Up close, she had a clownish look, her lipstick bleeding into the fine lines around her mouth.
‘Are you here to go hunting?’ she said. ‘With your own ickle, lickle gun? How old are you, pet?’
Nobody spoke like that to Kelsie Corvette, Elsie thought, with a flash of outrage. They wouldn’t dare. She lifted her chin and gave Marjorie a level stare.
‘Eleven,’ she said. ‘And a half.’
Nottle gave a snort of laughter. ‘She sure got you there!’
Marjorie flushed. She stared at Elsie with narrowed eyes.
‘Aren’t you a little old to be playing dress-up?’ she said, fastening her gaze on Elsie’s trainers. ‘Where on earth did you get those peculiar things?’
It was a spiteful question. But it was also a lucky one, because it made Elsie hang her head with embarrassment. And if she hadn’t been staring down at precisely that moment, she wouldn’t have noticed something lying on the floor nearby. If anyone else had seen it, they might have thought a gust of wind had blown it through the crack beneath the door. But Elsie knew that it had been deliberately pushed.
It was a small yellow feather.
Mandeep had sent them a message. He must have found something. Elsie glanced at John, but he was still in the corner, doing his best to blend with the wallpaper.
‘Well, where did you get them from?’ Marjorie repeated. Everyone was now staring at Elsie’s trainers.
‘Real strange,’ Nottle said. ‘Take ’em off. ‘Let’s have a look at ’em.’
Elsie felt a stab of panic. She shook her head.
‘Do as you’re told,’ Marjorie snapped.
‘I can’t…’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because,’ Elsie said frantically. ‘Because… I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘Oh!’ Marjorie cried, jerking back. ‘Not here, get away from me, get away!’
‘Was it something you ate?’ Charles suggested. ‘My sandwich tasted a bit rum, now I come to think of it.’
‘I just need some fresh air…’
‘Go at once, this minute.’ Marjorie fanned herself in an exaggerated fashion. ‘You don’t think it could be catching, do you, Charles? On our honeymoon…’
Elsie darted gratefully for the door. She paused to make sure nobody was following her, then hurried across the deserted lobby and on to the verandah.
‘Mandeep?’
She walked along the verandah to the far end and looked over the edge. He was standing below, hidden in the shadow of the wall.
‘I saw your feather,’ Elsie whispered.
‘Where is John?’
‘He’s inside, it’s hard to get out without somebody seeing. Did you find anything?’
Mandeep nodded, his eyes wide.
‘What is it?’
‘I must show you. Can you come?’
Elsie hesitated. But there was nobody around. They were all busy attending to the guests. She followed Mandeep around the back of the building and on to the track on the far side of the clearing.
‘Where are we going?’
Mandeep didn’t reply. He quickened his pace, not slowing even after the track curved away and the lodge was hidden from sight. Elsie stared into the tangled darkness on either side.
‘It’s far,’ Mandeep said. ‘A mile, maybe more.’
Elsie wanted to ask him again where they were going, but his face wore a look of such fierce urgency that she felt almost frightened. He walked with jerky speed, his arms tense. She had to half-run to keep up with him.
After about fifteen minutes, he turned on to a smaller path, and then another, even smaller and more overgrown. They followed it for a while until it petered out.
‘It’s a dead end,’ Elsie said.
‘That is what I thought too. But then I heard something…’ Mandeep bent and parted the screen of bushes. Elsie saw the wisp of a trail leading through low clumps of bamboo. It was blocked by the knotted trunk of a strangler vine, the wood twisted like a snake paralysed in mid-throttle.
‘It has been put there to stop people getting through,’ Mandeep said.
They scrambled over with difficulty, and even Elsie had to crouch as they followed the trail, pushing through undergrowth as they went. After what seemed ages, it grew lighter ahead, and they emerged into a clearing worn smooth by tyre tracks.
A long, low, windowless building, roofed with corrugated iron, stood in the centre, and from it came a sound.
