The Game - Laurie R. King [111]
We left him there and headed back into the bazaar. At the narrowest spot, when Faith stopped to take a closer look at a necklace she had been fingering earlier, I spoke into her ear.
“I just want to check something—I’ll meet you at the main gates in ten minutes,” and before she could object, I ducked my head down so our escort couldn’t see me, stepped behind a water-seller, and scurried away. At the next corner, I craned to see, but Faith was talking to the shopkeeper about the necklace, and the guard had not yet realised that I was no longer with her.
Holmes was seated on the ground in the shade of the wagon, counting his money, when I slid in beside him. He’d changed his Moslem cap for a black puggaree, tied elaborately with its starched end sticking up, and the thin moustache he’d grown since we parted in Simla added a rakish touch to his exoticism.
“Greetings, memsahib,” he told me.
“Holmes, you certainly got here quickly. Where’s Bindra?”
“It would seem that the same Delhi astrologer who instructed the boy to go with the two Mussalman gentlemen also warned him against entering Khanpur. Our young apprentice remained at the border, swearing to all the gods that he would wait there for me.”
“Wait there! So you’ve been doing all the work yourself, the donkey and everything?” The magician shrugged, and I muttered, “I’ll take off my shoe and give the brat thapad.”
“What do you make of the maharaja?” he asked, and he was right, we had time only for urgent business.
“Holmes, he’s . . . I don’t know, he’s an enigma. It may simply be the circumstances of his upbringing, but he’s thoughtful one minute and horribly cruel the next. An honest sportsman who apparently cheats at cards, a man who surrounds himself with artists and then keeps them from working, who is hugely generous with his hospitality but won’t let his guests out without watch-dogs. I have to get back,” I added, “before mine panics. And there’s a strange assortment of people at The Forts. He hired a best-selling novelist for a secretary; has two lesbian artists so avant-garde they make Epstein look staid, whom he’s commissioned to do works better done by an Indian; there are a couple of criminal types doing heaven knows what—remember the man Harry Koehler? He’s lived here for a year. The odd Communist like Thomas Goodheart. And me, whom he’s trying to convince to take on a project involving the education of Khanpur women. ‘Pets’ for his amusement, his cousin calls them. And a collection of individuals poached from side-shows, dwarfs and albinos. The dwarfs live down at the zoo, which I saw this morning. His treatment of the animals there is . . . troubling.”
“Cruelty?” he asked, coming alert. He knew, better than I, that a man who mistreats dumb beasts is apt to do the same to his human subjects. And I would have told him all about the zoo, if we hadn’t been so short of time. I’m sure I would have told him, if it wasn’t that I needed to think about it myself first. And if I didn’t know that if I described the maharaja’s act of cruelty, Holmes would become very nervous and would try to convince me that I shouldn’t return to The Forts. One thing I did not need at the moment was a nervous husband.
“Nothing extreme. It’s more that he’s experimenting to see if he can reshape their natures.”
“The lion lying down with the lamb?”
“No, more along the lines of convincing the lamb to become a lion.”
He thought about this for a moment, then to my relief, pushed it away for future consideration. “No sign of O’Hara?”
“If he’s here, he’s in the Old Fort. Have you seen the way The Forts are laid out?”
“I have.”
“The western half is where all the guests live, there’s a huge courtyard garden, the maharaja’s quarters. But the eastern part isn’t deserted—one occasionally sees guards on the walls. If the maharaja had a dungeon, it would probably