The Game - Laurie R. King [122]
And—my brain at last beginning to function with clarity—it was quite possible that Holmes might find traces of Kimball O’Hara where I had failed. Particularly if, as I thought possible, the spy was quartered in Old Fort rather than among the European guests.
Still, I did not think that sitting in this mud-walled village would help anyone, so I wiped away the artificial blood from the “slashes” on my arms and legs, doused the guttering flares, and went to look for the headman.
It took some doing to convince the man that I was neither dead nor spirit. In the end, the solidity of the rupees I put in his hand decided the matter. He would guard the wagon and feed the donkey, and although he had no horse himself to sell me, he could send for a man who did.
By midnight, I was jogging north out of the village on a sturdy pony that had a bone-jarring gait but loads of stamina. I took the first road that came in from the right, and pressed on for half an hour before the moonlight failed entirely and the horse let me know that it was blind. I hobbled the creature and curled up in a blanket for a short time, rising and setting off again as soon as the road became visible.
We travelled all day, passing Khanpur city with the end of my puggaree drawn across my face against the dust, without spectacles most of the time, trusting to my anonymity and the pony’s sureness of foot. In the afternoon I began to watch the telegraph lines that dipped and rose on poles beside the main road to Hijarkot, but I found no telegraph office until the road gave birth to a caravanserai, its air already heavy with a dozen smokey cook-fires, clusters of men sitting around eating, coughing heartily, and spitting red splashes into the dust. I might have gone another hour or two before dark, and certainly would have continued had I wished merely for sleep, but instead I hired a string charpoy from the same establishment that stabled my pony, and bought a large plate of rice and dhal so hot it brought tears to my eyes. The smoke rose and then died away in the serai, the horses and camels complained and quieted, the lights were turned out in the telegraph office, and eventually the charpoys around me subsided into a night-time chorus of snores and mumbles.
I lay without moving, to all appearances asleep; in fact, my brain whirred, dredging up images of Holmes in chains, or tortured, or fed to the lions, one pointless speculation after another. I dragged my thoughts from him and placed them instead on Kimball O’Hara, this phantom of the Survey who had brought us thousands of miles and occupied us for weeks now, a world-famous Irish-Indian lad who was also an unknown middle-aged Intelligence agent, a born trickster who found it painful to lie, a man who might be dead, or farming in Tibet, or sleeping on the next charpoy. Or who might be in chains, or tortured, or fed to the lions, or . . . I wrenched my mind from these futile images, and decided I’d waited long enough.
I had chosen my bed at the far reaches of the free-air dormitory, so it was an easy matter to slip from my bed-roll and, avoiding the watchman (who like all chowkidars spent the night warning villains off with his coughs), circle around to the stout mud-brick building that held the telegraph office. At its door, I pulled back the lining of my spectacles case to reveal a set of pick-locks, and bent over the door’s lock.