The Game Read online

  I was not to hear them now, either. Holmes had already turned to his brother, and was asking, “How did these come to you?”

  “Through the hands of a certain captain who has an interest in both worlds.”

  “Not Creighton?”

  “The man who currently holds the same position that Creighton did then, fellow by the name of Nesbit.”

  “And the story that accompanied them?”

  “So tenuous as to be nonexistent. An Afghan trader brings a rumour that a light-skinned native man is being held by a hill raja. Six months later, a camel caravan modifies the story, that the man was being held but took ill and died, asking that these, his last effects, be returned to his people. We did trace the amulet’s arrival to such a caravan, but no man could say who had carried it south, or whence it came.”

  Holmes nodded, but said only, “I find it difficult to imagine that particular individual being held against his will.”

  I broke in, with a request I did not think unreasonable, particularly as we seemed to be on the edge of being dragged into a case involving Kimball O’Hara. “I’d appreciate a little background information, just a few details about what you were doing when you knew the boy.”

  Holmes glanced sideways at his brother, assessing his condition, then suggested, “Perhaps it would be best if we saved the tale for a later time.”

  I started to protest, then decided that Mycroft’s colour was indeed not peak, and brought my curiosity under control, allowing them to continue.

  Mycroft answered, “As you say, it takes some doing to imagine O’Hara in custody for more than a few days. He was—how did you put it to me? ‘Wily as a mongoose, slippery as a cobra, more deadly than either.’ ”

  “If not in custody, then what?”

  “The Bear is awakening.”

  “ ‘The Bear,’ ” I said. “You mean Russia? But I thought our relations with them had settled down—don’t we even have a trade agreement now with the Bolsheviks?”

  “Oh, yes, they’ve played on our attachment to India by accepting industrial supplies in exchange for little more than a verbal guarantee that they would cease their intrigue in the sub-continent. But then last May, Curzon had to threaten to withdraw trade unless they took their agents out. And, oh the surprise, they have not.”

  “And you imagine the Bolsheviks might have laid hands on O’Hara,” Holmes asked, sounding dubious, “or got him in their sights, where the Tsar’s agents could not?”

  “Not precisely,” Mycroft replied.

  Holmes frowned. “A native agent, then, who worked his way inside O’Hara’s guard?” He seemed only a shade less doubtful about this possibility, but still Mycroft shook his head.

  “Sherlock, I am not convinced the man is dead.”

  “What, then? Not dead, not held, then—No,” Holmes said sharply as Mycroft’s meaning fell into place. “Kimball O’Hara would never side with the Russians against the Crown. Never.”

  “Perhaps not side with them, necessarily, but use them? As a tool for India herself? The move towards self-rule—Gandhi’s swaraj—has adherents on all levels throughout the sub-continent, and between their systematic obstructionism and the actions of outright revolutionaries, the country is a powder-keg. One more atrocity like Dyer’s and the entire country will rise up, battering its own way between the British and the Bolsheviks. Neither of whom has much affection for Mr Gandhi. But even lacking outright revolt, the educated classes are pressing strongly for a voice in their own affairs. And the boy was always more native than white in his sensibilities.”

  “Sensibilities, yes, but not in his loyalties. He would not turn coat against His Majesty.”

  “Then perhaps he is truly imprisoned. Or dead.”

  Holmes did not answer. Instead, he took up the much-folded papers from the table, holding them to the light, one by one, for a long and close study. He found no marks, no pinpricks, nothing to indicate a secret message to the outside world. He even turned the leather case outside-in, as if the stitches of closure might have been embroidered into a code, but there was nothing. And as I knew that Mycroft would have given the objects the same scrutiny, I did not bother doing the same: If neither Holmes brother had found a hidden message, it was unlikely that I should do so.

  “Has Kipling been questioned?” Holmes asked.

  “The last he heard of O’Hara was in 1916. A letter of condolence arrived some months after Kipling’s son was killed.”

  “Who was O’Hara’s contact within the Survey?”

