The Empress of India (27 page)

“Why is that?” asked Colonel Morcy.

“Why, middle-class morality, that’s why. Middle-class morality would have none of it.”

“Really?” asked Professor Moriarty. “Is it an immoral statue we’re looking at, then?”

“The way I sees it, the immorality is in the eyes of them as looks at the statue, not in the Harlot of Hajipur herself,” Tolliver said, drawing himself up and looking self-righteously around the group surrounding him.

Major Sandiman grimaced. “The, ah, ‘Harlot of Hajipur,’ you say?”

“Not me,” the mummer explained. “I don’t say that. But I’ve been given to understand by them as supplies me with such stuff that thissere lady”—he pointed a thumb at the statue—“is the goddess of what you might call ‘ladies of the evening.’ If you get what I mean.”

“Their goddess?” General St. Yves queried. “This statue?”

“Yes, sir, that’s it. Brings ’em luck, and, eh, clients, and keeps ’em safe. Or so I’m told. There’s a brass copy of thissere lady in the back room of every brothel from Yezd to Rangoon. Or so I’m told.”

“It is a suggestive pose,” added Moriarty, looking at the statue closely
through his pince-nez. “Resembling the passive-receptive postures outlined in the
Kama-Sutra
.”

Major Sandiman frowned. “The
Kama
—”

“An ancient Indian manual of, ah, lovemaking. Very instructive, or so they say,” Moriarty told him.

“And you have brass copies of this very statue?” a thoughtful Colonel Morcy asked the mummer.

“When we gets back to the ship,” the mummer told him, “you can come take a dekko at one, and see for yourself.”

“Yes,” said Colonel Morcy. “That will be nice.”

When Peter and Margaret made their way back toward the steam launch there was a man standing at the bottom of the stairs busy brushing lint off the lapel of his white linen jacket. He looked up as they passed and removed his hat. “Excuse me,” he said, “but are you Inspector Collins?”

Peter turned to him. “I am positively he,” he admitted. “What can I do for you?”

The man looked from Peter to Margaret and back. “Ah . . .” he said.

“It’s all right,” Peter assured him. “This lady’s with me.”

“Right, then,” the man said. He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Peter. “From H,” he said. “Urgent.”

“Ah!” said Peter.

“A pleasure meeting you,” the man said, bobbing his hat in each of their directions. “My name’s Phitts, by the way.” Jamming the hat back on his head, he turned and loped off down the dock to where a small sailboat was tied up. He jumped in, cast off, raised the sail, and waved at them in one continuous motion, and then the boat had caught the breeze and pulled handily away from the dock.

Margaret caught Peter’s arm. “So you’re an inspector,” she said.

“So I am,” he admitted. “We’re all inspectors, except those of us who
are Scouts, or district inspectors, or commissioners. But there’s only three of them.”

“H,” she said.

“My boss,” he told her. “His title is high exalted poo-bah.”

“Short name.”

“Yes.”

“Hadn’t you better open that letter?” Margaret asked. “Or are you tactfully waiting for me to go away?”

“Please don’t go away,” Peter said. “Don’t ever go away.” He ripped the envelope open and took out a folded sheet of paper. For a second he paused, looking at Margaret, who was peering over his shoulder expectantly.

“I won’t look,” she said, and turned her head away.

“I don’t think it will matter,” he told her. He unfolded the paper. “Look,” he said.

She turned back and looked. She saw a jumble of letters. Neatly arranged, but a jumble nonetheless:

GSJCA	QTMAW	RHKGH	ONBFR	RWRGN
KWHRE	OQFAB	GXCTF	BFSTN	DXGRH
OHUMM	LEOTB	RBTHM	JRHAF	MLOEW
EPRIC	TQLYE	OFCDL	TMLOE	WEOBK
QVQCB	KTRRH	LRQDW	GPLTC	PMRWR
TCHVM	FORHR	XQPNB	PRYZ

“Well,” she said. “Very informative. Some sort of code, no doubt.”

“It’s done in what’s called the Playfair Cipher,” he told her. “Safe and simple to use. I’ll have to wait until we get back to the ship to translate it.”

“I thought you said it was simple.”

“Simple but time-consuming,” he explained. “And it uses a key word which changes from time to time. I’ll have to look up this one back on the ship.”

“Oh,” she said, looking disappointed.

“It’s probably quite dull,” he told her. “These things usually are. Of course,” he reflected, “when they’re not dull, they tend to be very exciting indeed.”

