The Game

by Laurie R. King

  The walls, floor to ceiling, were covered in tiger fur. Black and orange stripes, running first in this direction, then that, fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, seamless but for a faint rectangular shape in the back wall. In the upper corners of the room, clustered and snarling, were mounted the heads.

  I shuddered in reaction, and someone chuckled, the sound damped and muffled.

  I whirled, and there was the maharaja, sitting in a chair of unrelieved black. Panther, my mind informed me; and the fluffy black-and-gold rug on which his boots were resting was made of the tails of the tigers on the wall. I swallowed convulsively, whether to repress fear or visceral disgust, I was not sure.

  The maharaja rose from his panther-skin chair and walked over to a table that appeared made of grey-painted wood, and on closer look proved to have a texture. It was covered in elephant hide, I realised, and somehow that final outrage tipped me over the edge, and I was suddenly icy calm.

  “I have something for you,” he said. “Since you did not wish the boar’s head for your wall, I had this small souvenir made, a memento of your first pig-hunt.”

  I looked apprehensively at the velvet-covered box he was holding out to me, and kept my hands at my sides. “That’s really not necessary.”

  So he opened it himself and turned it for me to see.

  Since Wednesday’s hunt, he had somehow contrived to have all four tusks of the boar removed and handed over to a goldsmith for mounting. The object before me had a central shaft as long as a hand, made of heavy, deep-red gold that had been intricately worked with a design I recognised from the stamp on the note that had brought me here, the crest of Khanpur. From the gleaming metal protruded the tusks, the shorter pair curving up from the bottom, the longer upper tusks rising from the shaft above them to curl together, nearly forming a circle above the gold. The tusks themselves had not been touched, aside from their removal, and looked as they had when they came to rest on the ground near my foot: the ivory as yellowed as a smoker’s teeth, the tip of the upper left one snapped off and worn blunt, even the dried spatter of blood that had been burned into my memory when the beast had been struggling to eviscerate me. The art of the goldsmith had been linked to these brutal tools for digging and killing, man’s most intricate craftsmanship used to set off all the nicks, grime, and blood that Nature had provided.

  It was quite the ugliest thing I had ever seen in my life.

  Beyond its mere appearance, the ornament was repugnant on any number of levels: aesthetically, yes, but also emotionally, in its attempt to create beauty from what was essentially a grisly extermination; theologically, in its glorification of the uncleanest of animals; even politically, that in a poor land, so much gold should be used for a frivolity. The maharaja of Khanpur held the box out to me, willing me to take it. I did so, reluctantly, then laid it immediately upon the elephant-hide table.

  Satisfied, he went around the desk and sat down behind it, gesturing me to the chair on the other side. Since this appeared to be merely wood, not bison’s leg-bones or stiffened cobras, I sat down in it. He crossed his legs and said, “I wanted to have a further conversation with you about your proposal for women’s education.”

  I had made no such proposal, but there seemed little point in arguing with him. Instead, I said, “Yes, I’m sorry about that, but it appears as if I’ll have to abandon it for the moment. I’ve been called back to Delhi. I’ll need to leave tomorrow.”

  His eyes narrowed, but I could see that the news came as no surprise. Indeed, I should have been amazed if it had.

  “Oh, Miss Russell—Mary—you must stay. We’re going after tiger on Sunday, you can’t possibly miss that.” The firmness in his voice left no room for contradiction, yet contradict I did.

  “That is a disappointment,” I replied, although it was all I could do to keep from looking at the walls and asking him if enough damage had not been done to the state’s feline population. “But my husband is expecting me, and truth to tell, he’s quite capable of sending someone after me if I don’t show up. You’ll just have to take the tiger for me.”

  “But you did promise to look at the schools here,” he said, which again I most emphatically had not. He kept his voice even, reasonable, although it seemed something of an effort. The maharaja was not accustomed to being crossed.

