The Game

head and feet and the spare two lighting the way with candles, we transported him through the belly of the hill, sweating and cursing, and no doubt bruising him all over. But the maharaja didn’t complain, not in his condition, and the necessarily slow rate of progress made it possible for me to repeat my question to Goodheart, at the fore of the procession. This time I received an answer.

“So, who are you?”

“Tommy Goodheart, travelling through India with his somewhat dotty mother.”

“But something else as well.”

“Yes. You see, when I was at Harvard, one of my friends had an uncle who is high in the War Department. Military Intelligence. He told me that I had such a superb poker face, I mustn’t waste it. And so I played along with him, went to a couple of Red meetings, even got myself arrested once—what a lark. Then when I graduated, and he found out I was going to be travelling in Europe, he called me in and gave me a serious talk.

“Our government believes that the Soviet Union is a spent force, militarily. We’ve been helping them rebuild their factories, giving them food, in the hopes that they might stay where they are. I mean to say, one only has to look at a map to be a bit nervous about the Reds, don’t you think? There’s a considerable acreage there.

“So he sort of suggested that if I went in that direction, I might just keep my eyes open. Nothing formal, you know? The U. S. of A. as a whole doesn’t have much of an interest in Intelligence—we seem to think it’s what the Brits would call ‘unsporting.’

“But when I got to Russia, I found the factories looked just fine, and there are an awful lot of healthy-looking soldiers. And then I’ve been told that the Soviets are buying guns and planes from the Germans. A whole lot of planes.

“I’d guess this uncle of my friend’s feels even more jittery after the last few months, what with your new government and all. Too many comrades make an outsider feel a mite uncomfortable. Although truth to tell, I haven’t been in touch with him since I left Europe, so I’m sort of playing it all by ear, here.”

“A one-man Intelligence operation,” Holmes commented from his position at the maharaja’s shoulders. He did not, however, sound disbelieving, and I had to agree with him: It made a certain amount of sense that the young man was independent, rather than under the control of some organised group.

“Did you arrange for that balcony to fall on us in Aden?” I asked Goodheart.

“Balcony? Is that what happened to you? Good Lord, no.”

I listened carefully, and could not hear a lie, but as I was at the rear, I could not see his face. His poker face. “What about the hotel fire in Delhi?”

“Ah. Well, there wasn’t really a fire. That is, there was, but it sort of . . . got out of hand.”

“And my missing trunk, off the boat?”

“Well, yes, I am terribly sorry about that. I tried to work some way to have it returned to you, but then you disappeared from the hotel. I only arranged to have it mislaid for a while. It seemed to me that searching your luggage would be one way of finding out if you were Russian spies.”

At that, all three of us stopped dead to stare at his back. At our sudden silence, he turned and saw our expressions. “Really!” he protested. “I’d been told that the most dangerous Bolsheviks were those that didn’t look like the enemy. And I couldn’t see the two of you travelling to India for any of the usual reasons, you just didn’t fit in. So I thought, maybe . . .” His voice died away in the tunnel.

Then O’Hara began to laugh. It started with a snort, then merged into giggles, and in a minute he had dropped his half of our prisoner and collapsed into uncontrolled merriment. Holmes, too, was grinning widely, and despite the vast inconvenience this man’s amateur sleuthing had caused me, even I had to grin. O’Hara giggled, repeating to himself, “Bolshevik spies! Sherlock Holmes a Russian spy!”

Goodheart looked vastly embarrassed. “It’s . . . I know. It was stupid of me, and I’d better give up this spy business before I do something really dangerous. So anyway, when I saw you with Jimmy, I figured you must know what you were doing, and I’d better throw my lot in with you. Um, can I ask, where are you taking him?”

The simple question triggered another paroxysm of mirth in O’Hara, and he began to choke, tears seeping from his eyes. I finally took pity on the American.

“As you said, we’re arresting him—taking him to Delhi to answer for his crimes. If the Army has to come in after him, a lot of people will die unnecessarily.” The original summons to Delhi, of course, the letter that had set off the maharaja’s final madness, had concerned the disappearance of the neighbouring nawab’s daughter—a sin which seemed less and less likely to be laid to his account. But that summons had been sent before the contents of the godowns came to light; once Nesbit’s report reached his superiors, a stern letter would not be deemed sufficient. I was hit by a brief vision: serried ranks of Tommies marching up the road to Khanpur, while just over a rise lay a phalanx of those machine- guns I had seen, draped and oiled and waiting.

“Is this kind of arrest legal here?” Goodheart asked, then hurried to explain, “Not that I mind, if it’s not. I’d just like to know.”

“Probably not,” Holmes said.

“Oh. Well, all right. How can I help?”

“You can take his legs for a while, since O’Hara seems to have lost his strength.”

Goodheart and I took a turn lugging our royal prisoner, and conversation lapsed. When we switched over again, twenty minutes later, he caught his breath and then asked, “How do you plan on getting him out of Khanpur?”

“Carrying him.” Holmes said it sharply.

“You could take some horses from the stables.”

“There are a dozen or more syces living at the stables,” I explained. “The way we came, cross-country, we may not be noticed until the first farmers rise.”

“I see. And that goes against borrowing a car, as well.”

“Doubly so, considering the terrain between here and the border.”

“Of course.” We went on for a while in silence, and then he said diffidently, “And I’d guess the airplanes are guarded, too.”

“Probably. Plus there’d be the small problem of flying it.”

“Why would that be a problem?”

We stopped again to stare at him, but none of us were laughing this time.

“Are you saying you could fly one of the maharaja’s aeroplanes?” Holmes demanded.

“Pretty much any of them, I’d guess. If there was fuel,” he added. We looked at one another, then picked up the maharaja and continued.

We made the lower door shortly after three A.M., arms stretched and shoulders aching, Goodheart’s head bleeding from two or three encounters with the low roof, our bellies empty and our throats parched. I distributed leathery chapatis and we shared out a bottle of water, chewing and swallowing and feeling the cold seeping its way into our tired muscles. As we sat on our haunches, the man at our feet stirred, and Holmes bent to feel his pulse and look under his eyelids. Wordlessly, O’Hara handed him the needle and morphia bottle, and Holmes slid another injection into our captive’s arm.

As the prince dropped more deeply into his sleep, I took a final swallow of water and asked, “What is our decision? Five miles to the border, or two to the air field?”

“With four backs to carry it, the load is eased,” O’Hara said. “I would choose the silent way.”

“I agree,” I said, getting my vote in so as not to be the last voice. “There are too many variables the other way: Are the aeroplanes fuelled up; are they unguarded; can we get past the stables without waking the syces?” I also wondered, but did not ask aloud, Does this wealthy American dilettante actually know how to pilot the things? And more to the point, will he—or is he waiting for an opportunity to stab us in the back? Yes, he distracted the guards back in the Fort, but . . .

Holmes nodded, albeit hesitantly. “The way we came is slower, but would appear to involve less risk.”

The Buddhist member of our conspiracy summed up the decision, making it sound like a philosophical dictum: “The simple path is best.”

I did not know how simple it was going to be, staggering across the countryside with a royal personage across our backs and the sun fast coming up to the horizon, but I had no wish to spend the day in this dark, cramped, and poorly provisioned place. I folded the last of the chapatis back into my rucksack, and we were ready.