The Empress of India (31 page)

St. Yves waited for a minute, and then went to the door. “Up against the wall, everyone,” he whispered. “Just in case.” He tried the door. Nothing happened. He twisted and jiggled the knob. No shots came through the door, but neither did it open.

“What the blasted hell,” he mouthed, yanking and jerking at the door, “have they done to this thing?”

“There is a way of fastening the door from the outside,” Captain Iskansen told him, dropping into a nearby chair. “If the room is to be used for storage, for instance.”

“D-damn,” said St. Yves. “I suppose they don’t want to kill us unless they have to.”

“Kill us?” Lieutenant Pinton leaped out of his chair and stared grimly at the closed door, looking even taller, slimmer, and more intense than usual. “Excuse me, sir, but they wouldn’t dare. Would they? I mean after all, we’re British officers.”

“D-damn!” St. Yves repeated. “You’re right, Captain. We should have seen it. This thing’s been well planned. Damn convenient, all those people getting sick all at once. They’re after the g-gold, of course.”

“I have a ship to run,” Iskansen reiterated, slapping his open palm once more on the edge of the desk. “I’ve got to get out of here. It’s bad enough that they’re after the gold, but the Good Lord knows how much damage they’ll do to the ship in attempting to get it.”

“You see what they’ve done?” asked St. Yves rhetorically. “They’ve removed the top of the chain of command from the ship’s crew and the
military by locking us in here. Our subordinates will be needing orders, and we won’t be there to give them.”

Captain Iskansen jumped to his feet. “The porthole!” he exclaimed.

General St. Yves looked at it critically from across the room. “Too small,” he said. “None of us will fit through it.”

“If we remove eight bolts,” Iskansen said, “we can push out the brass framing and gain an extra six inches or so. One of us should be able to get through it then.”

A rifle shot sounded from somewhere below. And then, about twenty seconds later, another.

“Those are our rifles,” said Lieutenant Pinton.

“One of the guards at the gold vault,” said McPride. “Or both.”

“Tools!” said St. Yves. “Do we have any tools?”

“The loft!” said the mummer. “I’ll wager they ain’t got that closed off.”

Moran looked around. “Loft?”

“Behind the stage and up a ladder,” explained the mummer. “There’s a loft for the stage canvas and such-like what has a door to the upper deck.”

“So there is,” said Moriarty. “Let’s go!”

The three of them clambered back onto the stage and headed for the rear wall behind the backdrop painting of a street bazaar in Hyderabad. “Here’s the ladder,” said Moriarty.

“I’ll go up first,” Mummer said. “I’m the shortest.”

“Take a glim over there on the stage,” said the Artful Codger. “It looks like the professor and his friends are making a break for it.”

“I knew it!” exclaimed Pin, seeing Moriarty disappear behind the backdrop. “Quick! After them.”

Pin raced down the aisle and leaped onto the stage, followed with a bit less agility by Cooley and the Codger. Behind them in the ballroom some of the men had taken a long table from the side wall and were using it as a battering ram against the main exit doors. Some others were at one of the side doors taking turns kicking at it with little effect.

After a bit of searching, Cooley the Pup located the ladder. “This must be where they’ve gone,” he whispered hoarsely.

“We’d better follow them,” the Artful Codger said, coming over. “You first.”

“Yeah, right,” said the Pup, “why am I not surprised?” He stuck his knife between his teeth like a storybook pirate, and scrambled up the ladder. The Codger was right behind him, and Pin, anxious not to lose his prey, crowded along behind.

A single shot sounded somewhere in the distance. They paused on the ladder to listen, but it wasn’t repeated.

“That was the fourth shot so far,” said the Codger, “unless I’ve missed one.”

“Where do you think it’s coming from?” the Pup asked in a loud whisper.

“No way to tell,” said the Codger.

“What do you think it means?” asked the Pup.

“No point in speculating, we’ll find out soon enough,” snarled Pin. “Let’s get on with it.”

The room at the top was filled with rolls of canvas, racks of wood slats, coils of rope, containers of dried fish glue, jars of paint pigment, and boxes of metal pegs, hooks, screws, hinges, and whatnots. Moriarty and his merry band had passed through without stopping, leaving the exit door open.

“Where are we?” the Codger whispered.

“We must be on ‘A’ deck,” Cooley the Pup ventured, peering out the door. “But this ain’t a passenger cabin corridor, and I don’t know what it is.”

“Come,” said Pin, leading the way into the corridor. “We must locate Moriarty and that colonel and their midget friend and stop them as quickly as possible.”

“They seem to have helpers,” said the Artful Codger.

“Cut off the head of a snake,” Dr. Pin Dok Low said grimly, “and the body will die.”

“Do you hear that?” Peter put his ear close to the ballroom wall.

“What?” Margaret leaned over and listened. “I can’t hear anything over the banging and thumping of our fellow prisoners.”

“The ship’s engines are slowing down,” Peter told her.

She listened and it was so: The steady
thumpita thumpita
of the engines was more pronounced and slower than it had been, and it slowed down even more as she listened. “What does that mean?”

“It means the ship is stopping.”

“I know that,” Margaret said testily. “I meant, what does
that
mean?”

“It means we’d really better get out of here.”

“That’s what I’ve thought all along,” she said. “Engines slow or engines fast, it’s not a good idea to be locked up in the ballroom while strangers with uncertain motives are rummaging through the rest of the ship.”

“Their motives are fairly certain, I think,” Peter commented.

She nodded. “They’re after the gold. Well, all right, let them take the gold and go away. Then we can get on with the trip.”

“It’s more than that,” Peter told her, trying to speak as calmly as he could given the surrounding chaos. “I think we’ve found your Phansigar.”