It wasn’t loud, but it was somehow vast. A rasp of breath and then a yawning groan, so strange in its utter, terrifying wildness that Elsie’s mind seemed to freeze for a second. It came again, unearthly, desolate.
‘What’s that?’
Mandeep looked at her with misery in his eyes.
‘Tiger,’ he said.
There was a door at the far end of the building. Mandeep lifted the wooden bar and tugged it open. Elsie peered inside, her legs trembling, her breath catching on a sharp, fetid smell.
The interior was almost completely dark, apart from a few rays of light slanting through rusted holes in the roof. She blinked, trying to adjust her eyes, saw the light catch a sliver of gold, as if its touch had burned the darkness. The shape of bars emerged, a groove in the concrete floor running darkly wet between.
She heard a growl, the sound deep in her bones.
Cages. Lining both sides of the room.
Elsie gasped and took a step back. But Mandeep’s hand was on her arm, nudging her forward. The foul, musky smell was far stronger inside, although she scarcely noticed. Her attention was fixed on the shadowy forms behind the bars. She could feel them. In the prickle of her skin and the thinness of her breath and the far-off hammer of her heart.
Tigers. Four of them.
‘I… don’t understand.’
All the urgency had left Mandeep’s face. He looked smaller suddenly, as helpless as a child, his hand clutching the front of his jacket, his eyes glistening in the dim light.
It hurts him to see this, Elsie thought. It hurts so much it makes him cry.
‘What’s going on?’ she whispered.
‘They are for Sowerby’s hunt,’ Mandeep said. ‘I am sure of it.’
Elsie nodded. It was the only explanation that made sense.
Mr Gordon had told them that Sowerby was a legendary hunter. But even Sowerby couldn’t find animals if they weren’t actually there. The only way he could provide a tiger for each one of his guests was if he caught the tigers first. He must have ranged far and wide to trap them. That was why he didn’t hold hunts very often. He needed time to find the animals.
Time to find the guests as well. People rich enough to afford the huge cost. People like Mr Gordon who were no good at hunting themselves, and too ignorant to know when they were being duped.
Sowerby must be making a fortune.
Elsie became aware of how hot it was in the building, how airless. A stink rose from the central gutter, filled with the run-off from the hosed-down floor and the dank cages.
Mandeep began to walk along the centre of the room, gazing through the bars at each of the tigers in turn. Elsie followed hesitantly, keeping a safe distance from the cages. But the animals hardly seemed to notice them. Two were lying on their sides, motionless except for an occasional twitch of their tails. Another stood, panting, with lowered head and lips pulled back in a strangely fixed grimace. The fourth paced mindlessly back and forth, turning every few steps when it reached the side of its cage. It paused for a second, a shudder rippling its tawny hide, then swung its head and began to pace again.
‘Why… are they like that?’ she asked Mandeep. ‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘I think that they have been drugged.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘It is probably how they were caught. And now they are being kept drugged to make them quiet and easier to handle.’
‘And easier to shoot,’ Elsie pointed out. Sowerby would release them tomorrow, she thought. They would b
e too doped to get far. Perfect targets for even the lamest of hunters.
She turned to Mandeep with a sudden idea. ‘Listen, the guests seem really horrible. Two of them are on their honeymoon.’ Elsie’s face twisted in disgust. ‘But I don’t think even they would like it if they knew the hunt was rigged. I mean, they want to kill tigers, but not like this. They don’t want to feel like fools.’
Mandeep didn’t say anything. He was too busy examining the door of one of the cages, frowning in concentration.
‘If they knew what was going on, I bet they’d be really angry with Sowerby,’ Elsie continued eagerly. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if they asked for their money back and made him cancel the whole thing. We have to go back and tell them.’
Mandeep looked at her. He shook his head.
‘No. What we have to do is free these tigers.’
The instant he said it, Elsie knew he was right. The guests might get angry, cancel the hunt, go home in outrage, but it would only be because they felt cheated. Not because they cared what happened to the tigers. And the tigers were all that mattered.