  “O’Hara hasn’t worked with the Ethnological Survey for nearly three years, but at the time it was Nesbit, and before that, Apfield. You knew him, I think?”

  “We met,” Holmes said, not apparently enchanted with the memory. He turned to me to explain. “The Survey of India is responsible for producing accurate maps of the country, but it is also the home of the Ethnological department, wherein lies Intelligence. Under cover of survey and census, the British government assembles the subtler kinds of information concerning secret conversations and illicit trade among the border states. When I was there, Colonel Creighton headed the Survey. A good man.” He finished packing the documents into their leather amulet case and slid the object back across the table to Mycroft. “You need me to go?”

  “I don’t want to ask,” Mycroft said, which was answer enough.

  “We’re off to India, then?” I said. Ah well; we’d had a pleasant holiday for nearly an entire week. And at least it wasn’t Russia: India was the tropics, which meant that my chilblains, begun in Dartmoor in October and not improved by two months in an underheated Berkshire country house broken by a cross-Atlantic trip for a missing ducal relative, might have a chance to heal. Still, I thought of the newspaper headlines I had read on the train, “Hindu-Moslem Bitterness—Riot in Calcutta Suburb,” and suppressed a sigh. “Do we have time to pack a bag?”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” Holmes said absently.

  “Holmes!” I protested, but to my surprise, Mycroft came down on my side.

  “The Special Express leaves Victoria at one-forty tomorrow afternoon. The P. & O. steamer meets it in Marseilles at midnight Friday. Plenty of time.”

  Not precisely what I would term plenty of time, but better than taking off for the East in the clothes I stood up in. Which request, frankly, wouldn’t have surprised me.

  We were even allowed to finish our coffee before having to race for a cab.

  The late train for Eastbourne was standing at the platform when we reached Victoria, but for some reason it proved unusually popular, with the result that we did not have a compartment to ourselves. This meant that the tale of Kimball O’Hara had to wait until after the car had deposited us at our door, and we had retrieved our trunks from the attic, and we had begun to pack them. Mrs Hudson, although we insisted we could manage, wrenched the clothes from our hands and took out her copious supply of tissue-paper. I admitted defeat and, leaving her bemoaning the lack of time to repair and tidy the summer-weight garments retrieved from the back of the cupboards, I followed Holmes down the hall-way and into the laboratory, where I cornered him.

  “Very well, Holmes, you may proceed.”

  “About young O’Hara? Yes, an intriguing lad. You know his history, you said?”

  “Born in India to Irish parents; mother died early; father drank himself to death, leaving Kim in the charge of a native nurse, who let him run wild so that he grew up in the bazaar.”

  “Save that it was opium that killed O’Hara, not alcohol, the rest is correct.”

  “As I remember it, when the boy was twelve or thirteen he finally came to the attention of the authorities, particularly the man who was in charge of the spy network operating along the Northwest Frontier. That was Creighton. He sent the boy to school for a while to learn his letters and numbers, before reclaiming him for the Intelligence service. Kim and some other agents foiled a Russian plot, something about treason among a group of hill rajas, and that’s where the book end
s.”

  “It was immediately after that tale’s conclusion that I met him. He was only seventeen, but already a full operative of the Survey. He had befriended an old Tibetan lama, and was returning him to his home when our paths coincided, and I joined them.”

  “You mean you actually got to Tibet? I assumed that was one of Conan Doyle’s romanticisms. Wasn’t Tibet closed to outsiders until Younghusband’s expedition in, what was it, 1904?”

  “That set off in the final weeks of 1903, and yes, all that time Tibet was closed tighter than a miser’s purse-string,” he said with satisfaction. “Which is why I needed to accompany the lama.”

  “And you wanted to go to Tibet because …?”

  “Mycroft, of course.”

  “Of course,” I muttered.

