Peter and Margaret turned to look at him in wonder, but he didn’t notice.
“Unfortunately, the colonel’s right,” Moriarty said. “Although he doesn’t phrase it in the way I—or anyone else in the known world—would. And we’d best get to it. How did you people get out of the ballroom?”
Peter explained about the hole they had chopped through the wall on the port side of the deck and the stream of people who were even now escaping from it.
Moriarty nodded. “That will add to the confusion, which is all to the good.”
A green flare streamed up into the sky from somewhere on the upper deck and burst high in the air.
“That’s not a good thing,” Peter said, watching the green ball of fire slowly descend into the sea.
“There must be a ship following us,” Moriarty said. “It’s probably trying to find us even now.”
“That’s what I thought,” Peter said. “My idea is to make our way to the bridge and try to get the ship going again.”
Moriarty shook his head. “Won’t work,” he said. “Come with us.”
“Why won’t it work?” Peter asked, “They’ve got to be spread pretty thin. They can’t have many men up there.” He exhibited his small pistol. “And I should be able to take out a couple of them, for starters.”
“They almost certainly control the engine room also,” Moriarty said. “Your signaling to resume speed from the bridge will only alert them to their new problem.”
“Well, sir,” Margaret said, “do you have a better idea?”
“I believe so,” Moriarty told them. “The guardroom for the Lancers is on a lower level by the gold vault, and it holds the rifles and bayonets for the whole force. I believe that the occasional gunfire we hear is a sign that it is being assaulted but has not yet fallen. If the villains had the guns, I believe we’d either hear a lot more gunfire or a lot less, depending. We should attempt to rescue it before our opponents, whoever they are, get the weapons.”
“Phansigar,” said Margaret.
Moriarty turned to her. “Excuse me?”
“Our unseen enemy,” Margaret said. “We believe they’re Phansigar.”
“Damn!” said Colonel Moran. “Excuse my language, miss. Thuggees—I should have guessed!”
“Thuggees,” Moriarty mused. “Phansigar. I’ve read about them, of course, but I thought they disappeared forty years ago.”
“Nothing that evil—and that successful—ever disappears,” said Moran.
“I’m afraid he’s right,” Peter said. “We heard they were possibly active again, and here they are.”
“We?” asked Moran.
“I’m with the DSI,” Peter told him.
“The Department, eh? Good chaps. I knew some of your people in Afghanistan. Eric Leakirk. Young chap. Dark hair. Blank stare. Smarter than he looked. Had a good seat on a camel.”
Peter shook his head. “Don’t think I know him,” he said.
“Save that for later,” Moriarty interrupted. “Are you with us or not?”
“We should try to get something to fight with,” said Peter. “I have a two-shot derringer pistol, but nothing else.”
“I have this,” said the seaman, hefting his axe. He pointed toward the lifeboat tied down at the edge of the deck. “And each of them lifeboats has a flare gun with eight or ten shells in a watertight compartment abaft.”
“Good thought,” said Moriarty. “What’s your name, seaman?”
“A. B. Hickscroft, sir.”
“Well, able-bodied Seaman Hickscroft, I’m Professor Moriarty, this is Colonel Moran, and we’re pleased to have you with us. You, too, Collins, and Miss St. Yves.”
Those spoken to murmured “Thank you,” and “Right on.” None of them seemed to object or think it odd that Moriarty had assumed de facto command of their little party.
“It’s time to get on with it,” Colonel Moran growled. “Are you ready?”
“Just let me near them, sir,” Seaman Hickscroft rumbled.
“That’s the spirit!” Moriarty said. “Mr. Collins, do you want to retrieve the flare gun from that lifeboat?”
“I do indeed,” Peter said, and suited action to word, opening a corner of the canvas covering the lifeboat and slipping into the boat like a well-greased ferret. A few seconds later he emerged. “I wondered why the rope was undone in this corner,” he said. “Look what—or should I say who—I found.” He ducked into the boat again, and reappeared with the head of Lady Priscilla. He pulled and heaved, and the rest of her appeared. She had been manhandled, tied up, and gagged, and was now bruised, angry, and very irritable, which they discovered as soon as Peter pulled the gag off.
