The Game - Laurie R. King [74]
I looked down at my arms, trying not to think too closely about the coming ordeal. “What can we do about my colour?” I asked. “And I shall have to have something other than homespun salwaar kameez to wear.”
“I brought with me the things you left at the hotel,” Nesbit told me. “And I have the necessary bleaching materials for your skin and hair.”
“Very sure of yourself, weren’t you?” I said, but he was not about to repeat his mistake.
“Merely relying upon your professionalism, Miss Russell.” His boyish grin was irresistible.
Chapter Fourteen
I stayed on that night at the Viceregal Lodge after Holmes left, having been given a room considerably more luxurious than our hotel in the native bazaar. In the end, however, I spent little time in the room itself, and many hours in the marble bath-room, scraping some of the brown from my face and hands and turning my black hair back into a substance the colour and, alas, texture of straw. Dawn found me damp, raw, jaundice-skinned and red-eyed from the combination of chemical fumes and lack of sleep. And because Nesbit and I agreed that the fewer people who witnessed this transformation the better, I saw no servants until one brought me a breakfast tray at seven o’clock. He was followed shortly by Nesbit, who apologised for the early hour, and ushered in a pair of the staff carrying not only my things from Simla but the bags I had abandoned in Delhi.
“I see the hotel didn’t burn to the ground,” I commented. “Coffee?”
“Thank you. And no, it was but a smokey collection of oil-soaked rags in a cellar stairway.”
“The alarm was the thing.”
“If we assume that the fire was deliberately set and aimed at you two, yes. However, even if it was not an accident, that same stunt has been pulled at two other hotels in the past year. An hotel emptied of fleeing foreigners makes rich grounds for a burglar.”
I handed him his coffee without comment.
“The Goodhearts plan to leave for Khanpur today,” he said, but when I set down my cup with alacrity he added, “however, I fear they will find that their porters are infected with the current intransigent attitude of the Indian working classes, and are holding out for more pay.”
“You talked the workers into going out on strike?” A gambit Mycroft would be proud to claim.
“Not precisely. But one of my agents filled their ears with sedition. And, incidentally, their bellies with strong drink.”
“Leaving them too hung-over to work.” He was good; his humble smile told me that he knew it.
“They should be fully restored to the maharaja’s services by Monday.”
“That gives me two days in which to ingratiate myself. Should be plenty. Thank you.”
“I have also arranged for a durzi to come here and provide you with two or three new garments for your time in the palace, and a shoemaker waits downstairs to measure your feet.”
My toes cringed in anticipation of the native craft, but there was always the leprous footwear, and a pair of formal slippers in my bags if I needed those. He drained his cup, preparing to leave, but first I had a question.
“What did you mean yesterday, that O’Hara counted his steps on Tibetan prayer-beads?”
“Oh, yes. It’s a thing the ‘pundits’ do, when surveying. The standard Tibetan prayer-beads hold 108 beads, along with two subsidiary strings of five each. If one removes eight, the rosary appears the same, but an even hundred becomes quite useful for survey purposes: One bead for each hundred steps, ten thousand steps to a circuit; with the side-beads a man can survey a small country. Assuming the length of his steps is unchanging.”
“I see.” I tried to imagine keeping track of steps while carrying on a conversation, and maintaining perfect distance on each stride; I failed.
When Nesbit left, he took with him the débris from the enlightenment of skin and hair so as not to provide fodder for below-the-stairs gossip. As I struggled to bring my straw-like mane under control, I made a mental note to purchase some sort of oil in the town to keep the strands from snapping off entirely. A short session with the