The Empress of India (28 page)

Slowly and carefully he wrote out the clear text of the message above the cipher text:

INFOR	MANTV	ERIFI	ESTHA	TXTHU
GXGEX	ESACT	IVEAG	AINBU	TWHER
EISUN	CLEAR	TRANS	FERCA	NCELX
LEDFO	RNOWL	EAVEC	ANCEL	XLEDI
MXMED	IATER	ETURN	TOCAL	CUTXT
AOFXF	ICERE	QUEST	EDXY

Or, removing the nulls and putting the proper spacing and punctuation in, he read:

Informant verifies that thuggees active again, but
where is unclear. Transfer cancelled for now,
leave cancelled. Immediate return to Calcutta
office requested.

As he was transcribing the clear version, Peter heard the ship’s horn sounding its doleful message of farewell to the city of Bombay. He could, he supposed, swim ashore, but that seemed a bit drastic. The next place he could leave the ship would be Suez, in about five days. The Thuggee hunters would just have to do without him for a bit longer. He thought of the telegram he’d like to send from Suez: DO YOU STILL NEED ME STOP THERE’S THIS YOUNG LADY . . .

No, he didn’t suppose that’s what he’d actually send.

The Empress of India
pulled out of Bombay Harbor accompanied by two Royal Navy steam frigates and a motley flotilla of sailing craft. Lady Priscilla returned to her stateroom looking flushed and happy and insisted on telling Margaret all about her day’s adventures with Lieutenant
Welles and the wonderfully near-sighted Mrs. Bumbery, who was much more interested in shopping in the bazaar than chaperoning her two charges.

Curious, Margaret thought, she had no impulse at all to tell Lady Priscilla about Peter Collins, even though his image crowded most other thoughts from her brain. It wasn’t that she and Priscilla weren’t such close friends, although they actually weren’t, but that she didn’t want to share Peter with anyone, not even verbally, not yet.

Professor Moriarty took his pince-nez from his waistcoat pocket, polished the lenses with a bit of flannel, and adjusted them on the bridge of his nose. “I think it went well,” he said.

“You do?” Moran asked, looking around the first-class lounge and signaling for a waiter.

Moriarty nodded. “We have planted the seed,” he said. “It will sprout and grow into a bitter weed.”

Colonel Moran looked at his companion in feigned admiration. “My, how you do talk,” he said. “A ‘bitter weed’ indeed. And just how will this profit us?”

Moriarty leaned back in his chair and regarded Moran over the top of his pince-nez. “You and I,” he said, “have different approaches to the world around us. Let us take, for example, the matter of dealing with other men. We both would try to persuade them to do our bidding, but you would use a blunt object atop the head, or the threat of one, where I would use superior knowledge and what the American philosopher William James would call ‘psychology.’ ”

Moran frowned. “Is that some sort of insult?” he demanded.

“Not at all,” Moriarty assured him. “I think what I’m commenting on is a difference in outlook. I don’t doubt your native intelligence. You made quite a good living playing cards for several years, I recall, and that
demands a fine intuitive mathematical skill and a quick wit.”

“It does,” Moran agreed. “But when possible I much prefer the direct approach. I confess it. It makes no sense to me to do otherwise.”

A waiter with a well-scrubbed face, dressed in new and spotless whites, came to the table, bowed, scraped, groveled a bit, and took their order: gin and tonic for Moran and a cognac for Moriarty.

“The staff has gotten a bit obsequious, have you noticed?” Moran asked. “It’s all ‘Would the sahib like this?’ or ‘Can I bring the sahib that?’ or ‘Let me brush the sahib’s jacket off, pliz’ or ‘It would be an honor for me to shine the sahib’s splended black boots.’ It’s those new people that came aboard in Bombay. And they all have this smile that isn’t a smile pasted across their faces.”

“They were probably hired just for this passage,” Moriarty surmised, “and they hope to keep their jobs past the one trip. Even the meager pay offered by the Anglo-Asian Star line to its waiters and stewards is probably triple what they could make at home. If, that is, they could find jobs at all.”

“Well, all that bowing and scraping—they make me nervous,” Moran said.

Moriarty chuckled as the waiter brought the drinks, groveled a bit, and left. “Turnabout,” he said. “I’m sure you make them nervous.”

Mummer Tolliver appeared at the table in a brand-new suit of many colors—mostly grays and greens—and straddled a chair. “Evening,” he said. “I has a favor to ask of you, Professor.”

“If it is in my power to grant it to you,” Moriarty told him, “it is yours.”

“What?” asked Moran in mock astonishment. “Without even knowing what it is?”

“Mr. Tolliver would not abuse my trust,” Moriarty said. “Any more than I would abuse his. There is, after all, honor among, ah, close friends.” He turned back to the mummer. “What do you need?”

“Well, it’s like this, Professor,” Tolliver said, looking a little embarrassed. “Have you heard as how they’re opening up the ballroom in a day or so?”

“No,” the professor told him. “I hadn’t heard.”