“Thank God you found me,” she said, spitting the remains of the gag from her mouth while Peter was busy releasing her from the rope that was wound around her like spider webbing around a fly. “I’ve never been treated like that before in my life. In my life! Trussed up like a sack of God-knows-what and tossed into a lifeboat. And by native stewards! I have no idea what they think they were doing, but when my father hears about this—prison is too good for them—they should be flogged!”
Peter helped her out of the lifeboat, and then dove back inside to emerge less than a minute later with a flare gun in one hand and a tin box of extra flares in the other. “It’s not lethal, I think,” he said, dropping back down to the deck, “but it should slow them down.”
“Lady Priscilla, how did this happen to you?” Margaret asked, going over and putting her own scarf around her cabin mate’s quivering shoulders.
“I was doing that trick, you know, with Mr. Mamarum, and when I arrived outside the ballroom door—”
“How did you do that?” Margaret asked.
“Does it matter?” she asked. “I’m not supposed to tell.”
“Actually, it might matter,” Moriarty said.
“Well . . .” Lady Priscilla said. “I suppose. . . . Do you remember
when Mamarum and his boy brought that rack full of swords out? Well, he put it between the basket and the audience and I scrambled out the top of the basket while you couldn’t see me.”
“Come on!” Margaret said. “That rack wasn’t solid. I could see right between the swords.”
“You thought you could,” Lady Priscilla told her. “But when they set it down, they released a rolled-up strip of canvas fastened to the rear that was painted to look like the back of the set. And I crawled behind it and put on a black robe and cinched it so it would look like a dress, if you didn’t look too closely. When that crowd of people came up to examine the swords, I joined the crowd. When they left the stage, I left the stage with them, and I kept going until I was outside the doors.”
“Gor!” said Seaman Hickscroft. “Who would’a thought?”
“And,” Lady Priscilla continued, getting down to the part that was the source of her aggrievement, “no sooner did I step outside the door than these two stewards grabbed me, stuffed a wad of cotton in my mouth, and tied me up. Then they returned to what they had been doing, which was securing the doors to the ballroom with strips of wood and screws and wedges and whatnots, leaving me tied up in a corner. When they finished with the doors, they jabbered at each other for a minute, then one of them tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of flour and took me over to the lifeboat and threw me in.”
“How fortunate!” said Professor Moriarty.
“Excuse me?” Lady Priscilla backed away from him, bobbing her head like an irate pigeon.
“My lady, had it not been for the fortunate circumstance of your early departure from the room,” Moriarty said, smiling at her as though she’d purposely done something clever, “and your friend the officer’s distress at your disappearance, then we should all still be in the ballroom watching amateur clog dancing, and by the time we emerged—or found out we couldn’t emerge—it would have been too late.”
“Too late for what?” Lady Priscilla asked.
Margaret explained to her as quickly as possible
what had been happening.
“Well, I’ll be—” Lady Priscilla said.
Another green flare went up from the bridge of the ship.
“That other ship must be having trouble finding us,” Moriarty commented. “We’d better get on with this before it does. We have at most thirty of them to deal with now, and if we manage to release the Lancers and their weapons we’ll have a good shot at it. But there’s no way to tell how many are aboard the ship.” He turned to Margaret. “I don’t know where to tell you and Lady Priscilla to stay until this is all over,” he said. “Perhaps you should return to your stateroom.”
“I think I’ll go around to the other side—the port side?—of the deck and see if I can find Lieutenant Welles,” Lady Priscilla said. “He’s very good in situations, if he has someone to tell him what to do.”
“Very well, my lady,” Moriarty agreed.
“As for me,” Margaret said, “were I to return to my stateroom I should go crazy wondering what was happening. And have palpitations at every sound. I’m not sure what palpitations are, but I’m sure I would have them.”
