Cecil was staring at me with something like admiration and I felt a glow of pride.
“Kit Salter, you reached Shambala. You made it to the temple of the oracle in Siwa. You are a very unusual girl.”
My glowing feeling spread. Then abruptly I remembered who was flattering me and I felt hollow.
“I’m not interested in your compliments,” I spat.
Cyril eyed me like a cobra sizing up a mouse while Cecil shrugged. “I offer them freely. It is your qualities that made me choose you, Kit Salter—and your er … seconds … Waldo, Isaac and Rachel of course.”
“What is this task?” Waldo asked wincing at the description of himself as a second. “Not that—”
“We take it for granted that you will protest,” Cyril interrupted—and Cecil flashed him a look of amusement. “We don’t expect you to do anything for us freely.”
That word, “freely,” hung ominously in the air.
Cecil pushed a gloved hand through his hair and then, leaning forward, steepled his hands on the table. I caught a merest glimpse of the wrist under the glove. It was a repulsive sight. The skin was wrinkled and browned, like that of a rotten apple. It reminded me of a monkey, or a very aged man. Somehow to see it side-by-side with smooth flesh was particularly revolting.
“What’s wrong with your hands?” I blurted. “Is that why you wear those gloves?”
The amiable expression on Cecil’s face was replaced in an instant by pure malice.
“Just this once,” he said very, very slowly, “I will overlook your appalling manners.”
“Get to the meat,” his twin murmured, who seemed a man of fewer words.
Waldo said, “Give it to us straight. Why did you kidnap us?”
“Cards on the table.” Cecil leaned back in his chair and spread out his gloved hands. “We are sending you to China, in the care of our best captain and crew. There is something I need you to—how shall I put this—retrieve from a secret monastery in the Songshan mountains.”
“You want us to steal? From monks?”
“Exactly!” Cyril grinned briefly. He glanced at his brother, who bowed his head. “Let’s call a spade a spade. There is a book in that monastery that we want. You will bring it to us.”
“Why do you want this book?” Rachel asked.
“Is it their business?” Cyril asked his brother.
“I suppose they have a right to wonder,” Cecil replied.
“Very well,” Cyril said. “I am talking of the legendary Book of Bones. It contains the finest of Kung Fu wisdom.”
“What is Kung Fu?” Rachel whispered.
“An ancient Chinese system of fighting. Usually there are no weapons involved, just the skill of the fighter. It’s what they call martial arts … a bit like boxing but more sophisticated, in a way.” Isaac replied. He can rarely resist an opportunity to show off.
“This doesn’t ring true,” I said. “I would have thought guns and bombs were more your style than bare hands.”
Cyril turned his chill gaze on me. Inside I felt very, very cold. “I would have thought you would understand, Kathleen. In Shambala we conquered mortality. The Book of Bones will enable us to—how shall I put it—perfect our perfection!”
“Perfect our perfection!” Cecil murmured. “That’s good, brother, very good.”
“What the Hades are these guys talking about?” Waldo whispered to me. “They’re about as perfect as a pair of gargoyles.”
“Look here,” Isaac interrupted. “I’m not being rude, just trying to understand. Are you saying you want this Book of Bones as a sort of health manual?”
Cyril inclined his head. “Precisely.”
Something was wrong with the Bakers, despite their seeming good looks. Something that was making them desperate for this Book of Bones. The withered hands, the rotten smell that they gave off when one came too close.
I remembered the words of Maya, the guardian of Shambala. She had predicted that their beauty was a curse. It would quickly wither in the outside world. Did they believe this thing was a talisman, which would help them in some way? What was this Book of Bones?
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why me? I mean, if you want this Book of Bones so much, why don’t you just go and get it. Or if you don’t want to risk your um … good looks, send one of your minions.”
“Sharp as ever, Miss Salter,” Cecil murmured. “The reason is simple. It is said that only one who is ‘pure of heart’ will be able to remove the Book from the monastery. Our experiences in Shambala convinced us that, although you are an infuriating nuisance, you have some valuable virtues. So we have entrusted you and your friends with this little commission.”
