The Maharajah's Monkey

by Natasha Narayan

  One bullet whizzed through the middle of the Maharajah’s turban, leaving a blackened hole. Another bullet was within a whisper of his soft, plump throat.

  The Maharajah howled, the screech of a scared animal. His whole body trembled, in face of this bewildering splatter of death. But he didn’t duck and he would have been killed if a bodyguard hadn’t pushed him to the ground with the butt of his rifle.

  My eyes desperately scanned the sprawl of bush, tree and creeper, the whole teeming jungle. The man with the gun could have been anywhere. In that neem tree over there, crouching behind that wild jasmine, anywhere in the dark of the encircling jungle. There might be a number of bandits attacking us, they might have led us here, only to surround us and pick us off at their pleasure. An ambush. Panic rose sour in my throat, as my eyes flicked this way and that. But nowhere could I see the glint of a hidden gun.

  Chapter Eleven

  A roar came from behind me. I spun round. Waldo was screaming, holding his gun in front of him like a sword. He’s been shot, I thought. I wanted to run to him, but my feet would not obey my brain. As I watched, frozen, Waldo raised his rifle and aimed at a large tree. It was a wild almond, sprayed with red flowers, like splatters of dried blood.

  His rifle stuttered. A moment later a pistol fell out of the tree, followed by a dark figure which landed with a thud in a thorn bush. The Maharajah yelled, Aunt Hilda bellowed and the bodyguards continued to fire into the jungle. Scared out of their wits, the elephants made a deafening honking, which almost drowned out the rest of the commotion.

  Finally my feet moved. I rushed to the wild almond, just a second behind Waldo, to see two brawny guards hauling a man to his feet.

  A stick-thin figure, with a huge mustache, clad in a grubby shirt and loincloth. He looked befuddled, eyes peering dully from above wrinkled brown skin. The guard slapped him viciously across the face. But he barely reacted.

  I was hit by a horrible stench—the wild almond as pungent as an open sewer. I staggered back, reeling. Mingled with this stink was a more delicate scent: rich, flowery, sickly sweet. A mixture of jasmine and musk. A familiar smell.

  Champlon!

  I blinked and gazed at the man, hanging like a skinny rag doll from the bodyguard’s hand. It couldn’t be! But it must. Those curving bullets. No one in the world could shoot quite like our French friend.

  I went up to the bodyguard and shook his prisoner by the arm. “Monsieur Champlon, it’s me.”

  Was I right? There was no flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes. He was seemingly unaware—or indifferent to—the commotion all around him. But the mustache, the jutting nose—the Frenchman was unmistakable. Champlon’s hand was dripping blood: the bullet had nicked one of his fingers. Why didn’t he feel the pain?

  Waldo gazed at the Frenchman and gave a grunt of surprise. “It’s him,” he squealed. “That rotter Champlon.”

  At that my aunt came scurrying forward and when she recognized Champlon such was her surprise that for a moment I thought she was going to faint. But she pulled herself together and glared at him, trembling slightly. Suddenly, she slapped him.

  “That’s what you get for running out on me,” she hissed. “You rat!”

  Champlon blinked in surprise, staring at Aunt Hilda without recognition. Aunt Hilda’s lower lip had begun to tremble at his lack of reaction. She stared at him unblinking, but his gaze back at her was dull.

  “Gaston! It’s me!”

  He was blank.

  “Gaston. It’s Hilda!” her voice broke. “Speak to me. Please.”

  By now the bodyguards were roping Champlon’s hands together, tying them so tight that the rope bit into his flesh.

  The Maharajah held out his hand to Waldo, his moon face beaming:

  “You saved my life.”

  “No.” Waldo blushed. He was glowing with pride. “I mean … um … yes, but it was only—”

  “A stroke of luck,” I interrupted, a bit meanly. But I could see how this would go to Waldo’s head. He must have blasted the gun out of Champlon’s hand! “Your Highness, that man is a sharpshooter. My friend has only just begun—”

  “Hey,” Waldo bridled. “I aimed.”

  “You are hero,” the Maharajah said, ignoring our tiff. He had a fluting sing-song voice, which rose over our squabble, like one of his own bulbuls. “It is because you are American, the New World they call it, no?”