She nodded and saw relief leap in Mandeep’s eyes.
‘But we can’t just… let them go,’ she said, giving the animals a nervous glance. ‘I mean, what if they…?’
Mandeep turned back to the cage. ‘I do not know how the doors open. You are right, it would need to be at a safe distance.’
‘They look like electric locks,’ Elsie said, staring at the metal boxes attached to each cage. ‘You see here? I bet this little button lights up when the lock is activated.’ She trotted back to the entrance, searching the wall on either side of the door. ‘There aren’t any switches here, but they must be somewhere. Maybe back at the lodge.’
She reached up and removed a couple of objects from a shelf by the door, then turned to show them to Mandeep. ‘These might come in useful,’ she said, feeling pleased with herself. ‘I didn’t know walkie-talkies had been invented yet!’
They were quiet on the way back. Mandeep didn’t want to return to the outhouse. He would rather hide somewhere nearby instead.
‘What if they come looking for you?’ Elsie asked.
‘It is worth the risk. It will be hard to find me if I stay in one place.’
They were about half a mile from the lodge when Elsie saw a turning off the main track, ending in a short flight of stone stairs.
‘What’s up there?’
The stairs were wet and uneven with age. She had to pick her way carefully until she reached the top. Then she stopped still in astonishment.
She was standing at the edge of a glade, fringed by trees. At the far end, above a pool of dark green water, a vast statue lay stretched out. He lay as though asleep, one knee raised, his head resting on a pillow of stone, his calm face tilted to the side. Time had weathered him, blurring his outline under the downy creep of moss and yellow lichen. In places he was quite worn away. Yet this only seemed to deepen the stillness and serenity of his ancient features.
As if he had lain so long there dreaming, he had become the dream itself.
Mandeep pressed the palms of his hands together and briefly bowed his head.
‘Lord Vishnu,’ he said. ‘The god of well-being and protection.’
A hush filled the glade. All Elsie could hear was the murmur of insects and the sound of water trickling down stone to break the surface of the pool.
‘This place must be very old,’ she whispered.
‘Hundreds of years,’ Mandeep agreed.
They went to the edge of the pool and gazed for a while in silence at the shrine. Then they turned to take in the view. The shrine had been built on the edge of the hillside, below the land stretched away towards a flat-topped mountain, far in the distance.
It was breezy up there, the wind filled with the scent of basil and honey and warm, dry grass. Elsie could see the whole forest spread beneath her. Down on the ground, it had seemed a confusing place, full of unseen obstacles and odd changes of terrain. It was different from above. She could see how everything fitted together. The groves of trees and tangled thickets, the sunlit meadows, the shining threads of streams. As if it had been planned to the last detail.
‘It’s all laid out,’ she said in a wondering voice.
‘Like a garden,’ Mandeep said. ‘So, you see it too.’
‘Yes,’ she said, smiling at him.
The sun was no longer directly overhead. It was early afternoon already. Elsie was suddenly aware of how long she had been gone from the lodge. It must be well over an hour.
‘I have to get back,’ she said in alarm. ‘What if they’re looking for me?’
There was a cave in the rocky slope behind the statue of Lord Vishnu, although it was so cramped that Mandeep had to crawl on hands and knees to enter it. But it made a fine hiding place.
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’
‘It is better than the outhouse,’ Mandeep said from the darkness.
Elsie handed him his bag, hesitated for an anxious second and then hurried back down the stone steps to the track below.
Mr Gordon was on the verandah as she approached the lodge. It was no use ducking away, he had already seen her. He was resting his elbows against the railing, a bored look on his face.
‘What’ve you been up to?’ he said, without straightening up.
Elsie had prepared a story to explain her absence, although she knew that as stories go, it wasn’t a terribly good one.
‘I went out because I felt sick and then a monkey stole my scarf,’ she said in a rush. ‘I chased it, but it got away. Into the bushes,’ she added.