Margaret was still for a minute, letting her mind absorb the implications of that suggestion. “Phansigar.”

“I think so.”

“Thuggees.”

“I’m sorry, but—yes.”

“Why do you think so?”

“The message I received. It said that the Phansigar were rumored to be active again, but my superiors didn’t know where they were planning to strike. Well, I think we’ve just found out.”

“But,” Margaret objected, “according to the old stories, they kill all their victims so as to leave no witnesses. Why haven’t they tried to kill us, then?”

Peter shrugged. “Why bother?” he said. “They have to transfer the gold to another ship. They must have a ship somewhere close. And reinforcements. There can’t be more than thirty of them on the ship now—the replacement porters and stewards who came aboard in Bombay, if I’m right. And they can’t bring the
Empress
into port anywhere, they’ll have to sink her after they get the gold. So there’s no point in killing us one by one when we’re all going to die anyway.”

“Oh, dear,” said Margaret, bringing her clenched hand to her lips. “There are so many things I wanted to do before I reached thirty, but dying was not one of them.”

Peter reached down and took her other hand. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to upset you. I spoke without thinking.”

She lifted her chin and her eyes were clear. “No, no,” she said. “Don’t ever tell me less than the truth. If there is an ‘ever.’ ”

Peter fought back an emotion that threatened to spill from him. There might possibly be a time when showing emotion was an appropriate response to something-or-other, but this wasn’t it. “There will be lots of ‘evers,’ ” he assured her. “The truth is that I plan to get us out of here, and stop these Thuggees from stealing the gold or sinking the ship.” He made a good solid fist out of his right hand and shook it in front of him. “Not necessarily in that order.”

“Good,” she said. “I am relieved to hear it. Tell me about your plan?”

“I plan to get us out of here,” he said.

“How?”

“I haven’t worked that part of the plan out yet.”

“Oh,” she said.

“It’s what we’re taught,” he told her. “First, establish clear goals.”

“And second?”

“I didn’t take that class,” he told her. “We’ll have to improvise.”

Margaret considered. “I should think the first thing would be to release all of these people,” she said. “With this many passengers running around, it should discommode our antagonists and make it easier to put your plan in effect. When you develop a plan, that is.”

“Some of them may get injured, maybe killed,” he said.

“And if they stay here?”

Peter nodded. “Release it is, then.”

“How?”

He considered. “I think the first question is, where? They’re expecting us to come through the main doors, or one of the two side doors, if we come at all. I think we’d better come at them from an unexpected quarter. Perhaps the promenade deck.”

“The windows are sealed,” Margaret reminded him.

“But the walls are thin.” He snapped his fingers. “Damn!” he said. “Excuse the language, but there’s something of which I should have thought earlier.”

“In this situation a little foul language is acceptable, perhaps even appropriate,” she assured him. “What?”

“The stage,” he said. “It’s a real, that is to say professional, stage.”

“Yes?”

“Come on!” he said, thrusting his pistol into his belt and heading toward the stage. “All professional stages in London are required to have a fire axe by the side of the stage. It’s to sever the rope holding up the curtain in case of fire.”

She hurried along behind him. “We’re not in London.”

“Let’s hope the requirement has become a habit.” He hoisted himself onto the stage and hesitated, looking to the left and right. He went left.

The fire axe was there, fastened to the wall to the left of the proscenium. Peter pulled it loose and leaped off the stage. “Right here should do,” he yelled, swinging the axe against the wall.

In three swings he had made a serious dent in the wall. In five he had a hole. Other men gathered around, shouting encouragement. After about a dozen swings, the hole was about the size and shape of an upside-down long-stemmed flower vase. He paused for breath and a seaman took the axe from his hand and attacked the wall with an air of professionalism that quickly enlarged the space until a small child could have squeezed through. And then an older child, and then an adult. And then he stopped and pushed through the hole, axe in hand, and looked around for someone to hit. Peter and Margaret came through next, and cleared out of the way for the stream of people following.

Peter tapped the axe man on the shoulder, and then dodged back as the man swung around, hefting the axe. “Friend,” he said. “If you have nothing particular in mind,” he said, “perhaps you’d like to come along with me.”

“You got some idea what to do about all this?” the man asked.

Peter nodded.

“All right, then—I’m with you.”

“Where to?” Margaret asked.

Peter considered. “I think the most important thing is to get the ship under way again. If I’m right and there’s another ship out there looking for us, we should make it harder for them to find us. Then we’ve only got the thirty or so attackers already on board to deal with.” He took her arm, and hesitated. “I’m not sure where to tell you to wait where you’ll be safe.”

“I’m not waiting anywhere,” she said firmly. “I’m coming with you. Besides, there’s no place that’s any safer than any other place, as far as I know.”

“But there are some places that are certainly more dangerous.”

“I’m coming with you.”

_______

Colonel Moran was in the lead as they moved cautiously down the corridor and through a door to the upper promenade deck. It was almost nine o’clock, and night had fallen with its usual thump. The darkness on deck was interrupted only by light spilling from a few portholes and an occasional dim oil lamp on a bracket marking a door or ladder. The electrical lights, it seemed, were limited to a few areas of the ship, and the generator was not run continuously.

Moran paused and turned as they reached a ladder going down. “So far, so good,” he said. “Not a soul in sight. What’s the plan?”

“Downstairs,” Moriarty said. “Our attackers must be spread thinly about the ship. General St. Yves’s Lancers were probably surprised in their sleeping quarters and somehow confined. If we could get to them, we might be able to do something.”

“Their weapons are all under lock and key in the guardroom,” Moran said. “That must be the first place our adversaries, whoever they are, secured. They may have taken the guns for themselves, which would present us with a pretty problem.”