The Empress of India (20 page)

But then the tall man had pulled something out of a case on the other side of the room. Was that a scorpion? By gad, that was a scorpion. So there were scorpions in the dining room. And he’d been going in there and putting his hands in the various cupboards for the past six weeks. And maybe they’d brought the creatures back from upcountry, and he’d been sharing a dining room with them for the last two years. Wasn’t that something to think about?

And the tall man had shoved the scorpion into a sack, and now came the mist again. What was that he had to look at? Oh, yes—the statuette. Couldn’t see anything now, but he’d keep an eye out.

But then the men went about spraying once again, and when the mist
had cleared he could see that the Lady of Lucknow was right up there on her shelf where she’d been.

It was a total of about forty minutes before the scorpion killers pulled the stuffing away from the doors, opened the windows, and declared the room free of dangerous pests. Corporal Pippins entered cautiously. The room smelled of something acidic and something burnt, but he wasn’t sure what. The men waited patiently while the corporal checked the silverware and the plate, and declared all of the brigade’s valuables present and accounted for. Then they nodded pleasantly to him and toddled off, carrying with them their assorted pails, bottles, boxes, and fabric rolls, and a perfect gutta-percha mold of the Lady of Lucknow.

Once outside the fort, Damodar, Harshil, and Farokh accepted the envelope containing the other half of the agreed-upon stipend, shook hands solemnly with the tall sahib and the broad sahib, and headed back to their foundry, where they were to immediately begin the production of fifty copies of the little statuette over the next three days. An arduous task which would require the assistance of most of their family members, but the sahibs needed them in time to ship them aboard
The Empress of India
when she left on Wednesday morning, and the sahibs paid generously.

After they had left, the tall sahib turned to the broad sahib. “I leave you to sort out the details for the next few days,” he said. “I’ll be taking a short trip. Mummer Tolliver will give you any assistance you need. You’ve seen by now how capable the little man is. Get our tickets for the voyage, and make sure the statuettes are crated properly and put aboard.”

Moran stared at the professor. “You are full of surprises,” he said after a moment. “A short trip to where, may I ask?”

“You may,” Moriarty said. “Do you realize that there are no English
translations of any of the more important Indian works of astronomy or mathematics?”

“No,” Moran said. “I didn’t realize that.”

“Disgraceful!” Moriarty said. “Consider that there are Vedic texts on astronomy that are over three thousand years old. Surely they must be worth perusing.”

“You would think so,” Moran agreed. If there was a degree of insincerity in his voice, Moriarty affected not to notice.

“I am going to see Dr. Pitamaha, head of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Calcutta,” Moriarty told him. “I have sent him a telegram telling him to expect me. He is attempting English translations of the
Grahanayayadipaka
by Paramesvara and the
Yuktibhasa
by Jyesthadeva. I am going to offer to help finance his work.”

“The
Grahanayayadipaka
?” said Moran. “Really? Who would have guessed?”

“Bah!” said Moriarty. “See you in two or three days.”

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley

W
ith her boarding pass and stateroom reservation in her right hand, and a large bouquet of Oriental lilies cradled in her left arm, Margaret St. Yves strode up the gangway and boarded the S.S.
Empress of India
. A blue-jacketed purser checked her boarding pass at the head of the gangway, and a white-coated, blue turbaned steward took her stateroom reservation and led her down, up, around, through, over, up again, along, and over again, to her stateroom. She had “A” deck stateroom number 72, two doors over from her father’s number 76. The door between turned out to be reserved for what was in effect a dayroom for the officers of the Duke’s Own, for whom
the pleasures of the ocean voyage were being tempered by their need to be ever vigilant against whatever threats might arise against the two tons of gold stored in the special vault below.

“Here you are, memsahib,” the steward said, pausing at the stateroom door. He pushed it open and stood aside, holding out the door key. “I present you to your key, gracious memsahib. Please to go in now. If there’s anything you require, I am placed at the end of the hallway in a small closet wherein are the towels and linens. My name is Taleem, and I am the cabin steward for this very hallway.”

“My luggage . . .” Margaret began.

“If you will be pleased to enter your stateroom momentarily, you will find that the steamer trunks and such as you wished to partake of in your stateroom are present now, as are the trunks of your companion. The baggage you wished maintained in the hold is yet already in the hold being held. A stewardess should be along shortly to assist you in the unpacking and show you how to operate the new electrical lights which have been recently installed.” He touched the bill of his cap with his forefinger. “I shall continue in my endeavors to aid some of the other passengers now, memsahib. I shall be back directly if you should require of me.”

“Yes, of course.” Margaret tried not to look surprised. The question was, she thought as she watched Steward Taleem scurry off down the corridor, just who was this “companion” whose trunks were already in her stateroom. It might be some mistake. But the last thing her father had said to her when she saw him last about two hours before was, “Dear, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you—” before he got pulled away by his adjutant to deal with the latest in the never-ending crises that always occur in any sort of troop movement. So perhaps . . . She took a couple of steps through the open door and peered cautiously into the stateroom.

On the far side of the room, next to the oversized porthole, a young blond girl was staring into an open steamer trunk with an expression of
distaste. She looked up as Margaret opened the door. “Miss St. Yves,” she said. “How good to see you again so soon.”

“Lady Priscilla!” Margaret said.

Lady Priscilla Montague’s expression of distaste did not change as she eyed the new arrival.

“I’m so glad our fathers arranged for us to share this stateroom for the voyage,” said Lady Priscilla Montague, plopping down suddenly on her unopened steamer trunks with something of a bounce.