  “This was 1892, when the Russian threat was at its height. The Tsar wanted India, the Viceroy wanted to know which pass the Cossacks would come pouring through, and I happened to be on hand. As was young Kimball O’Hara. I had joined with a group of explorers, calling myself Sigerson, and made a lot of careful notes and maps. O’Hara came to our camp one black night, begging food for his lama, this grubby dark-skinned lad with eyes that saw everything. As he was leaving, he allowed his shirt to fall open and reveal a certain charm around his neck which, combined with an exchange of phrases, told me that he, too, was engaged in the ‘Great Game’ of border espionage. He crept back to my tent at midnight and we had a long talk, and ended up travelling together for a time. Most of what we did is no doubt still under lock and key in some ministry office, but after the Bolshevik revolution, I had assumed that the need for guarding India’s passes had faded. However, it would seem that in Mycroft’s eyes, The Game persists, albeit against different players.”

  He made to leave the room, but I had to protest, for his tale had been in no way adequate.

  “But what was he like?” I persisted.

  By way of answer, Holmes paused with his hand in a trouser pocket, then drew it out and dashed the contents onto the table nearest the door. A handful of small, disparate objects danced and rolled and threatened to fall to the floor, but no sooner had they come to a rest than he scooped them up again, and turned a questioning eyebrow on me.

  We hadn’t done this particular exercise in a long time, but I had sufficient experience with Holmes’ ways to know what his action signified.

  “You wish me to play Kim’s game?” I asked.

  “The boy himself called it the ‘Jewel Game,’ but yes.”

  It was a test of one’s perception, first of seeing, then of committing to memory. I was tired, and I couldn’t see what this had to do with my question, but obediently I began to recite.

  “Three mismatched collar studs; a nubbin of India rubber; two paper-clips, one of them Italian; the cigar-band from Mycroft’s cigar; a gold pen nib; the button that came off your shirt two weeks ago that you couldn’t find, so that Mrs Hudson replaced all the shirt’s buttons at a go; the stub end of a boot-lace; a seed-head from last summer’s nigella; a penny, a halfpenny, and a farthing; two pebbles, one black and the other white; a tooth from a comb; and one inch of pencil.”

  He smiled then, and headed back into the bedroom. “You and O’Hara will find you have much in common, I think.” When I protested that he hadn’t answered me, he put up his hand. “We shall have many days of leisure in which to recount fond tales of derring-do, Russell. But not tonight—we have much to do before we catch that train. And, Russ?” I looked up to find him outlined in the doorway, a pair of patent-leather shoes in his hand, his face as grim as his voice. “Make certain to pack adequate ammunition for your revolver.”

  Chapter Two

  We rose from our brief rest to a world of white, and the news that the trains to London were badly delayed. Nonetheless, we had my farm manager Patrick put the horses into harness and take us to the Eastbourne station, where we found that indeed, the London trains were not expected to reach Victoria until late in the afternoon. I glanced at my hastily packed bags and tried not to look too cheerful.

  “That does it, Holmes. We shall have to wait until next week.”

  “Nonsense. Off you go, Patrick, before you end up in a drift over your head.”

  I shrugged at my old friend, who touched the brim of his cloth cap and picked up the reins. Holmes had already turned to the station master, a lugubrious individual long acquainted with this particular passenger’s idiosyncrasies, and, I thought, secretly entertained by them. Very secretly. “Are the telephone lines still up?”

  “Not to London, Mr Holmes.”

  “What about the telegraph?”

  “Oh, aye, we’re sure to get a message through by some route or another.”

  The two went off, heads together. I looked at the trunks, gathering snowdrifts to themselves, and took myself inside out of the cold.

  A couple of hours later something intruded upon my attention: a pair of shoes gleaming at me over the top of the book I’d snatched from Holmes’ shelves on the way out the door. I blinked and straightened my bent spine to look up into my husband’s face. His grey eyes were dancing with amusement.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Russell, I am constantly filled with admiration at your ability to immerse yourself in the task at hand.”

