The Game - Laurie R. King [39]
Sports; maharaja; exotic animals: The unlikely conjunction rang some bells in my mind, but Holmes got the question out first.
“What is the name of this maharaja?”
“They call him Jimmy. Rum chap, a bit, but a great sportsman. He’s the ruler of a border state named—”
“Khanpur.”
Nesbit’s eyes locked onto Holmes over the top of his cup. Then, calmly, he took the last swallow, placed the cup and saucer on the tray, and stood. “Shall we go and look at the garden?”
“Looking at the garden” seemed to be a common ritual in the Nesbit establishment. At any rate, the ground was clear for a circle of thirty yards around the two benches he led us to, benches located in the shade of a tree which had recently been thinned so its inner structure could hide no person, benches facing in opposite directions to cover all approaches. A low fountain played nearby, obscuring our voices.
“You seem to have an interest in the maharaja of Khanpur,” he said as soon as we were seated.
“Not directly, but the name has come to our attention.”
It took a while, the story. Thomas Goodheart and the bison-collecting maharaja who had been at a Moscow gathering attended by Lenin. The defiant words of the drunken Goodheart, and his odd choice of fancy dress, preceded the odder decision to enter Aden with a debilitating hang-over on the day a balcony fell. To say nothing of the interesting coincidence that Khanpur was one of the kingdoms along the northern borders insulating British India from her long-time Russian threat. Holmes even mentioned my missing trunk, although by this time neither of us thought that was due to anything more sinister than inefficiency, or at the most a garden-variety thievery.
Nesbit listened without comment, but with such intensity that I thought he might well be able to recite Holmes’ words verbatim afterwards. At the end, he sat forward with his elbows on his knees, his eyes not seeing the playing fountain while his mind explored the information. Eventually, he sat upright.
“If Goodheart is a known Communist, we probably needn’t worry, although I’ll pass his name on to the political johnnies. As for Khanpur, the state has always been staunchly loyal to the Crown. During the Mutiny, a handful of sepoys fleeing north attempted to pass through the kingdom, carrying with them two English captives, a mother and her young daughter. The then raja, Jimmy’s grandfather, allowed them entrance, but then set up an ambush on the road that passes through two halves of his hill fort. Dumped a thousand gallons of lamp-oil down the hill and set it alight. Killed them all, including the woman, unfortunately, but the child lived and was returned home. By way of recognition of their service, all the Khanpur tribute is remitted annually. And the raja’s rank was raised to maharaja. Khanpur has a seventeen-gun salute, which is big for its size—the girl’s family was important.”
“The Mutiny was a long time ago.”
“The Mutiny was yesterday, as far as every white man in the country is concerned. But it is true, that was the grandfather, and much can change in sixty-seven years. I shall bring this to the attention of my superiors.”
His eyes came back into focus. “Now, as to the reason why you are here. Kimball O’Hara. Mr Holmes, you knew O’Hara, did you not.” It was not a question.
“When he was a boy.”
“By all accounts, the man he became was there from the beginning.”
“The lad was remarkably well suited to The Game,” Holmes agreed.
“Which makes it all the more troubling that he has vanished.”
“How long has it been since he was last heard from?”
“Just short of three years.”
“Three—” Holmes caught himself. “We were told that he had not worked for the Survey in that time, but I had the impression his actual disappearance was considerably more recent than that.”
“It’s only in the past months that we’ve become aware of it. But once we cast back to look for his tracks, the last sure sighting we could come up with was in August of ’21.”
“Where was that?”