The Game - Laurie R. King [127]
The others began to catch us up, their horses plodding and stained with sweat, and we went through the same shock of introductions with the four of them who had met Mary. With the maharaja’s acceptance, however, the lead was down for them to follow, and I slipped into the rôle of visiting male friend without great difficulty. One of the young women, a newly arrived friend of the novelist Trevor Wilson, even batted her eyelashes at me.
We met for drinks on the terrace, with the sun slanting low over the rooftops behind us and the talk circling about the panther, its ferocity and speed, the bravery of the men approaching it with nothing but sharp sticks. At one point the animal itself was paraded through on a sort of decorated stretcher for our approval. Its sleek hide had been sponged to remove the gore, but I thought that, while the pair of gashes in its shoulders should prove easy for a taxidermist to stitch into invisibility, the great hole in its chest might prove more of a problem, particularly if, as the maharaja clearly did, one regarded a bullet as somewhat shameful.
Perhaps damaged skins were set aside to upholster more furniture.
The sun retreated up the walls, and a thousand small oil lamps were lit for our festivities, tiny earthenware saucers with floating wicks that added an incongruous touch of romance and tradition to the evening. A passing servant asked if I would like another gin and tonic, but I turned down his offer, knowing that we would shortly be off to our rooms to dress for dinner.
However, the maharaja had a surprise up his sleeve. With a flourish, not of trumpets but of his arm, he raised his voice and called us to attention.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have for you a small entertainment, a performance for your amusement and your mystification.”
That was all the warning I had before the tall, black-clad figure of my husband was escorted in from an unlit corner. Holmes had kept his own clothes, I saw, although he wore a Moslem cap instead of the starched turban, and his boots had been replaced by soft native shoes (which meant, damn it, that the knife and pick-locks in his heels were no longer a part of his equipment). I saw with relief that he had not been mistreated—his motions with the mirrored balls were fluid, his posture dignified, the broken English of his patter word-perfect. Whatever the maharaja was doing with him, Holmes seemed happy enough to go along with it for the moment.
He ran through most of the one-man stunts, and if the audience was vastly more sophisticated than the rustic villagers he normally performed for, even the English guests were caught up in the mystery of where objects went when they left his hands, and why they might reappear in unlikely places.
After twenty minutes, the mirrored juggling balls sparkling into nothingness for the last time, he bowed first to the maharaja, then to us, and made as if to leave. But the maharaja would have none of it; he called various people forward to examine the innocent hands of the magician, to pat his sleeves and marvel at the absence of hidden pockets (Holmes was a surprisingly competent tailor, when the need arose). Nesbit and I hung back, but we did not go unnoticed.
“Come,” our host called. Nesbit stepped forward and I reluctantly followed. The prince held up the magician’s hand as if this were the foot of a horse to be examined for stones, and he patted Holmes’ wrists, which showed nothing but brown skin—not nearly brown enough, I saw in alarm; dyestuffs are not readily available inside gaol. Holmes stood impassively under the handling, his eyes meeting mine but giving no sign of recognition—clearly, he had studied the crowd on the terrace from his dark corner and seen me talking with Nesbit.
And then the maharaja said to me, “Do remove your topee, Captain Russell; you’ll be able to see better.” Holmes tensed, his hand making a fist, his eyes darting to the guards as he prepared to fling himself to my protection.
But a topee is not a turban, and I had been my teacher’s pupil before I became my husband’s wife, learning