The Game - Laurie R. King [158]
The maharaja’s private quarters lay adjacent to the main gates at New Fort’s easternmost limits. The so-called “gun-room” with its fur walls was to the north of the gates, and according to Nesbit, the prince’s bedroom and private suites were immediately to the south of the gates, reached by a corridor that linked both halves of the wing on the top level. We planned to reach his quarters from the rear, by means of a little-used servants’ stairway at New Fort’s most southeastern corner, which Nesbit had seen but never tried to enter. He thought it might be passable.
It was, but only just. I think, looking back, it was probably the thought of that stairway that kept Nesbit from fighting harder about being tied to the bed. His wounded leg would never have got him up it.
But it did mean that, once we had shinnied up the abandoned stones and pulled ourselves over the gaps, we were in a place no one would have expected to find us. I had gone first, as the lightest and most agile, and now I folded the rope the others had used to traverse the final gap while we discussed what came next.
“It sounds to me as if the maharaja is having a pretty determined party,” I said, in little more than a murmur.
“Which merely means that the Fort will sleep late in the morning,” Holmes replied, his voice deliberately soothing. “Are you ready, O’Hara?”
“Oah yes,” he said. “May the Compassionate One be watching over us all.”
We stole north along the corridor towards the lighted section, there to reconnoitre. On the other side of a bend in the corridor, restoration had taken place: The carving around the doors gleamed; intricate carpets lay on the polished marble; brightly coloured frescoes graced the fresh plaster walls. There were even electrical lights in this section, as if a line had been drawn between the twentieth century and the seventeenth. O’Hara walked down the hall-way, opened a door, and disappeared from sight. We settled ourselves for a long wait.
This portion of the evening’s sortie had caused us the most vigorous argument. The maharaja was rarely alone for more than a few minutes while he was awake. Therefore, our best opportunity for laying hands on the man, short of a pitched battle with his guards, was to take him asleep, or at least alone in his rooms. And if he was not alone, at least the numbers would be few, and presumably any woman he took to his bed would not be armed.
But we couldn’t all three hide in a wardrobe or under his bed. And in the end, O’Hara’s talents, and the fact that he was smaller than either of us, gave him the job. He had the morphia, he could move as silently as a ghost, and heaven knew he had as much patience as might be required. So Holmes and I watched him go, and adjusted the revolvers in our belts, before settling ourselves to wait beyond the reach of the lights. As we waited, my hand kept creeping to my near-naked scalp, exploring the loss, and the freedom.
It is always at least mildly astonishing when plans actually work out, and I was indeed mildly astonished when, an hour later, the maharaja actually appeared, accompanied by two stoney-faced guards and a giggling German girl. The guards took up positions on either side of the door; after a few minutes, however, they looked at each other, and in unspoken accord retreated to the head of the main stairway, standing with their backs to the lit corridor.
I tried not to grin at the picture of O’Hara, silently reciting his rosary and trying to close his ears to the noisy events that had forced the guards’ retreat. It seemed forever before the shrieks of the girl’s laughter faded, and longer before the thuds and sense of movement died away, but in truth, less than an hour after we had come up the derelict stairway, the door nearest us eased open and the girl slipped out. Five minutes later it opened again, and Kimball O’Hara looked out at us.
We were on our feet in an instant. Holmes