The Game

He stood, brushed down his clothing, turned his back, and started walking: east towards the border. I eased the hammer down and took a much-needed lungful of air of my own before pushing past the stunned-looking captain.

I kept the gun on O’Hara’s back all the way to the borders of Khanpur, so it could not be argued that he was escaping of his own volition.

And footsore, famished, and exhausted, we made it back to New Fort a good forty minutes before dawn, to find our drugged chuprassi still snoring gently in his corner.

Before we parted, Nesbit caught my elbow and spoke into my ear. “Would you have shot O’Hara?”

I looked at the man’s features, haggard with fatigue but beautiful still, and I saw only Holmes’ face as the door locked him in. The false moustache shifted on my upper lip as I smiled. “If he’d refused? I honestly don’t know.”

I fell exhausted into bed, half dressed, my legs still twitching with the rhythm of the long miles of jog-trot. But as the first wave of sleep came to carry me away, it brought with it a troubling piece of flotsam.

On first seeing O’Hara, I had been struck by the peculiarly open and unshuttered quality of his eyes; now I recalled where I had seen eyes like those before. They had been in the face of a man Holmes had hunted down in the south of France, a man who preyed on gullible women, to whom he appeared an innocent, friendly, open. Up to the moment his hands closed around their throats.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The horrendous clamour of a laden tea tray came through my door what seemed like minutes after I had shut my eyes. I squinted at the white-clad servant from my tumble of pillows, hating him with a deep passion. Him, I would have shot. Joyously.

“His Highness says, the horses will be ready in one hour,” he informed me, and left before I could find my pretty revolver.

I peeled my moustache from the pillow sourly, and went to assemble Martin Russell from the dregs left behind by the night.

After some thought, I thrust the revolver into an inner pocket, just in case.

Afterwards, thinking back, I realised that I had gone six nights with little sleep, my last uninterrupted rest having been the night before Holmes was abducted. Three nights on the road to Hijarkot, a night with Nesbit preparing to be Martin Russell, and two much-broken nights in Khanpur had left me far from sharp- witted.

Thus it was that I went down the stairs in a fog, walked to the breakfast room and automatically chose foodstuffs from the buffet, wanting only to lean up against a post and go to sleep. It wasn’t until I saw Gay Kaur’s face that I woke up, fast.

“Good Lord, Miss Kaur! What happened?”

The brown face smiled crookedly beneath the swollen lip and the sticking-plaster on her cheekbone. “You sound so like your sister,” she said, and gingerly sipped from her cup of tea.

I pulled myself together. Martin; you’re Martin, I recited fiercely, lowering my voice, resuming my formality, and surreptitiously straightening my spine for its absent uniform. “It’s been the cause of more than one confusing telephone conversation,” I told her. “Seriously, that looks rather nasty. How did you do that?”

“I got in the way of an angry beast,” she said. “Not the first time. I must learn to be more careful.”

The contusions showed no sign of claw, hoof, or tooth; I could not help speculating that the beast had two legs. She changed the subject.

“I understand that you and Captain Nesbit are to be singularly honoured today.”

“Yes? How is that?”

“You didn’t know? Jimmy’s taking the two of you out with him, no one else.”

“I was only told that the horses were being brought out. Pig again?” I thought it slightly out of the ordinary for the maharaja to repeat his sporting activities that soon. Perhaps Nesbit’s presence, and their shared passion, made shooting or cheetah-coursing less appealing.

But Miss Kaur shrugged nervously and said, “I really don’t know. It sounded rather as if he’d got something special arranged.”

With that I recalled the maharaja’s final words to us the previous evening, long hours before. What had it been? Something about the Kadir Cup, and how Britain’s honour will demand that India lose—yes, and it had been followed by the thrown-gauntlet statement, “Let us see what you do with my entertainment tomorrow.”

If we were going ahead with the maharaja’s plans, then it would seem that he had not yet received news of a prisoner’s escape. I ate my eggs without tasting them, trying to envision the details of the cells. Would breakfast have been handed the prisoner, or simply shoved beneath the door? Yes, I decided, the door to Holmes’ cell had certainly been far enough off the stones to allow for a tray to be slid beneath. In which case, O’Hara’s absence might well go undiscovered until the guard went to retrieve the breakfast utensils.

It seemed likely that our day would end abruptly at noon.

Permitting us to creep silently off to our beds.

Slightly cheered by the possibility, and marginally restored by food and coffee, I smoothed my freshly glued moustache and went to face the day’s “entertainment,” my mind not so much forgetting Gay Kaur’s bruised face, as putting it aside.

I walked through the gardens and down the road to the stables, nodding at the guards, seeing no one else, which was slightly unusual. The animals in the zoo seemed restless, the monkeys’ chatter on seeing a human pass louder than usual, their leaps and swings on the high perches nearly frantic. The great African lion loosed its coughing roar every half minute or so, although as I went by its cage, I could see nothing out of the ordinary through the trees. Then at the stables, I found five horses saddled: the white Arab stallion, two bays, and the two nearly matched chestnut geldings that Thomas Goodheart and I had been given the first day. I greeted the syce; he responded with a sickly grin and would neither answer nor meet my eyes.

My skin began to prickle with uneasiness.

Minutes passed, and the gabble of monkeys heralded the approach of Geoffrey Nesbit, his perfect features looking older in the morning sun.

“Jimmy’s not here yet?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I told him, keeping my voice cheerful in the proximity of servants. “I was just going to have a smoke and watch the birds.”

We strolled around the stables to the rise overlooking the great tank, and settled on a half-wall in view of the swans and exotic fowl. A snowy egret picked its way through the reeds, perusing the water, and my companion held a match to the end of my cigarette. I filled my lungs with as much appreciation as act.

“If I’m not careful,” I said, “I’m going to find myself liking these things.”

Nesbit was not interested in my bad habits. “Have you any idea what’s going on?”

“None. But the maharaja’s cousin has a badly bruised face, and the syce won’t talk to me. Something’s wrong. You think he’s discovered O’Hara missing?”

“I went to borrow a stamp from Trevor Wilson. He told me that Jimmy had a letter yesterday, from Delhi. No one seems to know what was in it.”

“If it came yesterday, it could explain his evil temper yesterday night.”

“And if he then found O’Hara gone . . .”

I was suddenly glad for the weight of the revolver against my leg.

“How will that change things?” I asked him.

“Impossible to say. However, if he decides to make another all-nighter of it with me, I don’t think we ought to wait. You play ill. An attack of malaria should do it, you can start looking flushed over dinner and excuse yourself. As soon as it’s dark, make your way over to Old Fort and wait for them to bring Holmes out. The two of you should be able to overcome the guards—I can give you another vial of morphia, if you like, so they stay unconscious for a while, although I haven’t another syringe.”

I stared out over the lake, the forgotten tobacco burning down towards my fingers as I pushed the various