The Empress of India (29 page)

Chairs were set up in the ballroom, which had a stage at one end and was used for such entertainments. Electrical footlights and spotlights had been installed to illuminate the stage, and the chandeliers over the audience also held electrical bulbs capable of being dimmed slowly until
they were out. This modern electrical lighting was, for much of the audience, as much of a novelty as anything they might see onstage. After the performance the chairs would be struck and the ship’s orchestra would play for the passengers to dance far into the night.

Most of the first- and second-class passengers and those among the ship’s officers and crew who didn’t have other duties had filled the room by seven, when the foolishness was scheduled to begin.

The first performer was a large woman in a copious pearl-gray dress singing about her “Willie,” accompanied at the piano by a small, thin woman in black, wearing a hat with a large feather. The bobbing of the small woman’s head as she played caused the feather to come loose from its moorings and droop in front of her left eye. She blew it out of the way with a well-placed puff of air until, two bars later, it fell again. Again the puff of air, and again . . .

The audience was soon holding its collective breath in anticipation of each fall of the feather and, when the song came to an end, rewarded the performers with rapturous applause and even some cheering from a pair of eight-year-olds at the front. The ladies were startled at this, and very pleased. The singer’s husband, who was in the audience, never dared tell her the reason for their great success.

The sailors came next, three hearty young men singing “Hearts of Oak” and “Blood Red Roses,” with great volume and enthusiasm, and bashfully accepting their applause.

Peter and Margaret sat in the back row next to Lady Priscilla and her subaltern suitor and watched the show with divided interest. To Margaret’s eyes, Lady Priscilla was almost bubbling with suppressed excitement, while Lieutenant Welles seemed a mite subdued and worried. Sometime while the handsome white-tied young violinist was playing Pablo de Sarasate’s “Fantasy on Martha,” with his buxom and overly made-up mother at the piano, Lady Priscilla murmured something about taking a stroll on the promenade deck, and she and Lieutenant Welles slipped out of their seats and left the room.

“I worry about her,” Margaret whispered to Peter.

“I would say you should worry about him,” Peter replied softly. “I think that young lady can take care of herself.”

The next on stage was Alfred “Mummer” Tolliver in his neatly pressed red-and-white-checked suit, accompanied on the piano by Professor James Moriarty, in black tie and tails.

Sitting on the far right, about halfway along the files of chairs, were Dr. Pin Dok Low, in his disguise as a minor European nobleman, and his two companions. When Moriarty came out and sat at the piano, Pin leaned forward in his seat and intoned, “Professor Moriarty!” as though the name itself were a curse. “The Napoleon of crime, and he sits there like a respectable citizen. The man’s gall has no end.”

“You ain’t no slouch in the crime department yourself, Pin,” murmured the Artful Codger.

Pin turned to glare at him as the mummer began addressing the audience.

“Evening, all,” said the little man. “I’m going to sing for you a couple o’ songs what me father taught me. ’E used to sing ’em in the music halls ’imself, ’e did—till the ushers threw ’im out.” He struck a pose. “Maestro, please!”

Moriarty played a few odd-sounding chords, peered closely at the sheet music on the piano in front of him, and played a few more. The mummer opened his mouth to sing—and then closed it again. “No, no,” he yelled at the pianist, “that ain’t it.”

Moriarty pointed at the sheet music. “This is what you gave me to play, little man, and this is what I’m playing.”

“ ‘Little man,’ is it?” The mummer staggered, visibly hit by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Straightening up, he bellowed, “I’ll have you know I’m taller than I look!” He faced the audience and assumed his singing pose again. “Let’s take it from the top.”

Moriarty began again: the same distressing chords.

The mummer strode over to the piano, hoisted himself up on it, and
walked across the closed top until he was standing over the keyboard. He looked down at the sheet music. Then, with an exaggerated sigh, he reached down and turned the music over end-for-end. Jumping off the piano, he returned to center stage. “It was upside down,” he confided to the audience. “Let’s try it one more time.”

Moriarty studied the newly righted sheets for a second, and then commenced playing again and the mummer listened carefully and nodded. “That’s more like it,” he said. He struck his pose, waited for a few beats, and began:

“As we drive to the Derby in a four-in-hand, a four-in-hand, a four-in-hand As we drive to the Derby in a four-in-hand . . .”

After the first two verses, he interrupted the lyric for a soft-shoe shuffle, which got wider and higher and more energetic every moment, until it seemed that the stage could hardly contain the little man. The man wielding the follow spotlight had trouble keeping him in its beam.

And then the music stopped and, instantly, so did the mummer: frozen in motion, one foot in the air, one arm outstretched. After holding the pose for a few seconds, he folded himself into a bow and swept his arm out to the audience before scampering off the stage.

“The little chap’s done that before,” Peter murmured to Margaret through the applause.

She nodded. “He is certainly energetic.”

Lady Priscilla and her beau returned to their seats just then. Was her face a little more flushed than when she left? It was hard to tell in the subdued light. And besides, Margaret reminded herself, strictly speaking it was none of her business. As she had assured Lady Priscilla on the first day of this voyage, she was not her stateroom mate’s keeper.

The lights came up briefly, and then dimmed again. And then—magic!

A curtain toward the rear of the stage was raised to reveal the
painted backdrop of an open square in an Indian bazaar, the painting so lifelike that you felt you could walk up to it and feel the hard-packed earth under your feet, touch the wooden stalls, fondle the fresh fruit on one stand, smell the dried fish on another. So lifelike that it took a moment to realize that the table against one of the stalls, covered with a variety of not-quite-recognizable objects of brass and lacquered wood and ivory, was half painting and half actual table, jutting out from the backdrop.

Mamarum the Great came out from stage left. He didn’t look quite as short (platform shoes?) or as tubby (perhaps a girdle?) as Margaret remembered. Indeed, in his gold and white kurta with the wide red sash and pointy red shoes, he looked handsome and dignified. He bowed at the audience and several scattered people applauded for a few seconds. He smiled and stood motionless until the applause and the nervous coughs had died out. Then he reached to the table behind him and picked up—from the half that was real table, and not part of the painted backdrop—a large, ornate brass pot and held it chest-high in front of him. He put his hand in the opening and ran it about inside, to show that the pot was empty. He turned the opening to the audience so they could see for themselves that there was nothing in it. He then held the pot upside down and shook it, and indeed nothing fell out.

Mamarum peered into the air in front of him, as though looking for something suspended there that he could see but the audience could not. Holding the pot with his left hand, he reached for this invisible object with his right and snatched it out of the air. Then he tossed it, still invisible, into the pot, where it landed with a loud
clink.

He snatched another object out of the air, and then another and another, tossing each into the pot with a great clinking sound. He came to the edge of the stage and reached out over the audience, and grabbed. A gold coin appeared in his hand. He twisted it around and through his fingers, and bent down to show it to the mother of the two eight-year-old children sitting in the front row. He handed it to her and indicated
that she should examine it, which she did, that she should try to bend it and flex it to make sure it was solid, which she did. That she should bite it, which she declined to do. She handed it back to him and he tossed it in the pot.
Chunk.

And another.
Clink.
And another.
Clink.
You could see the gold coins appearing in his hand, appearing out of empty air, and hear them as they were thrown into the pot.
Chunk.
And then rapidly, one after the other, as fast as he could grab:
clink, clink, clink, chunk, clink.
And then he put the pot on the stage in front of him and reached up with both hands and a cascade of shiny gold coins rained into the pot.

Then he smiled and shrugged, as if to say it was nothing, any master of the mantic arts could have done the same. He picked up the pot and held it over the front row and poured—and nothing came out. The pot was once more as empty as it had been. The gold coins vanishing into air, into thin air.

