sowerby’s room, John pushed it wide with his free hand.
‘Worth a try…’ he muttered.
The tigress reached the open door of Sower
by’s room and stopped, sniffing the air. Then she turned her head and slipped inside.
‘Run!’ John cried.
Elsie hadn’t needed to be told. She was already making a dash for the staircase. As she flew by, she glanced down at the dining room. Someone had managed to open a window. She caught a glimpse of the guests jostling each other as they scrambled to escape.
‘Through the main door,’ John gasped when they reached the foot of the stairs. As they rushed across the lobby, he paused to grab his gun from the corner where he’d left it. Out on the verandah, Elsie heard running feet. Mandeep was there, his face bewildered.
‘What is going on?’ he said. ‘What are the tigers doing here?’
‘It’s all my fault.’ Elsie wrung her hands. ‘I didn’t mean to do it! I didn’t know—’
She was interrupted by the sound of voices. The guests, having managed to extricate themselves from the dining room, were making their way around the side of the building to the relative shelter of the verandah, arguing loudly all the way.
Even in the dim light from the lodge, they made a sorry sight. Marjorie’s hair stuck out at the side in a large knot, Gordon’s glasses were crooked, and several buttons had popped off Nottle’s shirt, exposing a wide swathe of his vest. They huddled at the bottom of the verandah steps, their eyes darting between the lodge, the looming forest, then back to the lodge again, as if unable to make up their minds what to do.
Marjorie was insisting they ought to retreat to the jeeps and lock themselves inside. But it seemed the bearer had the keys, and the bearer was nowhere to be seen. As they were debating, an engine started on the far side of the clearing, headlights pierced the darkness, and then were gone.
The bearer, like Mr Agarwal, had clearly decided enough was enough.
‘The scoundrel!’ Gordon spluttered, shaking an ineffectual fist. He caught sight of Mandeep staring from the verandah. ‘That boy! It’s him! He’s behind all this, I’d bet my life on it.’
The Time Traveller and the Tiger Page 15