  “Yes, I suppose I did. Perhaps I can return, when we’re finished in Delhi. It’s just, well, my husband can’t do this particular piece of business without my presence.”

  His eyes darkened, and he rose to come around the desk, standing over me in a clear attempt to force me into obedience. Another woman might have been cowed, but another woman was not Mary Russell; another woman had not spent nine years in the company of Sherlock Holmes. I set myself against the waves of domination and anger coming from him, bracing to repulse him if he decided to hit me. He managed to keep control, though, and merely said in a rather strangled voice, “I’m afraid the aeroplane is not available until the end of the week.”

  “What a pity. Well, perhaps I can find a motor to take me to Hijarkot.” From the sudden, hot anger in his face, a free car anywhere in the country would be no more forthcoming than the aeroplane. I stood up, forcing him to retreat a step. “In any case, I thank you for your hospitality. I’ve had a most interesting time here, and appreciate it hugely.”

  His voice stopped me at the door, saying my name. I looked back; he had the velvet box in his hand.

  “There is an interesting fact about pigs,” he observed, his voice gone silky soft. “The killing tusks are not the prominent upper ones, but the smaller, more hidden pair beneath.”

  I looked from his expressionless face to the box, and in the end I took the thing, walking back across the tiger-lined lair to do so. I took it because to refuse would have forced the issue of my rebellion into the open, with unforeseen consequences. Perhaps I took it because the smell of predator was strong in my nostrils, and I was afraid. I am not sure precisely why I allowed my fingers to close around the box containing that freakish object, but of one thing I was absolutely certain: I would not hold on to it any longer than I had to.

  I closed the gun-room door, and stood for a moment in the hallway, breathing hard, feeling the dampness on my palms and scalp, unable to say why I felt as if I had just put a door between me and a live tiger.

  I had two visitors during the afternoon. First came Faith, whose gentle knock I missed at first, busy as I was with folding away my clothes. When it came a second time, I realised what it was and went to open the door.

  “Hallo,” I said, “do come in. Why is it one’s things never seem to go back into the same space they originally occupied?”

  “Mary, please don’t go,” she said without preamble, sounding upset.

  I sat down beside my pile of folded blouses. “Faith, I’ve been away for a week. I have a life to return to.”

  She laughed, a sound with little humour in it. “Yes, don’t we all?”

  “Faith,” I asked slowly, “are you being kept here … against your will?” It sounded too melodramatic for words, especially considering the woman I was talking to, and she reacted as I might have done.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Although I suppose you could say—Oh, it’s too complicated to explain! No,” she asserted, suddenly firm. “Nobody’s being kept against their will. This is the twentieth century, not some feudal state. But Jimmy’s touchy sometimes, and one thing he hates is to think his generosity is unappreciated. You’re an honoured guest, and for you to just shake his hand and take off, well, it seems gauche to him.”

  “Faith, I have business to attend to.”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “The repercussions would be considerable.”

  “They will be here, too.”

  “Such as what?” I demanded, suddenly a little touchy myself. “Will he put the rest of you in chains? Torture a few coolies in a fit of pique? Come after me with a pig spear? What repercussions are we describing, precisely?”


  But she either couldn’t or wouldn’t say what he might do, and left shortly afterwards, glum at her inability to convince me to stay within the golden bars. Then an hour later, while I was sitting with a book in the shade of the garden, Gay found me, and asked me to stay as well.

  I closed the book with a snap. “Gay, this concerted effort to keep me here is becoming a bit worrying. What is going on here?”

  “Nothing at all, it’s only that Jimmy had plans for Sunday and is very disappointed to find them slipping away. He’s fond of you.”

  “Fond or not, most people would be glad enough to see the back of an uninvited guest. I don’t wish to overstay my welcome.”

  “But you’re here, and you interest him, and he’d like you to stay for a few days longer.”

  I leant forward to look the woman in the eye. “Gay, I’m not one of Jimmy’s pets. I need to leave.” And so saying, I stood up and left the garden.

