Moriarty led the group through a not-quite-maze of little chambers, grottoes, and connecting corridors to a cave with a high, narrow opening to the outside, letting in a wide blade of light that progressed about the room as the day advanced.
“I believe this is it, my friends,” Moriarty said, casting the beam from his lantern about the room. More of the wall space seemed to be unfinished in here than in most of the other chambers. But the carvings that were there were well and carefully done by a true artist with a feeling for the human form. The far wall displayed a series of images of strong men and supple women, or perhaps the same strong man and supple woman, engaged in erotic dalliance of an imaginative and athletic nature, assuming positions of which the average European had never conceived, and several that he or she would have deemed impossible.
“Well, there you are, gentlemen,” Moriarty said. “The people who built this had an enlightened attitude toward the sensual aspects of human relations fifteen hundred years ago. They have pictured here acts that we would be embarrassed to admit we know the names for.”
“I’d just as soon not know the name for that one,” Colonel Morcy said, pointing to a carving of a couple particularly intricately entwined. “It looks intricate and not particularly pleasurable.”
“I’d just as soon not know the names of any of them,” said Major Sandiman, who was standing at a position of parade rest and determinedly looking straight in front of him. Where, as it happened, was a carving in high relief of a woman’s leg wrapped around a man’s torso, her toes pointing joyously toward the ceiling. “A gentleman does not do that sort of thing!”
“No kidding, cove?” asked Mummer Tolliver, sounding intrigued. “What sort of thing does a gentleman do, then?”
Colonel Moran peered into a niche in the wall a little farther along. “Well, I’ll be damned!” he exclaimed. “Bring that lamp over here, will you?”
“Certainly.” Moriarty strode over to Moran with the lamp. “What have you found?”
“Shine it in there—in that recess.” He pursed his lips and stared at the illuminated statue in the niche. “I’m damned if that doesn’t look like a stone version of that statue you gentlemen of the Lancers go to dinner with,” he said, turning to General St. Yves.
“Here, now, what’s that?” Colonel Morcy demanded, wheeling around and stalking over to where Moriarty and Moran were standing. “A statue resembling the Lady of Lucknow? Wouldn’t that be something? Perhaps we can discover something of her provenance if it’s so.”
“It has been something of a mystery where she came from,” Brigadier General St. Yves said, coming over to examine the statue. “Hmmm. Curious. It does look like her, at least superficially, I’ll admit.”
The mummer elbowed his way between the men and squinted at the statue that he had put in that very niche barely two hours before. “Well, I’ll be packed in putrid pickled peppers,” he exclaimed, “if that ain’t Fatima the Dancing Dolly.”
“You know this statue?” St. Yves asked.
“Not this very one, o’course,” the mummer explained. “But I got a couple of hundred just like her in the hold of the ship. Only made out of the purist brass. I calls her ‘Fatima the Dancing Dolly,’ and plans to sell them to the tourist trade in London and Brighton, and such-like.”
“A couple of hundred?” asked Major Sandiman, looking annoyed.
“I would have gotten more if I could,” the mummer said. “The last batch went in nothing flat.”
“The last batch?” asked Major Sandiman, looking even more annoyed.
“You say you call her ‘Fatima’?” asked St. Yves. “Does that mean you don’t know the actual provenance of the statue?”
“Oh, sure I does,” the mummer said breezily, “but I couldn’t very well call her by her right name, now, could I?”
“Why is that?” asked Colonel Morcy.
“Why, middle-class morality, that’s why. Middle-class morality would have none of it.”
“Really?” asked Professor Moriarty. “Is it an immoral statue we’re looking at, then?”
“The way I sees it, the immorality is in the eyes of them as looks at the statue, not in the Harlot of Hajipur herself,” Tolliver said, drawing himself up and looking self-righteously around the group surrounding him.
Major Sandiman grimaced. “The, ah, ‘Harlot of Hajipur,’ you say?”
“Not me,” the mummer explained. “I don’t say that. But I’ve been given to understand by them as supplies me with such stuff that thissere lady”—he pointed a thumb at the statue—“is the goddess of what you might call ‘ladies of the evening.’ If you get what I mean.”
“Their goddess?” General St. Yves queried. “This statue?”
“Yes, sir, that’s it. Brings ’em luck, and, eh, clients, and keeps ’em safe. Or so I’m told. There’s a brass copy of thissere lady in the back room of every brothel from Yezd to Rangoon. Or so I’m told.”
