The Game - Laurie R. King [112]
“Is there any way you can get in?”
“New Fort is locked up at night, although a circumspect individual might come and go. I don’t know about the other side, but it, too, looks the sort of place that might be invaded by one or two.”
“How much longer do you wish to stay?”
“Honestly, I can’t see that I’m going to uncover much more than I have. Another day or two, perhaps? And, if you can arrange it, a telegram recalling me to the outside world might be helpful. My host seems reluctant to permit his guests to leave.”
“Very well. If I’m not here, I’ll be half a mile down the Hijarkot road, there’s a caravanserai there. You’d better go or your watch-dog will come looking for you.”
I threaded my fingers through his, and we sat for a moment, eye to eye and hands joined, before I separated myself from his presence to dart from the shade of the wagon and into the nearest alleyway. I reached the city gates before Faith; our sweating guard was greatly relieved to see me. We strolled demurely back to the palace, and allowed ourselves to be shut in again.
The telegram came the following morning, Friday, and said merely, MARY RUSSELL PRESENCE REQUIRED MONDAY MORNING DELHI. It was brought while I was at breakfast; I took it from the golden salver and opened it publicly, arranging a look of intense irritation on my face before wadding the flimsy and dropping it beside my fork. I left it there when I went to watch the morning’s entertainment, which proved to be a doubles tennis-match between dwarfs. Some of the guests seemed to think it uproariously funny, although I found that once my eyes had adjusted to the diminutive size of the players, it was just another amateur game. Perhaps the afternoon’s ostrich race would be more amusing, I thought, and closed my eyes in the sun.
My doze was interrupted by a cleared throat, and I opened my eyes to find a chuprassi clutching a note. It read,
Miss Russell, would you join me in the gun-room.
Its signature was the letter K, with a stamp that I thought might be the crest of Khanpur. I stood up and said, “Could you tell me how to find the gun-room?”
The chuprassi conducted me to New Fort’s east wing, where the maharaja’s private quarters lay. We entered through a brightly gilded archway just to the left of the gates, and within half a dozen steps, my jaw dropped. I had grown accustomed to the grand opulence of the central wing, but the corridor we walked down, the rooms whose open doors we passed, were another thing altogether. Here were unlocked display cabinets of exquisite miniatures, ivory and gold, beside paintings that any museum in Europe would covet. In one room, I saw Louis XIV furniture, clearly in daily use; in another room stood a display of trophies and photographs, including the one for the 1922 Kadir Cup that I had seen in Nesbit’s house. I tried not to gawp as we walked past, but my head swivelled unceasingly.
It was a revelation. These paintings, those trophies, had been placed here for the sole pleasure of one man, not as a way of impressing his guests—these fragile carpets took no concern of the wear of many feet, and the rooms had been arranged for his privacy and comfort, not for the appreciation of groups. The maharaja clearly enjoyed—even gloated over—his possessions, but he kept the true treasures to himself.
At the very end of the long corridor, the chuprassi opened a door and bowed me through; once inside, I stopped dead.
I do not know what was more disconcerting, the completely muffled sound in the room or its dim light, but one’s immediate response on entering the room was a frisson of alertness up the spine. Perhaps it was some trace aroma of the predator all around that made one go still, not even breathing, until the only motion to defy the room’s smothering atmosphere was the hair creeping upright on one’s skin. In any case, it wasn’t until one’s eyes became used to the light that the sensation of entering a lair became strong. And perhaps a full minute had to pass before the eyes told one why.
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