The Game - Laurie R. King [124]
When I was replete, he gathered his papers and we went down the hall to a study, where he closed the door and pulled two chairs close together.
I told him everything, beginning with the arrival of the aeroplane on the road outside the train station and ending with my breaking into the telegraph office. He interrupted only when my narrative passed over some detail, commented mostly with nods and raised eyebrows, although my description of the godowns and what I had seen there brought him briefly to his feet. When I had come to an end, he gazed out the window for a bit and then asked me for further details on the maharaja’s other guests; after that, he pulled out maps and asked me precisely where one thing or another had taken place.
In all, it took the rest of the morning. After lunch, he excused himself, saying that business required him elsewhere.
“Are you going to report what I’ve told you?” I asked him.
“I shall have to write a report, certainly. But I shan’t send it, not just yet. The contents of those godowns will prove explosive in more ways than the one.” He smiled. “Get some rest. I’ll be back for tea.”
With that domestic parting, he left. I chose a book from the shelves and carried it onto the veranda, although I was certain that I would not be able to concentrate on anything other than my agitation over Holmes. However, I woke three hours later to Nesbit’s boots on the boards and the gentle ting and clatter of a tea tray.
He sat down, waited for the khansama to go out of earshot, and said, “I’ve made arrangements for the both of us to be invited to The Forts.”
“How could I—” I started to ask, but he was still talking.
“I’m a regular guest there, or I used to be. Once or twice a year I would send Jimmy a telegram to say I had a few free days and suggest we ride after a few pigs. And every so often I’d bring a guest, so it would appear commonplace if I were to bring a friend. That’s what I’ve done. The only question is, you’re good at dressing the part of an Indian man; how are you at English men?”
I considered the possibilities, then suggested, “Someone relatively new to the country, who is coming to Khanpur primarily to look for his missing sister, Mary Russell? His twin sister, shall we say, as they look so much alike.”
“That would do nicely. Would a brother fit with the story you gave in Khanpur?”
I hadn’t really given much of a story in Khanpur, merely fact with some of the details left out. “I never told anyone I had a brother, but I never told anyone I didn’t, either.”
“Then that should be all right.”
“I do a marvellous Oxford undergraduate.”
“It’ll have to be an officer, I’m afraid.”
“Why? Couldn’t it be a trader or an accountant or something? Or a student on a world tour?”
“Any of those would be unusual to find in my company, from the maharaja’s point of view. An officer wouldn’t fraternise with a box-wallah.” The faint scorn in Nesbit’s voice echoed the general attitude towards tradesmen I had found since boarding the liner in Marseilles.
“Becoming an officer will take a lot of coaching.” It would take a week’s practice to deceive a general, although perhaps only twenty-four hours for civilians.
“We have nineteen hours. Jimmy’s sending the aeroplane for us at noon tomorrow.”
I set down my cup smartly. “Then we’d best get to work.”
At precisely mid-day on Friday, the throb of the maharaja’s aeroplane grew in the hot air over Hijarkot, and soon the sleek red-and-white Junkers I had ridden before lowered itself onto the cleared road half a mile from Nesbit’s villa. The pilot was the RAF man I had glimpsed in the Khanpur air strip; he gave Nesbit the handshake of acquaintances, received my introduction, and climbed back behind