  Waldo nodded proudly. “It is a mighty fine country,” he said.

  The Maharajah turned now to his dewan. But Aunt Hilda had intercepted the minister and was talking frantically to the king.

  “I know this man, Your Highness,” Aunt Hilda blurted to the Maharajah. She towered over him, but despite his tiny, plump frame the boy king had dignity. “Something is wrong.”

  “How can this be?”

  “He is a Frenchman. A famous explorer.”

  “He wanted to kill me.”

  “There must be some mistake.”

  “He will be execute at dawn tomorrow. Sonali will take care of him.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “She will crush him.” He brought one plump hand down, slap bang on the other. “His head will be crushed under her feet.”

  I had a sudden, sickening vision of Champlon’s head disappearing under the elephant’s massive, trampling feet.

  “No!” my aunt and father wailed in unison.

  “Silence.” The bald Dewan held up his hand imperiously. “It is the law of the land.”

  For a moment a hush fell on the scene, above which could only be heard the snorting of the elephants and the soft shushing and crackling around us. We could not let Champlon die in India, whatever he had done, so many miles away from his home.

  “Your Majesty.” My aunt’s gruff voice rose in desperate appeal. “Of course you must execute anyone who dares to threaten you. But something is wrong. I know it. Something is not right with this man …

  “Look at him. Your Highness, he looks like a sleepwalker.”

  “A what?”

  “He is not himself. I know it.”

  She had piqued the Maharajah’s attention. He went up to Champlon and gazed at him closely and the Frenchman gazed back dully, as if nothing unusual was happening. As if he was at The Travelers, that famous gentleman’s club in Pall Mall.

  The Maharajah said, “This is strange.” He said something in his own language—which I have learned is called Gujarati—to the guards who were holding Champlon. They seemed to protest but a sharp word from the Dewan was enough to silence them and they undid the ropes that bound the Frenchman, but remained close by his side. The Maharajah held out his hand and grasped Champlon’s in a kind of handshake. “I have seen this in my village once, long time ago. Before I was Maharajah.”

  Champlon scarcely seemed to notice the king taking his hand. His bony fingers limply in the Maharajah’s plump palm and now the boy king did something very strange. He began to stroke the Frenchman’s hand, pudgy fingers flickering.

  “This is fakir’s work. I have seen it in the village,” the Maharajah declared. He began to gabble excitedly to his dewan and the adviser translated:

  “The Maharajah says that this man has been hypnotized. He has been put into a trance. The Maharajah believes he is doing another man’s bidding.

  “The man is like a puppet on a string. Dancing to his master’s tune. The Maharajah saw this as a boy, a man driven out of his wits by a fakir.”

  Aunt Hilda exclaimed angrily but the Dewan held up his hand to silence her.

  “Do not despair. The Maharajah, he has learned it from his parents. How to bring someone out of a trance.”

  The word “trance” gave me a jolt. Indeed there was something trance-like, about the Frenchman’s strange behavior. His lolling, vacant eyes, his drooping mouth. Not at all the energetic and impatient explorer, the Gaston Champlon we knew so well.

  “It is a very powerful fakir who has done this,” the Dewan continued.

  In t
he tangle of creepers above us I had a fleeting glimpse of a pair of yellow eyes. A wrinkled face. Almost human, but so old and ugly it couldn’t be. A powerful smell of evil surged down to me and the tiger scratch on my face throbbed, with a sudden fierce pang. The monkey, I gasped. I looked up into the screaming maroon and green of the wild almond but the thing was gone. Only the caw of the racket-tailed drongo, the whir of lizard and shrike. How could I spot one evil creature here in the midst of this flurry of animal life? I wasn’t sure if, after all, it was only an illusion.

  All the while, the Maharajah held Champlon’s hand. The Frenchman drooped, his body limp, his eyes blank. Then he dropped the hand and the Frenchman gave a great cough. His head moved from side to side, his eyes darting wildly. In a heartbeat Champlon changed. Animated and anxious, he pulled away from the startled guards and trotted over to Aunt Hilda and blurted, “Madame, we must hurry. The Randolph Hotel. It is a bad business to be zo late.”