  But before I was quite out of earshot, I thought I heard her say, “Good luck.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Dinner was a tense affair, ill attended and again composed of great numbers of greasy and over-cooked dishes. Our host drank heavily, although it did not affect him other than making him ever more morose, and Faith and Gay on either side of him worked hard at keeping him distracted. I made empty conversation with the people on either side of me while I pushed the food back and forth on my plate, until over the seventh or seventeenth course, I overheard Faith telling him about the magician we’d seen in the town.

  “… so tall and mysterious looking, all in black with this incongruously cute little donkey standing in the background. He did the usual things, pulling coins out of the air and changing mice into sparrows, but then he called people from the audience to read their minds. I couldn’t understand most of what they were saying, of course, but they seemed mighty impressed.”

  For the first time all evening, the maharaja’s eyes rose from his glass as he snarled, “If you couldn’t understand what they were saying, how do you know what he was doing?”

  Faith hesitated at the accusation, then rallied. “One could tell from the sequence of events. The magician would invite the audience to ask him something, and then one of them would come forward and he would talk for a few minutes and then hold his hand up in front of the other’s face with his eyes closed, and sort of hum for a bit and then he’d say something and everyone would sort of ooh and aah. Then he took a deck of cards and had the person choose one and tell him which it was he had in his hand. That sort of thing.”

  “Not an astrologer?”

  “I don’t … He didn’t have any charts or anything.”

  “What else could he do?”

  Juggle fire, pull coins from the turbans of Sikh boys, levitate his assistant, I thought.

  “He made a stone hang in mid-air above his hand. And he took a turban from the head of one of the audience and cut it in half, then restored it.” From her tone of voice, Faith assumed these were tricks, although she couldn’t have said how. The maharaja, however, took them at face value.

  “This magician, he is in the town?”

  “He was yesterday.”

  Abruptly, he stood up, his chair saved from crashing to the floor by the servant at his back. “We will go to see this man.”

  “What, now?” Faith said.

  “Why not? Gay, Thomas, you come with us.”

  “May I come, too?” Sunny asked. “I adore magicians.”

  “But of course,” the maharaja declared, and swept out of the room, servants and guests alike scurrying to catch him up. The rest of us stood or sat where we had been abandoned, looking at one another quizzically. Mrs Goodheart was the first to move, folding her table napkin and rising ponderously to declare, “I believe I’ve had enough dinner. I’ll wish you all good night.”

  The spell broken, men hastily swallowed the contents of their glasses and rose to allow the ladies to depart. Most of them would make for the billiards room, along with a number of the women, but I followed Mrs Goodheart up the stairs. My light went out early, and silence fell.

  I did not hear when the servant came, turning his key in the well-oiled lock and padding on bare feet across stone and carpet to glance briefly through the bedroom door at my sleeping figure, then padding back out to the corridor to sabotage my door lock and make my rooms a prison. I did not hear the maharaja and his gold-plated Hispano-Suiza filled with high-spirited guests drive back through the gates, bashing the stones of the narrow opening and spewing gravel across the carefully swept lawn. I did not hear the maharaja ask his servant if the deed had been done, nor did I see the two of them go to make ready quarters for me in a quieter portion of The Forts.

  I did, on the other hand, hear the motorcar fly past me on its passage back from town, when the violent drop of one fast-spinning tyre into a pot-hole resulted in shouts and shrieks of laughter.