‘You weren’t wearing a scarf,’ he said in an indifferent manner, as if he wasn’t particularly curious, and merely wanted to catch her out in a lie.
‘It was in my pocket,’ Elsie said. ‘Sort of hanging out a bit…’ Her voice trailed off.
He stared at her.
‘It was a red scarf,’ Elsie said. ‘I think that’s why the monkey wanted it because of, you know, the red colour.’
She waited for him to say he didn’t believe a word of it. But he only shrugged, apparently losing interest.
Elsie hesitated. If she and Mandeep were right, and Sowerby intended to release the caged tigers from a safe distance, he must be planning on letting them go one by one. He would hardly want his guests coming across them all at once. But she still didn’t understand how Sowerby knew which direction each tiger would take.
‘How will you find the tigers tomorrow?’ she asked Mr Gordon. ‘Are they difficult to hunt?’
His face lit up at the question. ‘Sowerby knows their movements like the back of his hand. I’ve heard he can lead you right up to them.’
‘So, you’ll just walk until you find one?’
‘It’s a little more complicated than that,’ Mr Gordon said with a patronising chuckle. ‘We’ll go in the jeeps to start with, find a likely spot. Then set out on foot with the guns. There’ll be four or five beaters going ahead of us, making a racket with their sticks to flush out the animals.’
‘Why don’t the beaters have guns too?’ Elsie asked. ‘What if a tiger attacks them?’
‘Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,’ Mr. Gordon said, with another chuckle. ‘You’d be amazed how quickly those chaps can climb a tree.’
Elsie stared at him. He was the most horrible human being she had ever met in her life, she thought. After Sowerby.
She turned without another word and went into the lodge.
John was no longer in the common room, although everyone else was still there. Sowerby glanced up sharply as she opened the door.
‘Feeling better?’
Elsie nodded. ‘I felt ill for ages and ages,’ she stammered. ‘I sat outside.’
‘Close to the lodge,’ she added. ‘Just sitting.’
But Sowerby was too distracted to pay much attention. Nottle was looming close through the fog of cigarette smoke.
‘I’m thinking of call
ing my new addition to the park, “Tiger Terror-tory”,’ he was saying. ‘Neat name, don’t you think? Play on words, you know…’
Elsie closed the door silently and hurried down the corridor to the bedroom, looking for John.
It was difficult for Elsie to tell John about everything that had happened because he wouldn’t keep still. He kept pacing rather like the caged tigers had done, although a hundred times less gracefully, his hands rammed into the pockets of his wrinkled shorts. Every few seconds he interrupted Elsie with an exclamation.
‘Rotter! Utter bounder! How many cages did you say? Are they marked?’
‘I’m trying to tell you,’ Elsie said. ‘I can’t think straight with you striding around like that.’
There were six cages, each with a number painted on the door, and the four tigers were adult animals, apart from a small female who Mandeep said was not fully grown, probably less than a year old.
‘Mandeep could tell straight away they’d been drugged,’ Elsie told John. ‘They weren’t acting like they normally do.’
John stopped moving. He looked at Elsie.
‘I say, are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘How do I know what you’re thinking?’
‘The tiger,’ John said. ‘The one I nearly shot. It wasn’t acting normally either.’
Elsie thought of the animal she had seen in the clearing. Its body motionless, its neck held low, as if sinking beneath the weight of its own head.
‘Do you think it was drugged too?’
‘Maybe…’ John paused, nodding to himself. ‘Yes. Sowerby could have shot it with the drug and then it escaped before he could trap it. Must have happened recently because the drug hadn’t worn off yet.’
He lifted his head. ‘I’d have got it if you hadn’t stopped me, couldn’t have missed at that range. I’d convinced myself it was a man-eater. Gave you rather a hard time about it. Like to say sorry for that. Person ought to admit when he’s wrong,’ he added, holding out his hand solemnly.
‘It’s okay,’ Elsie muttered, shaking his hand.
The Time Traveller and the Tiger Page 12