  “Gaston,” Aunt Hilda gasped and the word struck him like a whiplash. He stopped short, gazing around in astonishment.

  “Where am I?”

  “Hyde Park?” my aunt replied tartly. “In the jungle, of course.”

  “Ze monkey,” Champlon murmured. “Where is ze monkey gone?”

  Chapter Twelve

  I waited till the next morning to visit Champlon, wishing to give him a little time to recover from his ordeal. Kidnap, hypnotism, an assassination attempt on a king—quite a lot to cope with even for a seasoned explorer. His bedroom was guarded by two fierce-looking soldiers. When I entered, despite the gravity of his situation, I had to suppress a smile. I had never seen anyone look quite so ill. His wrinkled face was just visible under the towel wound about his head and tied, like a lady’s bonnet, under his jaw. How could he bear to be muffled in blankets in this heat? The room was stifling with only a breeze now and then from the steady movement of the palm-leaf punkah wafting across the ceiling.

  “My ’ed. is ache,” he moaned.

  “Not your ’ed., monsieur,” I snapped, for I was angry and frustrated with our French friend. “Your head.”

  “Is what I says, my ’ed.,” Champlon replied.

  A small boy—the punkah wallah—was pulling the punkah. In a moment another boy—the pani-wallah—would replenish the jug of ice-cold water by the Frenchman’s bed. There was a boy for every job in this palace, servants everywhere. Giving up on the impossible task of correcting Champlon’s English, I dropped my voice. What I had to say was sensitive, and I did not want to be overheard.

  “’Ed or head,” I said sternly, “you’re lucky that mustachioed lump of flesh is still attached to your body.”

  Unconsciously, Champlon’s hands fluttered to his neck.

  “Most rulers would have it off,” I made a chopping motion with my hand. “Listen, monsieur, you’re in a very tight spot. Aunt Hilda is pleading for your life, right now. Most of the Maharajah’s advisers are begging him to squash your head under the feet of his favorite elephant.”

  “Mon Dieu!” Champlon moaned. “I have ze memories not at all.” He gave me an odd look. “What is zat on your face?”

  My hand flew to my scar, the vicious scratch the tiger had left on my cheek. It throbbed day and night; I was horribly self-conscious about it.

  “Nothing,” I barked. “Look, Monsieur Champlon, what were you thinking of? We have all been so worried. Trying to shoot the king!”

  “The ’ed. explodes.”

  I shot him a suspicious look. I’d never heard him speak such broken English. He sounded like a pantomime Frenchman.

  “Anyway, one thing is clear,” I said.

  “What is zat?” Champlon stuttered.

  “I thought you were meant to be a brilliant shot but even Waldo took you out.”

  He glared at me. “This was not ze true Champlon.”

  “I’ll say!” I knelt down by the bed and stared the Frenchman in the eye. “Monsieur Champlon,” I said, softening my tone, “you must try to remember. It’s very important. Let’s start with the monkey. And the boat.”

  He turned a troubled face toward me, his mustaches trembling. “What boat?”

  “I know you were on the boat with us, monsieur. The steamship Himalaya. In the sick bay.”

  “It is all so strange in my ’ed. Like I am walking through ze dream. Everything is cloudy and I floats. I see a man who I know. It is myself but I am not myself. I am looking at zis man and I am thinking who is he?”

  “Monsieur.” I took his hand. “Pull yourself together.”

  “Questions, questions, questions … First your auntie and now you. But I do not know what zat man did. He, or I should say me, was sick, on the boat. He was sick all days and the other men, ze brozzers, were sick too.”

  “Brothers?”

  “Wheezing men. Ghosts.”

  Instantly my mind flew to those villains, the Baker Brothers. I had suspected their hand behind the vanishing Maharajah. The uncanny way that Malharrao escaped from Walton Jail was so like the Brothers. They floated behind the scenes, pulling strings, paying the bills, furthering their own evil schemes. They preferred to operate through henchmen. From Champlon’s words—“brothers,” “ghosts”—it sounded very much like our old enemies. Something big must be afoot, if they were in India. However, Champlon knew these men. Wouldn’t he have told me if it was indeed the Baker Brothers? I stole a glance at my sick friend, while he continued to speak. Everything about him was hazy; like a pencil sketch that was half erased. In this state, I was surprised he even recognized me.