For the first time, I knew I had some power. “No,” I said firmly. “I will not play your game.”
“You’re quite sure about that?”
“Bully and bribe all you like! We’re not going anywhere!”
“You know I’m almost glad to hear you protest,” Cecil said. “You see we cooked up a little insurance policy. Tell them, Cyril.”
Cyril’s rubber lips pulled back over his perfect teeth. “We thought of torture, pulling your fingernails out one by one, that sort of thing. But it was so messy. Then we came up with something a little more subtle.”
“A plan sprung fully formed from Cyril’s fertile mind,” Cecil interjected.
“A little something was added to your food yesterday,” Cyril said, slowly drawling the words for maximum effect. “One of you has been poisoned.”
“What?” Waldo asked dully.
“I repeat. One of you has been given a deadly poison.”
“Just … one of us?” I asked.
His pale blue eyes scanned us, looking over each of us in turn. Was it my imagination that they lingered a little longer on me? They were openly amused. My heart beat faster and my hands began to tremble. Was I the ill-omened one? Somehow I just knew it was me.
Cyril held up his gloved hand to silence our uproar. “This is a fatal poison, deadly and subtle. The ‘chosen one’ won’t feel anything yet. But be assured. Our chemist is a very talented man. If you are not back from Peking with the Book of Bones, in precisely five months you will go off to meet your maker; I promise you that. One of you will die. You will die a very horrible death if you do not take the antidote.”
“Why not all of us?” Rachel burst out. “I would have thought it was more your style to kill us all.”
“Certainly not,” Cyril snapped. “That isn’t how we operate. We aren’t heartless. It wasn’t necessary to poison you all.” He paused a moment, smiling. “We don’t believe in taking a sledgehammer to a nut. As I said, just one of you has been given the fatal dose.”
“Who?” I asked. “Which one of us have you poisoned?”
“That would be telling!” Cecil said.
“Our cruelty is strictly scientific,” Cyril added.
“What does that mean?”
“It means we want to keep each and every one of you on tenterhooks, guessing, worrying, fearing. You’ll pass sleepless nights, check each other for signs of illness. It will all be tremendously frightening,” Cecil replied.
“You’re sick,” Waldo spat. “Twisted.”
“Perhaps,” Cecil shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me.”
He got up and stretched his arms, as if rather bored. Then he leaned over the table and whipped off the checked cloth that hid the mound in the center, revealing a wire cage. Lying at the bottom was a golden Labrador. Its coat was still glossy but everything else about the hound was badly wrong. Its eyes were open, blank and staring, covered with a film of white mucus. Poor beast, its jaw was badly contorted, teeth protruding. A pool of dribble lay under its muzzle. Everything about the creature spoke of a death in screaming agony.
“A nasty death,” Cecil said, looking down with something like regret. “Rather a shame, really. Still, Pippin was getting rather old.”
“Unless you want to die very unpleasantly,” Cyril said, �
��I suggest you follow our orders.”
“It’s a trick,” Waldo replied faintly.
But I scarcely heard. I couldn’t look at the animal. I was going to be sick.
“You are trying to trick us into doing your dirty work,” Waldo continued.
But his voice lacked conviction. I knew the Baker Brothers—they would have no qualms about a mere poisoning.
Cecil smiled and rang a bell. Another liveried minion appeared, carrying a silver platter. On it was a leather folder. Cecil took the folder and opening it drew out four slips of paper. The words Peninsular and Oriental were emblazoned on them. I knew instantly what they were—steamer tickets.
“Here are your tickets. You hardly need them, dear children, for of course my brother and I will be hiring the entire steamer. Still, we thought you’d appreciate the gesture.”
“Take a word of advice,” Cyril added. “I’d make damn sure one of you doesn’t end up as dead as poor Pippin.”
I rose from the table and walked out, the others following my lead. I saw Waldo had taken the tickets, and although I wished he hadn’t, I couldn’t blame him. At the door I heard one of the Brothers call out to us:
“You’ll need a guide, of course!”
“Don’t worry Cy,” the other drawled. “They’ll have plenty of time to work it out.”
Chapter Nine
We sailed to China on a ghost ship. The Mandalay was a modern and elegant steamer, but lifeless nonetheless. This was hardly surprising. Anything touched by the withered hand of the Baker Brothers lost its pulse. Rachel and I shared a cabin, the boys were next door. The rooms were large, luxurious. Ours was paneled in walnut, fitted with a thick maroon carpet and decked with wardrobes, leather armchairs, bookshelves and mirrors. One could have fancied oneself in a gentleman’s club stuffed with old men smoking cigars—rather than aboard a floating prison.
The dining saloon where we had our meals was also lavish, with crystal chandeliers, steaming tea urns and the finest Chinese porcelain. It could have fitted a hundred or more people, but we were the only passengers, eating our lonely dinners in the midst of a vast empty space. I had detested the Memsahibs on our voyage to India, who were always criticizing my manners. Now I would have positively welcomed their company, our solitude was so sinister. True, there were the mute Chinese waiters who brought us our food. I had spied Lascar sailors scrubbing down the decks. But no one would answer us if we said a friendly hello. Sometimes at night I would imagine that I heard the same haunting cry that had disturbed my sleep at Hadden Castle. A high-pitched wail, like a trapped fox, but so ghostly I put it down to bad dreams.
We had been sailing on like this, seeing hardly a soul except Mrs. Glee, who dropped in on us every day to continue our education. Mrs. Glee was positively shrinking, becoming more frail and breathless as each day passed. Sometimes she seemed on the brink of a confession, but then she would pull back. I realized that she felt guilty about the harm she was doing us, for she often left little treats on our pillows. Packets of candied peel or butterscotch. Jars of salted almonds. We ate the treats, of course. But they didn’t make us like her, certainly not respect her. Luckily Mrs. Glee was often called away by a bell to some other mysterious task and we were left with free time.
Not that there was anything to do. True there were books, but we had soon read them all. We played games—hangman, noughts and crosses, cards, jacks with small stones. Mostly we just brooded. Little wonder that we all, individually, thought we were the one who had been poisoned. I was convinced my heart was burning, while Isaac suffered from nausea and Rachel from headaches. Only Waldo seemed relatively unaffected, though he had nervous tremors in his hand. He’d lost a finger in the Himalayas to frostbite—now he claimed “the poison” was making his whole hand tremble.
I am making light of it now, but it was no easy thing that voyage. The aches, the foulness—each one of us certain we were going to die. I was the most downcast. At night I could barely sleep for the nausea in my throat. I woke up each morning weary to the bone, my neck stiff, and dreading the day ahead.
We had been sailing on like this past Italy, through the Indian Ocean and the Malacca Straits on to the South China Seas when one day at dinner Waldo threw down his spoon.
“This is hell,” he announced. “I can’t stand it any more! Mrs. Glee’s lessons! This disgusting food! We should make a raft and just jump overboard.”
“We’d make good shark bait,” I murmured.
“Waldo!” Rachel snapped. Her dark eyes had filled with tears and her voice had an edge of hysteria. “If you can’t talk sense just keep your mouth closed.” With that she threw down her napkin and slammed out of the saloon.
“What did I do?” Waldo asked, bewildered.
Isaac shrugged. “Girls,” he explained, lifting an eyebrow. “They have these vapors. Nerves, they call them.”
“She’s not the only one who is on edge,” I snapped. “It’s hardly pleasant being a prisoner of this crew.”
“You can’t call those two a crew,” Isaac said, gesturing to the captain, who was outside by the railings talking to Mrs. Glee. “They’re more like characters from Frankenstein.”
The captain was our old friend Bert, aka “Lips,” who seemed to combine running a ship with a little kidnapping on the side. Whenever he was around, Mrs. Glee became even more timorous, like a spaniel beaten so many times that it cringes at the sight of its master. We saw her now, a nervous smile on her lips, positively shrinking while Lips puffed and preened. We saw them turn and watch Rachel. Since he had hijacked our coach, Bert had somehow acquired a scar which ran down the left side of his face and made his rosebud lips even more repulsive.
Watching him, I could only shudder. No wonder Mrs. Glee was so terrified.
Why, you might be wondering, did we agree to undertake the voyage to China at all? The answer is simple, we could see no other choice. Somehow it might have been easier if we had all been poisoned. But with a sword hanging over just one of our heads, we miserably gave in to their demands. Oh, it was a very ingenious plan those two Brothers came up with—inspired both in its nastiness and in the ease with which it threw a noose around our necks. The Brothers had assured us, in the most honeyed tones, that there was no use trying to escape. There was no use consulting doctors. The poison was absolutely untraceable. It would not show up in tests at all, until it killed one of us as stone dead as Pippin.
All these threats didn’t prevent us trying to find a way out. I was especially concerned to get news of our plight to the outside world. My father, Waldo’s mother, Rachel and Isaac’s guardians—so many people must have been frantic with worry. They probably believed us dead, murdered on that lonely Dartmoor road by highwaymen. I thought that if only I could somehow contact Aunt Hilda, she might have a plan. My aunt, as you know, is an intrepid explorer and spy. She had contacts at the highest level in her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. She was actually present at that party in the castle, talking to the Prince of Wales. If she could whisper in the right ear, might she have the Baker Brothers investigated?
I could only hope.
Meanwhile, we were helpless. Lying in our bunks that night, staring at the oak-paneled ceiling which seemed to hang oppressively close, Rachel and I chatted.
“Have you thought how odd this steamer is?” she asked.
“Sinister, more like,” I replied.
“I mean, all we see is the captain and Mrs. Glee, but there must be others. Seamen who run the engines and stoke the boiler things.”
I nodded. “We’re imprisoned up on the top deck. There’s stuff going on in the ship that we know nothing about. For a start, what do you suppose our cargo is? We’re clearly not a passenger ship.”
“Opium?” Rachel asked, the horror in her voice drifting up to me in the top bunk.
“No,” I replied quickly. I had thought of that possibility but did not want my sensitive friend to dwell on it. “There’s no reason to think of opium.”
I was not telling the truth. There was every reason to think we might be on a steamer involved in the opium smuggling business. British merchants directed the trade, which was said to have infected the Chinese people with the evils of addiction to the poppy—but made merchants like Jardine Matheson very wealthy. Shanghai, Canton, these were ports grown fat on the profits of opium. Indeed, to the shame of many reformers, Britain had even recently fought two “opium wars” to demand access from the Imperial Chinese government to the drug. Critics of the war, such as our current Prime Minister, William Gladstone, who was then a young reformer, had roundly condemned the trade and the war. But it was a slippery business. Opium was not smuggled from England, but from British India. Just a few days ago we had stopped in the Indian port of Calcutta. Had we picked up supplies of opium to sell for many taels of silver to Chinese drug smugglers?
I turned over irritably in the bunk; my sheets were sticky with sweat despite the cool air blowing in through the porthole. These were unprofitable thoughts.
“Kit … why don’t we go and investigate?”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“We’re not likely to get very far in daylight. Please.”
I was reluctant. Usually it was the other way round, me urging on a doubtful Rachel to adventure. Maybe it was the stiffness in my neck and back. The poison slowly working its evil magic on me. Perhaps it was because I was filled with dread, scared of what we would find aboard this steamship. Nevertheless I changed out of my nightgown and pulled on some clothes. Then we knocked on the next-door cabin. Waldo stuck his head out. It seemed that our friends were also kept awake by the muggy heat. They agreed to join us and soon we were creeping stealthily down the first-class deck.
There were no lights on anywhere. But the moon was bright, hanging low over the Indian Ocean. A thousand, a million, stars guided us. We had candles; we could light them in an emergency.
“Wait!” I suddenly stopped short and hissed. “How are we going to get through the doors to the lower decks? You know Bert always keeps them locked.”
The Book of Bones Page 5