Happy Thought
The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.
—Robert Louis Stevenson

T
he Artful Codger came into the second-class lounge at something between a fast walk and a canter and stopped at Pin’s table. His breathing was rapid and his face was flushed. “I seen him,” he gasped.

“Breath deeply,” said Pin. “Relax. You should never run on board a ship; all the books say so. Sit down. Let me pour you a cup of tea.”

Dropping into a seat, the Codger put his hand to his chest and took several slow deep breaths. “He’s back on the ship,” he said.

Pin finished pouring the tea and put the teapot carefully down. “Who is?”

“Who else? Professor Moriarty.”

“Of course he is. Where else would he be? The
Empress
is about to leave port.”

“Yes, but he really is here. I’ve seen him. He was getting off this old side-wheeler. I don’t think he saw me.”

“Are you sure it was him?”

“Tall bloke, stands straight as a lamppost; big head, with them nose-pinching glasses; deep-set eyes, cold as blue ice, looking like they could read what you’re thinking and not liking it much; topper; gold-handled cane.”

“That’s an apt description of Professor Moriarty. Does he know you?”

“I don’t think so, but they do say that the professor knows everything.”

Pin’s eyes widened and he seemed about to say something, but he refrained.

A waiter came by the table and paused, salaamed, bowed, looked obsequious, and wished to know whether the masters would like anything else be brought to them that they might partake of, if it pleases your worship.

They said no. The waiter backed away and left.

“And this is why you were running?” Pin asked.

“Actually . . .” the Codger said, looking embarrassed, “actually I got lost.”

“Lost?”

“Well, it’s a big ship,” he said defensively.

Pin nodded and ran a hand over his sleek, black, well-groomed hair. “So the professor has returned,” he said. “Where has he been?”

“He’s been out with a bunch of folks looking at the elephants, is what they told me.”

“Elephants?” Pin asked, looking suddenly alert. “For transporting gold, perhaps?”

“I thought of that, I did.” He took a breath and added, “Which is why I was running.”

“Ah!” said Pin, and then lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

Cooley the Pup strolled over to the table and joined them, hands
jammed deep in the pockets of his light gray flannel pants. “How’s yourself?” he asked. “I thought you might like to know the professor has rejoined the ship.”

Pin came out of his reverie and looked sharply at his companions. “So I just heard,” he told the Pup. “Off looking at elephants, was he?”

“I hadn’t heard that,” said Cooley. “I heard as he was on some island looking at statues.”

“Maybe,” suggested the Artful Codger, “they was statues of elephants.”

The long, mournful blast of the ship’s horn reverberated through the room.

“We’re about to leave Bombay,” said Pin. “Go down and casually pass in front of the gold vault door every so often. If the captain is as faithful as they say about opening the outer door once we leave port, you should be able to see something.”

“Right enough,” said the Codger. “What am I looking for?”

Pin grinned a tight-lipped grin. “Gold,” he said.

It was early evening when the
Efrit
returned the Elephanta visitors to their ship, and
The Empress of India
was already preparing to depart. The cargo hatches were closed and battened down, the purser was fretting about the few as-yet unreturned passengers, the last of the fresh water had been brought aboard, and the replacements to the crew had been fitted out in fresh uniforms and given their instructions.

Margaret and Peter shook hands decorously, although perhaps their hands remained together rather longer than either of them expected and separated in the main corridor to return to their cabins. Margaret pulled open the door to her stateroom, saw that Lady Priscilla had not yet returned, and flung herself on her bed to consider life. In his cabin Peter sat at the small writing desk and, banishing the image of Margaret as best he could from floating in the air before his eyes, took the
Tauschnitz pocket edition of British poetry from a side pocket of his portmanteau and flipped through it.

By an abstruse process devised by some clerk in the coding office who never had to decode a message as though anything more important than his lunch were at stake, Peter determined that the fourth word in a poem by Dryden was to be the key word for the cipher. On looking it up, he found that the word was “Cleopatra.” Peter made a five-by-five grid of the alphabet on a sheet of lined paper, starting with the letters in “Cleopatra,” and took the letter from his pocket and smoothed it out on the desk:

GSJCA	QTMAW	RHKGH	ONBFR	RWRGN
KWHRE	OQFAB	GXCTF	BFSTN	DXGRH
OHUMM	LEOTB	RBTHM	JRHAF	MLOEW
EPRIC	TQLYE	OFCDL	TMLOE	WEOBK
QVQCB	KTRRH	LRQDW	GPLTC	PMRWR
TCHVM	FORHR	XQPNB	PRYZ