The Game - Laurie R. King [46]
“Do you smell smoke?” he asked me.
I moved to the doorway and breathed in the air. “Maybe—yes, I’m afraid I do.”
I stepped out into the hallway, causing a frightened servant to dodge around me and urge the sahibs to “go down please to the lobby right quick” before he continued on to the next room. But Holmes laid his hand on my elbow, and instead of joining the excited guests scurrying towards the central stairs, we ducked against the traffic in the direction of the servants’ stairs. And—clearly Holmes had made a fairly thorough reconnaissance earlier in the day—once within the stairwell, we turned up instead of down.
With many twists and turns through the servants’ passages, we eventually came out at the side entrance of the hotel, where we stepped over the hastily abandoned bags of some late arrival and trotted down the dim alley, past the guest stables and garage until we came out on the next major thoroughfare. We slowed to a stroll among the night traffic, its pedestrians as yet unaware of the nearby alarms, and after a few minutes hailed a rickshaw. The puller did not comment on Holmes’ destination, which proved to be a brightly lit palace of the senses such as one found in any city of size. It catered to Europeans, although I glimpsed a pair of brown faces in the party of men going through the door, and the music that rolled out with the opening of the doors seemed a peculiar amalgam of West and East. The tune rendered by the weird and wailing native instruments was that of a popular song I remembered my father crooning, “A Bird in a Gilded Cage,” although I doubted that he would recognise it without help.
I was just as glad, however, that our path did not take us into the place, but around it. Holmes had clearly laid out this escape, and walked without hesitation down the side street and through a gateway into a yard lit only by a feeble oil lamp. He opened a door, taking my hand to guide me inside, and shut it behind him. I waited in the blackness as his bag hit the ground and his fingers sorted through the contents of his pocket before coming out with a rattling match-box. The box rasped open and with a scrape, light flared. He stepped across to where a handful of fresh candles lay on a tea chest, set the match to one, and dribbled a puddle of wax onto the chest to hold it upright.
We were in what I would have called a cellar, had we not entered it from street level. It was a dank and rustling space about fifteen feet square, with neither windows nor stairs, although the door appeared stout enough. Two walls were heaped with anonymous crates and barrels, on top of which lay a number of string-wrapped, dust-free parcels. The fruit of Holmes’ shopping expedition, I had no doubt.
He wedged a chip of brick under the edge of the door to discourage intruders, and took out his folding knife to slice through the twine of one parcel, tossing its contents in my direction. Most of the garments landed on the dirt floor—thus, I supposed, adding to the verisimilitude of my appearance. From another parcel he took a bottle about five inches in height, containing a thick, dark liquid. This he did not toss, but placed with a scrap of soft cloth on the top of one of the barrels. I removed most of my upper garments, uncorked the bottle, and set about turning myself into a Eurasian.
Without a mirror or adequate light, the walnut-based skin dye was a somewhat haphazard affair, and would need attention the next morning in order to pass close inspection. But for now, by night and heavily clothed, our faces and hands would give the necessary impression. When the dyestuff had worked its way into our pores, Holmes prised the top from one of the barrels, and we washed our skin in the water it contained.
Baggy salwaar trousers of coarse white cotton, knee-length kameez and padded waistcoats over, floppy turbans wrapping our heads and woollen shawls around our shoulders: