The Empress of India (30 page)

That was too much for Lieutenant Welles, who suddenly jumped to his feet. “Damn you,” he bellowed, “you bloody wog, can’t you see what you’re doing? Get her out of that thing!”

Startled, Mamarum stopped circling the basket to peer out into the audience. “Beg pardon?” he said calmly. Only the fact that he had spoken at all showed the intense emotion the taunt must have provoked in him.

The spell was broken. The magician had spoken.

“The girl—you’ve cut her,” someone yelled.

“There’s blood all over the place,” contributed someone else.

An angry woman’s voice trebled, “My God, my God! What a tragedy!”

A surge of anger and panic swept the audience and some jumped to their feet, some pushed themselves up heavily from their chairs. Most remained frozen in their seats, but there was no telling how long their hesitation would last.

Mamarum threw up his hands in despair. “Patience, my friends,” he said in a surprisingly loud and powerful voice. “The illusion was to end otherwise, with a drawing out of the swords and much ceremony. But you would have it thus.” And with that he tilted the basket toward the audience and pulled off the lid.

The nested swords gleamed and sparkled in the spotlight’s beam, and Lady Priscilla . . .

. . . was not there.

The swords pierced empty air, the rag that had seemed part of Lady Priscilla’s dress was just a small silk rag, and the blood on the basket’s side had come from nowhere, as far as anyone could see.

“You see?” Mamarum’s voice carried through the room. “No unnecessary spilling of blood. No one injured. Only a disappearing lady, the very essence of magic, the heart of the mystery. Where is she? I leave that to you to solve!” And with that Mamarum turned and walked slowly and deliberately off the stage.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” said the Artful Codger. “I seen her climb into that there basket, and I had my eye on it the whole time since, and she sure ain’t in it now.”

“It’s all done with mirrors,” said Cooley the Pup with the air of a man who’s in the know.

Pin turned to Cooley. “Really?” he asked. “And just where were these mirrors placed?”

“Maybe there was a trick bottom in the basket,” offered the Codger. “And she dropped through a trap in the stage.”

“That’s what I said,” the Pup agreed, nodding. “Mirrors.”

“Notice the lovely Kasham rug that the magician thoughtfully placed under the basket,” Pin said with just a trace of irony in his voice. “Perhaps there’s a trapdoor in it, also.”

“Perhaps,” agreed the Codger, who was invincible to irony.

The audience was still balanced in their seats, unsure whether to go forward or back, when someone in the back of the room started to applaud. And then someone else took up the clapping, and another, and another, and the applause became general and anger and apprehension were forgotten and everyone sat back down in their seats and relished the way they had been fooled.

“You’re so clever,” Margaret said, touching Peter’s arm.

Peter turned to her. “What?”

“Starting to clap like that. You may have prevented a riot.”

“Sheer genius,” Peter admitted modestly.

Lieutenant Welles was still standing, and looking around the room like a marksman seeking a target. “Where is she?” he asked the room. “If the wog’s so bloody smart, what has he done with her?”

It seemed like a good question, and was about to be answered. The wog in question had returned to the stage and was peering out into the audience. “Lady Priscilla!” he called. “Come forth now, please!” When he got no response, he jumped down from the stage, looking puzzled. “She should be at the back of the room,” he said.

“How’d she get there, then?” called someone.

“Perhaps we should wonder about that later,” Mamarum replied. “For now, let’s see where she, indeed, is at this moment.”

The lights came up in the room, and everyone looked around. Lady Priscilla was nowhere to be seen.

“She should have come back in through that door,” Mamarum said, pointing to a door on the right side rear of the large room.

“How’d she get back there?” the man demanded again.

Mamarum struggled for an answer. A magician never reveals his secrets. “Later,” he said finally.

“Well, she’s not here. So where is she?” Lieutenant Welles demanded.

Mamarum shrugged. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “Perhaps you frightened her away.”

Welles took two steps toward Mamarum, and then reconsidered and stopped. “I’ll settle with you later,” he said. “We have to find Priscilla!” He trotted toward the indicated door, an invincible force in his blue and white Lancers’ uniform.

From somewhere on the ship, outside the room, came the distant sound of a sharp explosion. A shot? A firecracker? People in the audience stood up and murmured to each other, but none seemed to have any clear idea of what to do.

Welles reached the door and pushed. Nothing happened. He jiggled the handle and pushed again. Nothing happened.

“Who locked the door?” Welles demanded sharply. “What the bloody hell is going on here?”

“Please, sir,” an elderly man in a frock coat admonished him. “Watch your language! There are ladies present.”

Welles stopped and turned. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “I do apologize for my profanity, but as we seem to be locked in here, for no discernible reason, and with one of our group missing, I thought it proper for me to express my concern.” His voice had started low and intense, but it grew louder as he went on, ending in a bull roar. “If this is some sort of joke, it’s no longer funny. I’d suggest that whoever locked this door get over here right now and unlock it!”

More sharp cracking sounds from outside, these seeming to come from a different direction.

Audience members headed for all the exits. There were eight of them. They were all blocked. The ballroom was right next to the promenade deck on “B” level, and six large windows fronted the deck. The metal weather shutters had been drawn over the windows to keep light out during the show. One of the ship’s officers broke the central window to get at the shutter. It had somehow been locked from the outside and
would not budge. The hysteria mounted, and passengers broke out the other windows with the same result.

“There’s something wrong,” Margaret said with heroic understatement, rising to her feet. “I think I’d better go find my father.”

“There’s a lot wrong, if I’m any judge,” Peter told her. “I think your father’s going to be quite busy for the next little while. I’d suggest, if you don’t consider it too much of an imposition, that you stay with me.” He took her arm and pulled her back to the rear wall. “We’ll be out of the way here,” he said. “Which might be a good thing. Until we can figure a way out of this room.”

Margaret turned to face him and saw that he had produced from somewhere a short, two-barreled pistol, which he held casually in his left hand, pointed at the floor. Her eyes widened, but she decided not to say anything about it now. Not now. “What do you think is happening?” she asked.

“I’d say someone’s making a try for the gold,” he told her.

“Blast!” said Pin. “I should have seen this coming.”

Cooley the Pup pulled at a string fastened around his neck under his shirt, and a long, wicked-looking knife slid from its mooring up his sleeve and fell into his hand. He pulled off the thin leather sheath and discarded it. “You think this is it?” he asked.

“They’ve got most of the passengers and crew in here,” Pin said, flexing his shoulders angrily. “What better moment to go after the gold?”

“But look,” the Artful Codger objected. “There’s your pal the professor up there. If his men were taking the gold, wouldn’t he be with them?”

Pin looked up at the stage, and saw Moriarty and Mummer Tolliver standing together at the left side, looking out at the auditorium, as though they were just as puzzled at what was happening as everybody else.

“Clever!” Pin said. “I’ll give him that.”

The Artful Codger had taken off his tie and slipped a pair of brass knuckle dusters on each hand. “We’d better get a move on,” he said. “The question is, where to and how?”

Colonel Sebastian Moran made his way through the restive audience over to where Moriarty and the mummer were standing. “Well, Professor, you said someone would make a try for the gold before the trip was done, and it looks like you were right. I can’t think of anything else that could be happening, unless it’s the natives on the crew mutinying because their curry isn’t hot enough. But, if it is the gold, the question is who’s doing it, and how are they planning to manage it?”

“I think we’d better do our best to put a stop to the attempt,” Moriarty told him.

“Ah!” said Moran. “Then I’d best go see which of our companions in involuntary incarceration has devised the best chance of getting us out of here. I’ll be back in a trice.” He sprinted off toward the front, where several men were already pounding at the locked door.

Moriarty looked thoughtful. “Perhaps we can turn the hueing and crying to our advantage, that is if we succeed in beating off these attackers.”

“How so?” asked his small companion.

“Mummer, I have a job for you.”

“You mean I has to miss the fighting?” the mummer stamped his foot in irritation. “We short people never have any fun.”

“You might find this exciting enough to satisfy you for a while,” Moriarty told him. “Here’s what I want you to do. . . .” And for the next two minutes he explained what had to be done.

Moran returned a few minutes later. “It’s going to take them a while,” he said. “Perhaps we can find a quicker way out of here.”

Another gunshot sounded in the distance.

“Perhaps we’d better,” said Moriarty.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too . . .
—Rudyard Kipling

A
t first it was not clear just who was trying to do what, and with what, and to whom. Captain Iskansen entered the Lancers officers’ dayroom at five after seven. “Not going to the big show, I see,” he said. General St. Yves and the two junior officers with him looked up from the oversized table strewn with documents.

“Paperwork,” St. Yves said. “The bane of the military. Everything written down, signed, and filed, never to be looked at again. Not that the idea of watching dowagers sing or juveniles play the piano is that compelling. What can I do for you, Captain?”

“I thought the question was what I can do for you,” Iskansen said. “I was informed that you wished to see me. What do you need?”

St. Yves pushed his chair away from the desk. “I wanted to see you? Who said so?”

“Why, one of the stewards told the first officer, who told me.” Captain Iskansen frowned. “Is this some sort of joke?”

“Not on my part,” St. Yves assured him, rising to his feet. “We’d better get to the bottom of this.” He turned to the two subalterns. “Lieutenant McPride, take over in here. See to the changing of the guard if I’m not back in time. Lieutenant Pinton, come with me.”

A pair of white-coated stewards appeared in the doorway holding pewter trays under their arms and Webley service revolvers, which were pointed toward the officers, in their hands. “Pliz, I beg of you, remain quiet and stay contentedly where you are,” one of the stewards said firmly. “We would not like to have the shooting of you.”

St. Yves sat slowly back down. No point in charging a man with a Webley. Good revolver, the Webley. Great stopping power. “What do you blighters want?” he demanded, trying to put a veneer of nonchalance over what was actually more anger than fear.

“Only just for you to remain where it is you are,” the steward told him. “All of you. Pliz.”

Lieutenant McPride, a beefy, red-faced young man with that lack of fear and common sense so useful in junior officers, started forward. “Damn you! You can’t just—”

The steward pointed his Webley at the ceiling and fired once. The sound in the small room was deafening and hurt the ears.

“I must insist,” the steward asserted, his voice sounding thin and distant in the wake of the booming of the pistol.

Captain Iskansen stood still where he was, white-faced and trembling. “By God, I’ve got a ship to run!” he said. “You can’t do this!”

The talking steward smiled a gap-toothed smile. “Have,” he said.

The silent steward came into the room, carefully not getting between his partner and the Englishmen, and relieved the three army men
of their sidearms. Then the two stewards backed out of the room.

“If you bang on door, I shoot through it,” the talkative one said. And they left the stateroom, pulling the door shut behind them.

“They’re after the gold!” Captain Iskansen slammed his hand down on the desk. “I should have foreseen this. It must be those new porters and stewards that came aboard in Bombay. But how are they planning to get away with it?”