The Game - Laurie R. King [51]
“Why do I get the idea that the child is going to take us wherever he thinks we should go?” I asked Holmes in a low voice.
“A most determined infant,” he agreed.
“It’s going to be very difficult, not to give ourselves away in front of him.”
“Hm,” Holmes commented, unconvinced. “I should say that his wits tend more towards the cunning than the analytical.”
I thought privately that the child would have to be remarkably obtuse to spend much time in our company without noticing that one of the “gentlemen” had some very odd habits when it came to private matters, but I said nothing. If the boy’s presence became difficult, we could always drive him away.
Or, we could try.
We turned north, the sun rising on our faces as we walked the road with a million other inhabitants. We were making for Simla, the government’s summer capital and year-round home of the Ethnological Survey of India. Holmes had debated heading south first in order to shake off any possible enemies from our tail, but he had decided that disguise and the sheer number of people on the road ought to be enough, so north it was, with the sun to our right.
Five miles outside of the city we paused to take tea at a roadside café that seemed to double as a motorcar repair shop, hung about with rubber belts and tyre tubes. Holmes wandered away to talk with the mechanics, and when we had finished with our refreshment I was not surprised to find him directing our steps around the back of the garage. There we received the rest of our possessions for the road, left there by Nesbit: a tent of some light but tightly woven fabric with a silken sheen, a pair of sleeping rolls, pots, pans, and paraffin lamp.
Everything a travelling magic show might require.
We kept close eyes on our new assistant, but although he darted to the side from time to time, picking up the odd twig or discarded object, he made no attempt to flee with our possessions. He appeared to have a jackdaw’s love of shiny objects, nearly coming to grief under the feet of a gaily caparisoned elephant when he spotted a silver button about to be trampled into the dust. He darted forward, under the animal’s very belly, and out the other side with his fist raised in triumph; the button he polished on his shirt-front, and hung on a piece of twine from the donkey’s harness.
Being caught up in his own affairs, the boy spent most of his time well ahead of us, which meant that I could continue my language lessons without attracting his questions. In another day or two, I thought, I might even venture the odd phrase in the boy’s direction.
Or perhaps three. I was already beginning to suspect that young Bindra was neither as innocent nor as feeble-minded as he appeared.
Chapter Ten
I had been in India for nearly a week, but only that morning, on foot and beneath the hot blue sky, did I begin to see the country. From the train I had witnessed a dream-like sequence: canals and hamlets; elephants bearing massive loads and camels hitched to wagons; a dead cow in a field, decorated with vultures; a man in homespun dhoti and purple socks wobbling on a shiny new bicycle; an Englishman in khaki shorts solemnly jumping rope on his verandah; a peacock atop a crumbling wall, feathers spread wide in a blaze of shimmering iridescence before his dull and disinterested lady; train stations without number, each packed like sardine-tins with veiled women hugging bundles and kohl-eyed babies, men draped with a thousand goods for sale, cows stealing from the food-sellers, policemen pontificating, and scabby dogs picking up the edges. Just before dusk I had seen a red-eyed sadhu seated cross-legged at a roadside shrine, his forehead smeared with the three white lines of the holy man, his thin body clad only in beads and the scrap of cloth around his loins. At first light the following morning I had seen a group of men in a river, brushing their teeth and washing their heads, while farther out from the