He bowed for his applause. It came.

Mamarum then clapped his hands thrice, and an assistant—a young Indian lad clad in an oversized dhoti—came out carrying a rolled-up rug perhaps six feet wide and ten feet long, which he proceeded to unroll in the middle of the stage. He then raced offstage to return with a wicker basket about large enough to hold a small goat if it lay down and curled up, which he carefully centered on the rug.

Mamarum pulled the top off the basket with a flourish and pointed the opening toward the audience so they could see inside. It was an empty wicker basket. Putting it back down with yet another flourish, he reached into it and pulled out a long red scarf. There was a slight gasp of surprise, but not a large one. After all, it was only a scarf—easy to conceal—we didn’t look that closely in the basket, did we?

Waving the scarf gently, so that it rippled in front of him as he walked, Mamarum left the stage. He came down the central aisle, looking to the left and right, peering into the audience, considering, until about halfway down he stopped by the side of an attractive though
stern-faced young lady. He offered her the end of the scarf. She took it tentatively. He pulled on it, urging her to stand up and come along. She let go of the scarf and shook her head.

Mamarum shook his head questioningly and shrugged. Smiling that it was all right, he continued down the aisle to the last row and offered the end of the scarf to Lady Priscilla. She shrank from it. He nodded encouragingly. She took the end delicately, unsurely. He nodded his encouragement again and pulled gently. She stood up as one hypnotized and, clutching the scarf, followed him back up the aisle until they reached the stage.

Lieutenant Welles was not happy. He glowered at Mamarum. “Why the bloody hell she agreed to this is more than I know,” he muttered.

The lieutenant, Margaret decided, was jealous. Not a good trait in a suitor.

Mamarum the Great took Lady Priscilla’s scarf hand and kissed it in a proper, respectful, and genteel manner and led her by the hand onto the stage. In the back row, unnoticed, Lieutenant Welles growled.

With gestures and silent encouragement, Mamarum had Lady Priscilla step into the wicker basket and lie down, smoothing her outer garments and curling up until she was out of sight within the basket. Mamarum picked up the lid and, with a swift, practiced motion, set it on the basket. A few in the audience saw that he had allowed an apparently unnoticed few inches of the fold of Lady Priscilla’s dress to stick out at the join of lid and basket.

The assistant now returned to the stage, wheeling out a rack holding about a dozen long, sharp swords with bejeweled handles. Mamarum and the assistant pushed the rack to the front of the stage and allowed several people in the front row to examine the swords and feel their points and edges. Mamarum then pointed to various people farther from the stage and silently invited them to come forward and examine the weapons. Several did at first and then, impelled by curiosity and a desire to be one of the knowledgeable few, a sizable number left their seats and came to the edge
of the stage to see and feel for themselves that the swords were, indeed, swords. Several were actually invited onstage where, for the edification of the rest of the audience, they pulled, pushed, and prodded the various swords to demonstrate that they were real, solid, and sharp.

When the audience members, satisfied that there was no trickery at least in the edged weapon part of the illusion, returned to their seats, Mamarum picked up one of the swords, slapped the flat edge against his open palm to reemphasize the hard-steel reality of the blade, and then thrust it quickly and roughly through the wicker basket until its point protruded through the other side.

Rapidly, and with a smooth economy of motion, Mamarum circled the basket, thrusting swords through the wicker high and low, until the basket was crisscrossed with swords, and it was clear that nobody inside could have escaped being pierced by at least one of the blades, and probably a good half dozen.

The audience knew they were being fooled, but they were caught up in the spectacle, and in the story of what was supposed to be happening, and they waited breathlessly to see how it came out. Then, as Mamarum placed the last sword, there was a murmur from some of those watching, an excited whisper, a gasp here, a sharp intake of breath there. For what Mamarum seemed not to have noticed as he danced around the basket was the trickle of blood coming through the side of the basket, staining the wicker, dripping onto the carefully placed rug.