  I closed The Riches of Mohenjo-Daro and rose, in some confusion, only noticing when I was upright that the trunks had been brought in and arranged at my side, long enough ago that the snow had not only melted but dried as well. What was more, a tea tray someone had set by my other side bore a half-empty cup and a half-eaten biscuit. I could taste the biscuit in my mouth, but I had no recollection whatsoever of having consumed either.

  “Glad I amuse you, Holmes. What have you arranged? An aeroplane journey to Marseilles? A sub-marine boat to run us to Port Said?”

  “Nothing so exotic. The delay is due less to the quantity of snow than it is to something on the tracks the other side of Lewes. All other trains, though slow, are still getting through. Mycroft has arranged for the Express to wait for us in Kent.”

  I looked at him with astonishment. “I should have thought a sub-marine boat easier to arrange than the delay of a train.”

  “The Empire is but a plaything to the whims of Mycroft Holmes,” he commented, glancing around for a porter.

  “The Empire, yes, but the Calais Express?”

  “So it would appear, even with the Labour Party bearing down on the horizon.”

  Not that the catching of it was a simple thing. It meant boarding an east-bound train, one of those locals that pauses at every cattle shed and churchyard, and which cowers in a siding every few miles that an express may thunder past in majesty. Not that anything much was thundering that day; I began to suspect that even Mycroft’s bestlaid plans might leave us stranded in the middle of Kent.

  Still, I had a book.

  Either through mechanical problems or through some deep-seated class resentment of the driver (he’d probably cast his ballot for the incoming Socialists), our train stopped well short of the assigned station. This expression of class solidarity (if that is what it was) became somewhat derailed itself when Holmes summoned many strong men to haul our possessions over the slippery ground, to the puzzlement of the local’s passengers and the huge indignation of those on the Express. Class warfare at its most basic. Holmes did, however, tip the men handsomely.

  The instant we had spilled into the waiting train it shuddered and loosed its bonds to steam furiously off for Dover. I understand that mention was even made in the next day’s Times of a puzzling stop in the wilds of Kent for a hasty on-load of essential governmental equipment. Mycroft’s decrees were powerful indeed.

  The entire trip to Marseilles carried on as it had begun, rushed and uncomfortable. And dreary—it was on that train that we read of the death of the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, an old friend of Holmes’ whose problems on Dartmoor had occupied our early autumn. Then the Channel crossing was rough, so rough that I spent the
entire time braving the sleet-slick deck rather than succumb to sea-sickness, reaching Calais with nose, hands, and toes not far from frost-bite. Paris was flooded, its higher ground packed with refugees and their bags, the train crowded and all the first-class sleepers occupied by fleeing residents. We spent Friday with an aged Italian priest and his even more aged and garrulous sister, both of whom exuded clouds of garlic. The rain and snow persisted, slowing the journey so much that I began to doubt that we would actually arrive before the steamer had departed, but in the end, the boat, too, was held (for the train as a whole, not merely for the two of us), and when we reached the docks, our possessions were hastily labelled and carried on, divided between cabin and hold. We scurried up the ice-slick gangway in the company of a handful of other train passengers, slipping almost apologetically onboard the sleeping boat, witnessed only by P. & O. officials and, I thought, one or two other sets of eyes in the higher decks, their presence felt but unseen in the darkness.

  Once in our cabin (this, at any rate, had no priest in residence) I crept into bed, praying that exhaustion would take my body into sleep before the pitch and toss of the boat asserted itself. To my relief, such was the case: The steam-roller of the past fifty-four hours rumbled over my recumbent body, and my last memory was of Holmes wrestling open the small port-hole, letting in a wash of frigid air scented with salt, and nary a hint of garlic.

  I woke a long time later to a more subdued sea, a pallid attempt at sunshine, and the ting of a spoon against china. When I reached for the bed-side clock, my hand knocked against the water carafe; after a moment Holmes came through the doorway with a cup of tea in each hand. He set one on the table, and sat down on the other bed with his own. It was, I saw, nearly noon.