  I witnessed none of these events within New Fort for the simple reason that I was not there. I left my rooms less than five minutes after entering them, having stopped there only long enough to pull on black trousers and a long dark pull-over. I wrapped a dressing-gown over the clothes and handed a note to the servant who lurked at my door, asking him to take it to Sunny Goodheart. When he had gone, I dropped the gown and grabbed my soft Simla boots, pausing only to dip my hands into the lamp’s soot and wipe it across my face. Then I slipped unseen down the stairs and into the dark gardens. With my boots on my feet and a handful of tiny pebbles in my pocket, I took up a position near the gates, crouching there for a few moments until the guards went to investigate the rattle of tiny stones in the shadows. I eased out of the gates and over the waist-high stone wall onto the rocky hillside. Easing down the faint, near-vertical path that I felt more than saw, inching on all fours from rock to shrub, the back of my neck crawled with awareness of the mysterious eastern half of the fortress, looming behind me in the darkness. As I moved with infinite care down the slippery slope, I fancied I could hear the ghostly echoes of screaming Mutineers, trapped and burning sixty-seven years before.

  I reached the road at last, leg muscles quivering, two fingers ripped and bleeding from a rock, but undiscovered. I gazed south, where lay the town of Khanpur, then turned resolutely north. This was the first time that I’d been out unobserved, and I was not about to waste the opportunity. I strode briskly north, towards those beguiling godowns that had been calling to me since I had first laid eyes on them from the window of the maharaja’s aeroplane.

  Little more than an hour later, I was hunkered behind the lip of a drainage ditch halfway between The Forts and Khanpur city while the maharaja’s laden Hispano-Suiza flew raucously past. I rose to watch the great head-lamps illuminate the stone drive, its driver blithely unaware that the disapproving eye of the Crown was about to turn upon his little kingdom. I watched the car stagger its way through the gates, then turned, finally, towards Holmes.

  The city gates were shut for the night, so I went on to the serai south of town, and there in the dying firelight I found the outlines of a familiar mirrored wagon. As I laid my hand on the flap of the tent, a faint slipping noise came from within, and I stopped to say, “It is I.” When I heard the blade slide back into its sheath, I continued in.

  “I had word that men were seeking me in the town,” said Holmes in Hindi, to explain his haste in drawing steel.

  “The maharaja and his friends, in search of entertainment.”

  “Ah. And you?”

  “The time has come for Mary Russell to return to her husband.”

  “And time for her to disappear as well, do I take it?”

  “It would be best. The maharaja dislikes …” I did not know the Hindi word, so I used the English. “… ingratitude.”

  “Interesting. Fortunately, I have a good supply of walnut dye.”

  “Holmes, it is best if we depart the city. Its prince might think to look again tomorrow, and it would be easier if he were to find you gone.”

&nb
sp; “And O’Hara?”

  “I have a few ideas on that,” I said. “However, it’s complicated, and I think we should get on with doing my skin. Oh, but Holmes, remember when Nesbit made mention of a report that the maharaja had been buying large quantities of cotton? I found it.”

  Say one thing for Holmes: He always appreciated the little gifts I brought him, and this no less than any. He even permitted me to tell the story properly: creeping past the inhabited buildings at the air field and to the silent godowns; the makeshift pick-locks I had fashioned from hair-pins; the discovery of no fewer than three of the big triple-engined Junkers planes, awaiting assembly; a disconcerting number of machine-guns and light artillery; and (best for last) the biggest godown with its store of cotton bales, floor to ceiling, and neatly arranged beside them, drums of the other materials one would need for making explosives.

  Oh yes; Nesbit was going to love this.

  The more, perhaps, if we could find him Kimball O’Hara as well.

  We slipped away from the serai during the night, again disguised as a pair of itinerant Moslem magicians, and headed west into the broad plateau that formed the centre of the state, a rich source of pulse and cane, wheat and vegetables. I had been, I thought, remarkably patient; no more.

  “Holmes, it is your turn. What happened after you left Simla?”

  “Remarkably little,” he replied. “Quite odd, really.”

  “As a narrative, Holmes, the statement is by no means sufficient.”

  “No? I suppose not. Very well. Bindra and I left the hotel early. I had decided that the train out of Simla being unlikely to provide a rich source of information concerning that itinerant monk O’Hara, we should walk out of the hills.”