“It is a suggestive pose,” added Moriarty, looking at the statue closely through his pince-nez. “Resembling the passive-receptive postures outlined in the Kama-Sutra.”
Major Sandiman frowned. “The Kama—”
“An ancient Indian manual of, ah, lovemaking. Very instructive, or so they say,” Moriarty told him.
“And you have brass copies of this very statue?” a thoughtful Colonel Morcy asked the mummer.
“When we gets back to the ship,” the mummer told him, “you can come take a dekko at one, and see for yourself.”
“Yes,” said Colonel Morcy. “That will be nice.”
When Peter and Margaret made their way back toward the steam launch there was a man standing at the bottom of the stairs busy brushing lint off the lapel of his white linen jacket. He looked up as they passed and removed his hat. “Excuse me,” he said, “but are you Inspector Collins?”
Peter turned to him. “I am positively he,” he admitted. “What can I do for you?”
The man looked from Peter to Margaret and back. “Ah . . .” he said.
“It’s all right,” Peter assured him. “This lady’s with me.”
“Right, then,” the man said. He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Peter. “From H,” he said. “Urgent.”
“Ah!” said Peter.
“A pleasure meeting you,” the man said, bobbing his hat in each of their directions. “My name’s Phitts, by the way.” Jamming the hat back on his head, he turned and loped off down the dock to where a small sailboat was tied up. He jumped in, cast off, raised the sail, and waved at them in one continuous motion, and then the boat had caught the breeze and pulled handily away from the dock.
Margaret caught Peter’s arm. “So you’re an inspector,” she said.
“So I am,” he admitted. “We’re all inspectors, except those of us who are Scouts, or district inspectors, or commissioners. But there’s only three of them.”
“H,” she said.
“My boss,” he told her. “His title is high exalted poo-bah.”
“Short name.”
“Yes.”
“Hadn’t you better open that letter?” Margaret asked. “Or are you tactfully waiting for me to go away?”
“Please don’t go away,” Peter said. “Don’t ever go away.” He ripped the envelope open and took out a folded sheet of paper. For a second he paused, looking at Margaret, who was peering over his shoulder expectantly.
“I won’t look,” she said, and turned her head away.
“I don’t think it will matter,” he told her. He unfolded the paper. “Look,” he said.
She turned back and looked. She saw a jumble of letters. Neatly arranged, but a jumble nonetheless:
GSJCA
QTMAW
RHKGH
ONBFR
RWRGN
KWHRE
OQFAB
GXCTF
BFSTN
DXGRH
OHUMM
LEOTB
RBTHM
JRHAF
EPRIC
TQLYE
OFCDL
TMLOE
WEOBK
QVQCB
KTRRH
LRQDW
GPLTC
PMRWR
TCHVM
FORHR
XQPNB
PRYZ
“Well,” she said. “Very informative. Some sort of code, no doubt.”
“It’s done in what’s called the Playfair Cipher,” he told her. “Safe and simple to use. I’ll have to wait until we get back to the ship to translate it.”
“I thought you said it was simple.”
“Simple but time-consuming,” he explained. “And it uses a key word which changes from time to time. I’ll have to look up this one back on the ship.”
“Oh,” she said, looking disappointed.
“It’s probably quite dull,” he told her. “These things usually are. Of course,” he reflected, “when they’re not dull, they tend to be very exciting indeed.”
TWENTY
A NUMBER OF THINGS
Happy Thought
The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
The Artful Codger came into the second-class lounge at something between a fast walk and a canter and stopped at Pin’s table. His breathing was rapid and his face was flushed. “I seen him,” he gasped.
“Breath deeply,” said Pin. “Relax. You should never run on board a ship; all the books say so. Sit down. Let me pour you a cup of tea.”
Dropping into a seat, the Codger put his hand to his chest and took several slow deep breaths. “He’s back on the ship,” he said.
Pin finished pouring the tea and put the teapot carefully down. “Who is?”
“Who else? Professor Moriarty.”
“Of course he is. Where else would he be? The Empress is about to leave port.”
“Yes, but he really is here. I’ve seen him. He was getting off this old side-wheeler. I don’t think he saw me.”
“Are you sure it was him?”
“Tall bloke, stands straight as a lamppost; big head, with them nose-pinching glasses; deep-set eyes, cold as blue ice, looking like they could read what you’re thinking and not liking it much; topper; gold-handled cane.”