“So,” Margaret said tentatively. “We’re to share a stateroom.”

“I’m sure that we shall be the best of friends,” Lady Priscilla declared. Margaret could only see her from the nose up over the open steamer trunk, but both nose and cheeks were flushed with red, which showed even through her Indian tan.

Margaret took two more steps into the room and closed the door behind her. “When anyone says ‘we shall be the best of friends’ to me in that tone of voice,” she said, “I know that she means the exact opposite.”

“Then you have had some experience in this matter?” asked Lady Priscilla sweetly.

“Tell me, Lady Priscilla,” Margaret continued calmly, “how have I managed to offend you so thoroughly in such a brief acquaintanceship? I will be able to make use of the knowledge directly, as there are several people whom I have been trying to offend for quite some time, and they never seem to notice.”

Lady Priscilla folded her arms and stared fixedly at the statuette she had just placed on the bureau: a porcelain representation of a small mouse sitting at a small-mouse-sized school desk, reading a small book. “Offend me?” she said. “Offend me? Ridiculous! How could you possibly offend me? Just because my own father doesn’t trust me to take a simple voyage from Calcutta to London without thrusting someone in my very own cabin to watch over me as though I were a schoolgirl. . . .”

“Actually, you are a schoolgirl,” Margaret pointed out.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“And I am neither your governess nor your duenna. I have no desire to watch over you. I have quite enough trouble watching over myself, thank you.”

Lady Priscilla moved from the steamer trunk to the bed with another bounce. “I would like to believe you,” she said. “Perhaps, with some years of practice, I shall achieve that happy state.”

“Deep breathing might help,” Margaret suggested. “I didn’t even know we were to be cabin mates until I opened the door and found you within. Perhaps there has been some mistake.”

“No mistake.” Lady Priscilla shook her golden locks. “My father said that we’d be sharing a stateroom. That you would act as my chaperone until we reached England.”

“Then it was your father’s doing and none of my own,” Margaret told her. “I did not volunteer for such an assignment and, as a matter of fact, I was not asked.”

“Do you swear it?” Lady Priscilla asked, looking solemnly over at her cabin mate.

Margaret thought of telling her that ladies do not swear, but decided to forgo the opportunity. “I do,” she said solemnly, raising her right hand.

“Cross your heart?”

Margaret crossed her heart.

“My father did not arrange for you to be in this cabin with me so that you could watch over me?”

“He may well have,” Margaret said, “but he said nothing to me about watching over you, and I have no intention of doing so. Perhaps he suggested it to my father, who intended to mention it to me. But Father did not do so, therefore I have neither the inclination nor the authority to be your duenna.”

Lady Priscilla nodded. “Then I’m sorry I assumed otherwise,” she said.

Margaret stretched her hand out to Lady Priscilla. “We will keep
each other’s secrets,” she said, wondering just what sort of secrets Lady Priscilla had that she was so desperate to keep.

One deck below, Professor Moriarty stood in the middle of his small cabin and looked around with distaste.

“It’s the best I could do,” Colonel Moran told him. “All the first class cabins were gone. I was assured that this was—how did the booking agent put it?—the very first class of the second class. Our tickets are actually first class, and entitle us to the use of all the first-class facilities. So we can mingle with the gentry, if we’ve a mind to. I was being facetious,” he added quickly, as Moriarty gave him a less-than-pleased look. “I thought it best if we each took a whole cabin, rather than doubling up. The booking agent wanted us to double up, but I was quite firm.”

“Double up?” Moriarty asked in disbelief, stretching his arms apart and touching both walls.

“They stack the beds,” Moran told him. “All the larger staterooms, even second class, were gone before I booked. It’s this bloody gold. The ship is crowded with the Duke’s Own officers and men, who fancy that they’re guarding it.”

Moriarty raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure that our crates got on board?” he asked.

“I am,” Moran assured him. “And I spread around a little baksheesh to make sure they were put where we could get at them easily.”

“Very good.” Moriarty shook his head sadly. “It seems such a waste.”

“And what would that be?” Moran asked.

“To come all this way merely to turn around and go back after four days. Do you know that the Department of Astronomy at Calcutta University has the archives of the observatory at Burrah? And I barely had time to admire them, much less examine them.”

“A pity,” said Colonel Moran.

Moriarty poked at his bunk tentatively with his walking stick and sat
stiffly on the edge of it. “The Burrah Observatory is over three thousand years old,” he told Moran. “They were taking naked-eye observations of celestial events for over two and a half millennia before the telescope was invented. They have records of transits of Venus from the fifth century before Christ.”

“Fancy that,” said Colonel Moran.

Moriarty rested his chin on the gold handle of his walking stick and gazed up at Moran. “When you and I are long gone,” he said, “the stars will still be in their places, and the planets will still be orbiting majestically around the sun.”

“And a fat lot we’ll care,” Moran commented.

A faint smile flickered across Moriarty’s face. “Sometimes it does one good to contemplate the infinite,” he said. “It serves to put things in their proper perspective.”

“When I want to feel small,” Moran said, “I contemplate my bank account.”

“And when I wants to feel small,” said a voice in the doorway, “I looks in the looking glass.”

Moriarty turned around. His midget-of-all-work was standing in the doorway looking unusually elegant in a new suit of broad green and yellow checks with wide lapels and cuffs on the trousers and jacket sleeves. “Mummer! I wondered where you’d gotten to.”

“They’s got me two decks down, gov,” the mummer said, swaggering into the room. “Down with the cows and the sheep and the pigs and the like.”