The Game - Laurie R. King [159]
The maharaja, wrapped in a dark red dressing-gown, stank of alcohol, but his sleep was that of drugs as well. He stayed limp as we slung him down the pit of the stairs; he remained lifeless across O’Hara’s shoulders through the shadows of the ground-floor arcade. The festivities on the other side of the gardens seemed to have died rapidly away once the maharaja was gone; half the lights had been extinguished, and the only voices I could hear were the querulous calls of the over-worked servants. Still, we kept to the deepest shadows, and made the western wing without raising an alarm.
We shifted our unconscious burden from O’Hara’s back to that of Holmes, and I led the way through mostly unlit passages to that off which the toy room opened. Nearly half the oil lamps had burnt out, including the one nearest the blue door itself. In near darkness, I reached for the doorknob, when the smoothly working mechanism of abduction suddenly hit a rough patch that sent it through the roof.
“Hey,” said a familiar voice. “What’s going on here?”
O’Hara stepped in front of Holmes as if he might conceal a six-foot-tall man with an insensible maharaja on his shoulders, and I reached for my gun, only to freeze when the figure down the hall-way stepped under a lamp, a large Colt revolver in his hand.
Thomas Goodheart.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The tableau held for six long breaths, seven, and then all hell broke loose. Another figure appeared beside Goodheart, dressed in the uniform of a chuprassi with a scarlet turban and an outraged voice.
“What is this thing?” the newcomer demanded in the lilting accents of the Indian, looking from us to him. “You have found dacoits stealing the master’s treasures, oah, sir—”
But to my utter confusion, Goodheart raised his revolver and pointed it, not at us, but at the red puggaree. The servant choked off his words in confusion and stared at Goodheart, as flabbergasted as I.
Tommy started to gesture with his gun, saying “You’ll have to come—” when the man broke, turning on his heel to sprint for the outside door. Without a moment’s hesitation, the American shot him.
Instantly, he turned and said urgently, “You two come fetch him, then stay in that room until I join you.” And without a word of explanation he fled up the passageway and burst outside into the courtyard gardens.
O’Hara and I looked at each other, then he kicked open the toy room door for Holmes and we ran to gather up the chuprassi. The servant had died instantly, shot through the heart. We took him, shoulders and feet, and scurried back to dump him inside the blue door.
“What the hell was that about?” I demanded of Holmes, but he could not enlighten me. I looked down at the dead man, but he, too, could tell me nothing apart from the obvious: that Goodheart had shot him, and not us.
“I think you two should get into the tunnel,” I said.
“I will wait here,” O’Hara said, but I was already shaking my head.
“You’re stronger than I am,” I told him. “Easier for you and Holmes to carry the maharaja five miles than Holmes and I.”
I did not wait for the men to agree, merely ripped the red turban from the dead man’s head and hurried back to where he had fallen, thinking that I might remove the worst of the stains from floor and wall, thus delay a full-scale search of this specific area. I shook out the tightly wrapped fabric and was just kneeling down to scrub at the stains when more gunfire cracked the stillness, followed by shouting voices. Or rather, a shouting voice.
I pinched out the oil lamp over my head, then ventured down the corridor to the nearest window onto the courtyard gardens. There I saw a puzzling sight: Thomas Goodheart, swaying like a foundering sailboat, seemed