“That’s an apt description of Professor Moriarty. Does he know you?”
“I don’t think so, but they do say that the professor knows everything.”
Pin’s eyes widened and he seemed about to say something, but he refrained.
A waiter came by the table and paused, salaamed, bowed, looked obsequious, and wished to know whether the masters would like anything else be brought to them that they might partake of, if it pleases your worship.
They said no. The waiter backed away and left.
“And this is why you were running?” Pin asked.
“Actually . . .” the Codger said, looking embarrassed, “actually I got lost.”
“Lost?”
“Well, it’s a big ship,” he said defensively.
Pin nodded and ran a hand over his sleek, black, well-groomed hair. “So the professor has returned,” he said. “Where has he been?”
“He’s been out with a bunch of folks looking at the elephants, is what they told me.”
“Elephants?” Pin asked, looking suddenly alert. “For transporting gold, perhaps?”
“I thought of that, I did.” He took a breath and added, “Which is why I was running.”
“Ah!” said Pin, and then lapsed into a thoughtful silence.
Cooley the Pup strolled over to the table and joined them, hands jammed deep in the pockets of his light gray flannel pants. “How’s yourself?” he asked. “I thought you might like to know the professor has rejoined the ship.”
Pin came out of his reverie and looked sharply at his companions. “So I just heard,” he told the Pup. “Off looking at elephants, was he?”
“I hadn’t heard that,” said Cooley. “I heard as he was on some island looking at statues.”
“Maybe,” suggested the Artful Codger, “they was statues of elephants.”
The long, mournful blast of the ship’s horn reverberated through the room.
“We’re about to leave Bombay,” said Pin. “Go down and casually pass in front of the gold vault door every so often. If the captain is as faithful as they say about opening the outer door once we leave port, you should be able to see something.”
“Right enough,” said the Codger. “What am I looking for?”
Pin grinned a tight-lipped grin. “Gold,” he said.
It was early evening when the Efrit returned the Elephanta visitors to their ship, and The Empress of India was already preparing to depart. The cargo hatches were closed and battened down, the purser was fretting about the few as-yet unreturned passengers, the last of the fresh water had been brought aboard, and the replacements to the crew had been fitted out in fresh uniforms and given their instructions.
Margaret and Peter shook hands decorously, although perhaps their hands remained together rather longer than either of them expected and separated in the main corridor to return to their cabins. Margaret pulled open the door to her stateroom, saw that Lady Priscilla had not yet returned, and flung herself on her bed to consider life. In his cabin Peter sat at the small writing desk and, banishing the image of Margaret as best he could from floating in the air before his eyes, took the Tauschnitz pocket edition of British poetry from a side pocket of his portmanteau and flipped through it.
By an abstruse process devised by some clerk in the coding office who never had to decode a message as though anything more important than his lunch were at stake, Peter determined that the fourth word in a poem by Dryden was to be the key word for the cipher. On looking it up, he found that the word was “Cleopatra.” Peter made a five-by-five grid of the alphabet on a sheet of lined paper, starting with the letters in “Cleopatra,” and took the letter from his pocket and smoothed it out on the desk:
GSJCA
QTMAW
RHKGH
ONBFR
RWRGN
KWHRE
OQFAB
GXCTF
BFSTN
DXGRH
OHUMM
LEOTB
RBTHM
JRHAF
MLOEW
EPRIC
TQLYE
OFCDL
TMLOE
WEOBK
QVQCB
KTRRH
LRQDW
GPLTC
PMRWR
TCHVM
FORHR
XQPNB
PRYZ
Slowly and carefully he wrote out the clear text of the message above the cipher text:
INFOR
MANTV
ERIFI
ESTHA
TXTHU
GXGEX
ESACT
IVEAG
AINBU
TWHER
EISUN
CLEAR
TRANS
FERCA
NCELX
LEDFO
RNOWL
EAVEC
ANCEL
XLEDI
MXMED
IATER
ETURN
TOCAL
CUTXT
AOFXF
ICERE
QUEST
EDXY
Or, removing the nulls and putting the proper spacing and punctuation in, he read:
Informant verifies that thuggees active again, but
where is unclear. Transfer cancelled for now,
leave cancelled. Immediate return to Calcutta
office requested.
The Empress of India Page 20