“You can’t talk her out of coming with us,” Peter told Moriarty, “and we’d best not waste time trying.” He held out his little two-shot pistol to Margaret. “Do you know how to use this?” he asked.
“Am I my father’s daughter?” asked Margaret. “I’ve been firing sidearms since I was six years old. I’m also a dead shot with a forty-pound bow, and I can handle an épée reasonably well.”
“A sure recipe for domestic bliss,” Peter said, handing her the pistol. “Watch out for this one. It’s a single-action with a light hammer pull and a hair trigger.”
“This way,” Moriarty said, leading them along the deck to the next stairs down.
The Artful Codger, who had been stretched out along one side of the ladder between the decks, his head lower than his feet, to hear what Moriarty and his minions were planning, pulled himself up and twisted his head from side to side to relieve a neck cramp that had overtaken him while he was unable to move. “They’re going down to the guardroom to try to free the guards and get their weapons,” he reported to Pin. “It sounds like they’re getting ready to fight the Thuggees, so maybe they’re not on their side after all.”
“The what?” Pin asked. “They’re going to fight the what?”
“Thuggees,” the Codger repeated. “That’s what the other bloke called them. He said it several times. Thuggees.”
“I thought they were all killed off many years ago,” said Pin.
“That’s what the professor said. But apparently they ain’t. Who are they, then, when they’re at home?”
“A vicious gang of murderers. They made a religion out of theft and murder.”
“I got some acquaintances like that,” commented Cooley the Pup.
Pin considered. “No profit in staying here,” he said. “We’d best follow along behind them and see which way the wind blows. Perhaps Moriarty and I are both trying to prevent the gold from being removed by some third party.”
“Now, wouldn’t that be something?” commented the Artful Codger.
“Teaming up with the professor,” said Cooley. “Now, that would be—”
Dr. Pin Dok Low glared at him.
“—wrong,” he finished hastily. “That would be wrong. Interesting, but wrong.”
Lieutenant McPride gave one last pull and the inner rim of the porthole frame came free of the wall, sprang from McPride’s hand, and bounced around the room, narrowly missing General St. Yves. “Sorry, sir,” he said. He dropped the twisted and bent spoon he had been using and pushed at the porthole itself. It resisted his efforts at first, but then budged slowly and grudgingly outward.
Lieutenant McPride fell back, exhausted, and Lieutenant Pinton took over for the final push. It took another few minutes before the brass porthole, mount and all, was pushed out and fell with a clatter to the deck below.
Pinton stepped back and examined what he and McPride had wrought. “It still seems a mite small,” he said.
“I think you’re the, ah, slenderest of us, Lieutenant,” St. Yves said. “If you can’t make it through, then none of us can.”
“I’ll give it a try, sir,” Pinton said. “If we could move the desk over to the hole so I don’t have to balance in midair while I’m trying to pull myself through, it might help.”
They pushed the desk over and moved all the papers, a box of cigars, and a small ornate jar of snuff off the desktop. Lieutenant Pinton took his jacket off, climbed up on the desk, and stuck his head through the porthole. Then he backed out again. “It’s my shoulders, sir,” he said apologetically. “I always thought of them as being too narrow, but now it seems they’re not narrow enough.”
“Are we b-bereft of options, then?” asked General St. Yves. “There must be some way we can escape this confounded room.”
“Perhaps if I put one arm through first . . .” said Pinton, considering the hole. He stretched out his right arm and thrust it through the hole, followed by his head. “By God, sir,” he called from the outside. “I think this might do it!”
Pinton continued wiggling and squirming and pushing and pulling, until he succeeded in getting his body through the hole and fell, shoulder first, on the promenade deck below. He stood up and peered back inside. “I’ve done it, sir!” he announced.
“So we see,” said St. Yves. “Can you—”
“Yes, sir; I’ll go right around and see about freeing the door.”
“You’re cut,” St. Yves said, seeing blood running down the lieutenant’s arm.
“Nothing, sir. Just a scrape. Be right there, sir.” And he ran around to the corridor.
