corner. Holmes had kept his own clothes, I saw, although he wore a Moslem cap instead of the starched turban, and his boots had been replaced by soft native shoes (which meant, damn it, that the knife and pick-locks in his heels were no longer a part of his equipment). I saw with relief that he had not been mistreated—his motions with the mirrored balls were fluid, his posture dignified, the broken English of his patter word-perfect. Whatever the maharaja was doing with him, Holmes seemed happy enough to go along with it for the moment.
He ran through most of the one-man stunts, and if the audience was vastly more sophisticated than the rustic villagers he normally performed for, even the English guests were caught up in the mystery of where objects went when they left his hands, and why they might reappear in unlikely places.
After twenty minutes, the mirrored juggling balls sparkling into nothingness for the last time, he bowed first to the maharaja, then to us, and made as if to leave. But the maharaja would have none of it; he called various people forward to examine the innocent hands of the magician, to pat his sleeves and marvel at the absence of hidden pockets (Holmes was a surprisingly competent tailor, when the need arose). Nesbit and I hung back, but we did not go unnoticed.
“Come,” our host called. Nesbit stepped forward and I reluctantly followed. The prince held up the magician’s hand as if this were the foot of a horse to be examined for stones, and he patted Holmes’ wrists, which showed nothing but brown skin—not nearly brown enough, I saw in alarm; dyestuffs are not readily available inside gaol. Holmes stood impassively under the handling, his eyes meeting mine but giving no sign of recognition—clearly, he had studied the crowd on the terrace from his dark corner and seen me talking with Nesbit.
And then the maharaja said to me, “Do remove your topee, Captain Russell; you’ll be able to see better.” Holmes tensed, his hand making a fist, his eyes darting to the guards as he prepared to fling himself to my protection.
But a topee is not a turban, and I had been my teacher’s pupil before I became my husband’s wife, learning to my bones that half a disguise is none at all. I lifted my topee, smoothed my regulation officer’s haircut with my other hand, and bent forward obediently to witness the lack of tricks up the magician’s sleeve.
The moment my short-cropped, pomade-sleek, unquestionably masculine hair passed beneath his nose was the closest I’ve ever seen Holmes to fainting dead away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The magician was led back into the palace, either escorted or under guard, according to the eyes that watched him go. The rest of us drifted away to dress for dinner. My clothing had been ironed and either folded away or hung in the spacious wardrobe, and the safety razor and shaving mug I had borrowed from Nesbit were laid out in the bath-room, ready to lend the verisimilitude of smooth cheeks to my appearance. I launched into the laborious process of donning a man’s formal attire, fumbling with the studs and cursing under my breath at the tie, working for just the correct touch of insouciance. The indicators of quality in a human male are more subtle than those of the female, hence all the more essential to hit it right. Hair combed but not plastered; shoes of the highest quality and shined to a mirror gloss, but clearly not new; fingernails clean but not pampered. When the knock came on my door, I presented myself with all the nervousness of a debutante at her Court presentation.
Nesbit ran his eyes over me, coming up with approval and a trace of amusement, which made me glad, that he was beginning to get past his dislike of the clandestine impetus for our invasion of Khanpur. He did not care for spying on his friend, but he would do so at the top of his bent.
“Shall we go?”
“I didn’t hear the bell.”
“Time for a drink before,” he suggested, and Martin Russell followed him agreeably down to the billiards room.
The atmosphere of the palace had shifted in my absence, although I could not lay my finger on the how or why. Mrs Goodheart had left, off to Bombay to see her “Teacher,” taking Sunny with her; that accounted for some of the change. And although Gay Kaur was there, her hands trembling as she lit a cigarette, I saw neither Faith nor Lyn, who had seemed to me steadying forces in the maharaja’s menage.
For one thing, we seemed to be heavily weighted to the masculine now, the three flighty German girls gone, a couple of visiting wives returned to their homes. The feminine exodus had left behind eight rather hard-looking females who would only by the furthest stretches of chivalry be termed “ladies,” two of whom I thought I recognised from the
We didn’t actually make it as far as the billiards room, not with drinks being served on the terrace. We were standing with our glasses in our hands and a couple of flirtatious women in our faces when Thomas Goodheart came onto the terrace, spotted me, and stopped dead. I carefully took no notice of him, bending instead to listen to the witticism of the painted lady, but he certainly took notice of my every action. After a few minutes he brought his drink over to where Nesbit and I stood.
“Hello, Captain Nesbit,” Goodheart said, although he was watching me as he spoke. “I didn’t know you were coming to Khanpur.”
“Good evening, old chap,” Nesbit said, pumping the American’s hand in greeting. “And I didn’t realise you were still here. I don’t see your charming sister. Or your mother.”
“No, they’ve gone to meet Mama’s friend. I stayed on to . . . I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said, although he didn’t sound at all sure of it.
“Captain Martin Russell, old friend of mine,” Nesbit told him. We shook, and I arranged a somewhat tired smile on my face.
“From your reaction I take it that you, too, have met my twin sister. Whatever she did, I probably don’t want to know.”
Nesbit’s ease and my hearty masculinity completed what the hair-cut and false moustache began, and Goodheart, like the others before him, began tentatively to accept this peculiar coincidence. I felt various eyes on me during the evening, but my mask did not slip, and by the evening’s end, I was Captain Russell, not Miss.
After dinner we were again entertained by
I kept my place, grateful that I was not on the outside and thus a target of one of the sinuous women, and it was with huge relief that I saw them leave: It would have been exceedingly awkward had the evening degenerated into a whole-scale orgy then and there. When the group rose to adjourn in the direction of billiards or cards or the smaller-scale orgy that no doubt was scheduled for elsewhere, I made my excuses and headed for the doors.
Unfortunately, Nesbit was not with me. The maharaja had claimed him early, kept him by his side, and looked to be intent on keeping him now. I met his eyes across the room as I left, an exchange that said without words that he had no idea when he might join me. I sat for a while in the fresh air of the garden, making a display of smoking a cigarette through, then went upstairs to my quarters to wait for Nesbit. As I passed, I offered a cigarette to the
I waited a very long time.
When Nesbit came, there was no missing it. Scuffles, loud grumbles, and a stifled burst of laughter preceded him down the corridor; his door slammed back, and a minute later a crash came, followed by more hilarity. I pulled pyjama bottoms and a smoking jacket over my clothes and went into the hall-way. Three servants were backing out of Nesbit’s door, looking amused until they spotted me and went obsequious again.
“Is the old man all right?” I asked the one assigned to squat at our door.
“Oah yes, he has merely taken much drink.”
“Thanks for getting him here in one piece,” I said, and absently distributed cigarettes to all four, then let myself into Nesbit’s room, closing the door behind me.