  “One of zees men, he ’ad ’orrible skin, like ze burned rubber. He was sick. We were all sick. The monkey, the Indian, me. I don’t remember a thing—have pity, Kit.”

  Champlon was so wan I was loath to press him further. He was sick, for sure. I was cruel to come here and press him for answers. But then, I had to find a way to save him from execution. Awkwardly standing there, my fingers pressed against the scrap of lace which I’d found with Amelia Edward’s lapis lazuli cross. I’d carried it all the way from Oxford with me, out of some odd superstition.

  “I found the ankh!” I murmured, absentmindedly.

  My words had the oddest effect on Champlon. His fuddled manner vanished. He glanced at me, then quickly looked away. Just a fleeting impression, but so crafty. The very hair on my scalp began to prickle. All my instincts warned me to be very, very careful.

  Something was not right.

  I could not mistake the cunning in that glance. So, was he merely acting sick? I knew I had to pounce.

  “It was very precious,” I said, quietly.

  “Lapis lazuli is only a semi-precious stone … Not so—” he began and halted.

  “But so old, that’s what made it so valuable.”

  “Please. Spare me, I beg you. Do not tell your aunt,” he blurted, in perfect English.

  Champlon was sitting bolt upright, the towel had fallen off his head and what little color there was in his face had drained away. He was very frightened.

  “So old … and …” I said, feeling my way. Then suddenly, savagely I knew. “But it is not just the money, it is a matter of trust.”

  He fell back, his face ghastly against the white pillows.

  “You betrayed Aunt Hilda, didn’t you? Why?” I had no mercy. “Was it greed? Treachery?” I moved closer to him and he flinched away. “This is all an act, isn’t it? The whole hypnotized bit. You were never hypnotized. You were no more in a trance than I was.”

  He took a deep breath, steeling himself. When he spoke his voice was cracked. “You’re a child. You don’t understand.”

  “I am going to tell: Aunt Hilda, the Maharajah, the police. Public scandal.”

  “Please.”

  “I will tell all,” I said firmly.

  “You wouldn’t do that to me. Your own dear Champlon. Why I ’ave always looked out for—”

  “Monsieur,” I cut his bleating off. “There is only one way. Tell me everything. Everything, mind.
I will see what I can do for you.”

  “You’re a cruel girl, Kit.”

  “Everything,” I said coldly.

  He sighed. “We were shopping, your aunt and I, in the old market in Cairo. At the same moment we both saw an ankh lying on a stall along with a pile of fakes.”

  “Fakes?”

  “Antiquities created for the stupid travelers. Not so valuable at all.”

  My mind flew back to our visit to Egypt. My gang of friends, along with Champlon and my aunt, had become embroiled in an adventure revolving around a stolen scarab. I recalled the day my aunt and Champlon had gone to the market together.

  “Your auntie claims to be Egyptologist but she knows nothing. Not like Gaston. She wanted to buy ze ankh, but I told her it was worthless. I teased her. ‘Can’t you tell a fake?’ I asked. When I got it back to my hotel room and checked in my book I found ze ankh was a brilliant thing. A genuine Old Kingdom ankh. Worth ’undreds of pounds. Later, I sent out my servant to buy it. He got it very cheap.” The crafty smile was back.

  “Your auntie would be hopping mad! She would never forgive me! But, of course, I had no intentions to tell her how I trick her.”

  “You double-crosser!”

  He shrugged. “Anyway, perhaps your auntie look in ze same book. Poor lady, she brooded on ze ankh. She told me next morning at the breakfast, she was going back to buy it—pah … it was gone. Luckily she never found out I trick her—for the market man tell her Egyptian boy buy it.”

  “So it ended. I took my ankh everywhere. Then, disaster. I saw something in the newspaper about that terrible woman, Amelia Edwards. You know her?”

  I nodded. Miss Edwards, as you will remember, is a great rival of my aunt, a famous lady traveler and Egyptologist. In fact, I believe she is better known than Aunt Hilda, though of course my aunt will dispute this.

  “Miss Edwards she ’ad a big collection of Egyptian antiquities in Cairo—waiting to be shipped to London. She ’ad given much to ze British Crown.