A few moments later those inside the room heard some thumping, scraping, and cursing from outside the door, and then it was opened. “It was a bolt, sir,” said Lieutenant Pinton, hefting a three-inch-long bolt.
Captain Iskansen was the first out the door. With a “Got to get to the bridge. Thank you, Lieutenant,” he was off down the deck and up the nearest ladder.
“Well, gentlemen,” said General St. Yves. “We’d better go and see how much damage these chaps have been able to do, and set it to rights.”
“Yes, sir,” his lieutenants said.
“And perhaps do a bit of damage of our own,” added Lieutenant McPride.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE MARQUIS OF
QUEENSBERRY DOESN’T
RULE HERE
I ’listed at home for a lancer,
Oh who would not sleep with the brave?
—A. E. Housman
A battle was being waged between six Lancers and an indefinite number of Thuggees on the deck holding the gold vault. A slow battle, a battle in miniature, with no bugles sounding the charge, no roar of cannon, no advance at full gallop with lances down, no shouted orders to dismount and form a skirmish line; but deadly nonetheless.
Six of the Lancers were in the guardroom, crouching behind an overturned table in the doorway two at a time, peeking out at the corridor, and firing their Martini-Henry carbines at whatever moved. One of their number—the guard who had been on duty at the far end of the corridor—now lay dead at his post, a Thuggee scarf tight around his neck.
About a dozen Phansigar were blocking both ends of the corridor, hiding behind an overturned couch at one end and a barricade of fifty-pound bags of rice at the other. The six of the Duke’s Own were not interested in fighting their way out of the guardroom. It was more important to remain and keep the guns and ammunition stored there out of the hands of their opponents.
All was quiet when Moriarty and his passel arrived at the disputed deck. They rounded a corner in the corridor and saw several men in stewards’ white crouching behind an overturned couch about twenty feet in front of them, exchanging shots and insulting remarks with some of the Duke of Moncreith’s Own in the guardroom. The electrical lights were still shining brightly in front of the gold vault, and the outer door to the vault was still open
. As yet there was no sign that the Thuggees had made any attempt to remove the gold, or even open the inner door. Moriarty waved his group back out of sight around the corner before the Thuggees noticed them.
“Things seem to be at an impasse,” Moran commented. “The enemy’s advance has stalled.”
“It’ll pick up again if that ship gets here,” said Peter. “If there is a ship.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Moriarty said. “Which means we’d better do something with reasonable speed.”
“Any ideas?” Colonel Moran asked, tight-lipped. “I don’t fancy advancing into superior firepower. A flanking attack would be preferable. Sneak up on them.”
“How do you sneak up on them in a corridor?” Peter asked.
“The professor’s the tactician,” Moran told him. “Ask him. I just do as I’m ordered.”
“I’d like to thank you for that profound statement of confidence,” Moriarty said. “But you’re the military man. What did they teach you at Sandhurst besides looting and commissary?”
“Artillery,” Moran told him. “I can plot a trajectory with the best of ’em.”
“Very useful,” Moriarty agreed.
“Speed?” Margaret reminded them.
The door to the deck behind them swung open, and they whirled and pointed various weapons at the three men who came through until they saw that the newcomers were not Phansigar.
“Perhaps we might be of some use,” said the tallest of the three. “I am Dr. Pin Dok Low. These two gentlemen are my assistants.”
Moriarty silently examined the three men, pausing for a long moment to look hard at Pin Dok Low. For a second he seemed about to say something, and then he didn’t. Colonel Moran thought that Moriarty looked vaguely puzzled, except that was clearly impossible. Professor Moriarty was never puzzled by anything, no way.
“Welcome to our little farrago,” said Peter Collins. “You don’t happen to have a small cannon anywhere about your person, do you?”
“My walking stick,” said Pin, displaying the gold-headed object in question, “has a powerful air gun concealed in its shaft. Unfortunately, it takes entirely too long to reload and pump up the air pressure to make it more than a one-shot weapon. However”—he reached down and took the gold-banded tip off the bottom of the stick—“we may as well have the benefit of that one shot.”
The Empress of India Page 24