“Well, they are. They was fixin’ the floor, laying down new parquet flooring and such, and now they’re done with the fixin’.”

“Disgraceful!” said Colonel Moran. “I shall write to the
Times
about it. The idea of traveling aboard a ship without a functioning ballroom. Why didn’t they put the new flooring in whilst we were at dock, I ask you?”

“It’s taken a gang of seven men two weeks to do it,” Moriarty commented. “That’s two weeks of paying wages and keeping steam up without going anywhere, if they were to do it at dock. It’s more profitable for the company to keep the ship working while they do minor repairs.”

“I thought you didn’t know about this here ballroom work,” Colonel Moran said querulously.

“I like to know everything I can about everything there is,” said Moriarty. “I merely meant I hadn’t heard that they’d finished the job.”

“They’ve finished it off near enough so’s they’re going to have a little show on the stage and some dancing after,” the mummer said. “And so I want your help, Professor.”

“You’d better ask Moran,” Moriarty said with a chuckle and a gesture. “He’s assuredly a much better dancer than I. Have him join you.”

Moran recoiled a few inches. “Not on your life,” he said. “I’m not a dancing master sort of gent, if you don’t mind.”

“I’m capable of dancing quite nicely all on my lonesome, thank you very much,” said the mummer, twisting his face into the grotesque frown of a greatly insulted man. “That ain’t nohow it.”

“Then how may I aid you?” Moriarty asked.

“I’m going to perform a few songs at thissere show they’re putting on, and I’d be properly pleased if you’d accompany me.”

“The professor—sing?” Moran asked. This time the astonishment was not mock.

“On the piano,” the mummer added quickly. “I would like you to play the piano for me, and perhaps join me in a little patter; a bit of back-and-forth banter, don’t you know. Which banter we will carefully work out aforehand, o’course.”

“Well, Mummer, what a nice thought,” said Moriarty. “It’s been a while since I trod the boards.”

“The stage lost a great talent when you decided to become a mathematics professor, if you don’t mind my saying so, Professor,” said the mummer.

“What do you know—who would have guessed?” asked Moran. “The piano, no less.”

Moriarty turned to him with an unreadable expression. “I’m also a virtuoso on the bassoon,” he said.

Moran stared at him, his mouth open. “I don’t know whether you’re putting me on, Professor,” he said. “But I reckon it don’t much matter if you want to have your little joke.”

“No, I don’t suppose it does,” Moriarty said. “How are you doing in the distribution of our lovely Lady, Mummer?”

“I’ve put out a smatter of the statues where they’re sure to be noticed, as you suggested, Professor.”

Colonel Moran swirled his gin and tonic around in the glass and stared at the professor. “How’s that?” he asked. “Perhaps, as we’re this far along, you should explain just what it is you expect to accomplish with this sleight-of-statue business. We can’t switch them out for the real one, ’cause that would be stealing and contrary to the agreement.”

“True,” Moriarty agreed.

“We could buy the thing from them, if they’d sell it. That would be legal and proper. But I don’t see how having a hundred of our own is going to get us any closer to that desirable consummation. Maybe we
could get them to buy a couple of copies from the mummer here, but where would that take us?”

Moriarty looked thoughtfully at the portrait of Queen Victoria on the far wall. “What we are endeavoring to do,” he told them, “is to convince the officers of the Duke of Moncreith’s Own Highland Lancers that the statuette they call the Lady of Lucknow would be a disgraceful and improper object for them to bring back to Castle Fitzroberts. After all, their wives and children—including daughters—dine at the officers’ mess at least three times a year.”

“But it’s been there for years,” Moran objected.

“Ah, yes. But for those years they were in ignorance. Now their eyes have been opened. With the proper assistance they shall purge themselves of this, ah, half-century lapse in judgment.”

Moran thought it over. “If you say this trickery will accomplish the desired result,” he said, “then let’s get on with it. I will happily watch and learn.”

Moriarty nodded. “It stands an excellent chance of doing the job.”

“And ain’t nohow illegal,” said the mummer. “Not as I can see.”

Moran nodded. “And that’s what counts, isn’t it? I’ve never been overly enamored with morality, that I’ve noticed.”

“Nor legality, either, as I recall,” Moriarty added.

Colonel Sebastian Moran looked insulted. “I’ve never done anything just because it was illegal,” he insisted. “There has to be some monetary incentive.”

These are much deeper waters than I thought.
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A
n evening’s entertainment in the newly reopened ballroom was scheduled for the second day out from Bombay. Most of the entertainers had been recruited from among the passengers themselves except for a trio of sailors who were rehearsing traditional sailors’ chanties (the bowdlerized versions) and Third Officer Beagle, who was going to play the mandolin and sing doleful songs about lost love. Doleful songs about lost love were very popular.

The highlight of the evening, according to the daily bulletin posted in various places about the ship, was to be Mamarum Sutrow in his very-first-ever public performance as “Mamarum the Great, Prestidigitator and Magician Extraordinaire.”