The Game Page 7

  A light and lightly accented voice interrupted my survey. “You like my house, Miss Russell?”

  I whirled, unaware that there had been anyone in the room. I had to look around for the owner of the voice, then look down, to find a tiny figure scarcely four feet tall, nearly hairless but wizened with wrinkles, seated in a nest of silk cushions beside a burbling hookah.

  “It’s very attractive,” I replied. “How do you know me?”

  He giggled, a sound I normally mistrust in a man but which seemed natural in him. “We have, shall I say, mutual friends. And you, Mr Holmes. I had not thought to lay eyes on you again this side of Paradise.”

  “Good of you to imagine I might be headed in that direction, Solly. Russell, this is Suleiman Lal. Suleiman is the uncrowned king of Aden, and this room is the junction-box through which all the power of the Red Sea is dispersed. The state of the hall-way outside is his little jest.”

  “I imagine it also keeps away stray tourists,” I said drily.

  “Precisely,” said the small man, and took a draw at his pipe. “You have come for your mail, I think?”

  “To see if there was any,” Holmes replied.

  “In the cigar box on the second shelf,” said Lal. Holmes stepped over to the diminutive shelves and drew out the wooden box, thumbing open its lid and taking out the pieces of paper therein. They were not mail, but telegraph flimsies. “Please, do read them,” the small man urged. “You may wish to send a reply. And while you do so, we shall take tea.”

  With that, a narrow door behind Lal opened silently and a very dark-skinned man of normal height padded in with an ornate brassware tray set with the makings of an Oriental tea. Lal laid his pipe aside and shifted forward to pour from the tall pot into the handleless porcelain cups, and as the odour of mint filled the room, I was transported back to Palestine. Yes, this was already sweetened, and I slurped at the scalding, syrupy mint essence with pleasure.

  Holmes read the telegrams and handed them to me. Both were from Mycroft. They read:

  YOUR PRINCE INDEED OF QUESTIONABLE VIRTUE MAKING ENQUIRIES RE AMERICAN MYCROFT

  Followed two days later by:

  TGH ACTIVE POLITICALLY AT UNIVERSITY NO CHARGES BUT MOTHERS GURU ARRESTED TWICE SPIRITUALIST FRAUD NO CONVICTIONS

  TGH SEEN IN COMPANY OF MOSCOW SECURITY SUGGEST YOU MENTION TO FRIEND IN DELHI MYCROFT

  “TGH” was doubtless Thomas Goodheart; his “political” activity at Harvard (to Mycroft, “political” would be synonymous with “subversive”) and his proximity to “security” in Russia went some way to justify Holmes’ interest in the man. Goodheart might be nothing more than Holmes’ shipboard hobby, but I agreed that whomever we were seeing in Delhi should be informed of our chance meeting.

  I handed the flimsies back to Holmes, who stretched his arm over to Lal’s hubble-bubble to uncover its burning coal, using it to set the telegrams alight. He allowed them to burn out in an ash-tray, then thoughtfully tamped the ashy curls into black dust with his finger.

  “There will be no reply,” he told Lal, who nodded.

  “I was told your brother was unwell.”

  “Is there any place you have no ears?” Holmes asked, sounding amused.

  Lal thought for a moment. “Within the American White House I am currently friendless, but no doubt someone will come to my aid before long.” And with that revelation his smile changed from a thing of easy humour to a hint of what lay behind it, a knowledge of the world’s wickednesses and the sheer joy of possession. Suddenly his giggle was not so child-like and endearing.

  Holmes continued to sip his tea, but I found the stuff too sweet, cloying along my throat, so that I had to force the last swallow down for the sake of politeness. The two men chatted of names I did not know while I hid my impatience to be gone, hid, too, my growing suspicion that there were things behind the airy silken drapes that I did not wish to see.

  At long last, Holmes put down his empty cup and rose.

  “You will not stay to lunch?” Lal asked, not really expecting that we would.

  “We have purchases to make before the ship leaves, but thank you.”

  Lal nodded, that curious sideways gesture of the Oriental, and his eyes slid to mine.

  “Miss Russell, I am not, perhaps, on the side of God as you would see it, but I assure you, I am not on the other side, either. I am glad to have met you, my dear.”

  He inclined his head, the equivalent of an offered hand, a gesture I returned. Then we left, through a door into the courtyard instead of the filthy alley, and came out on the next street over under the eye of a very large and well-armed Turk. I glanced around to be sure there was no one listening, and said in a low voice, “Holmes, do you trust that man?”

  “Solly collects information, he does not sell it. He is utterly safe as a conduit because he is completely impartial, and would as willingly have given us our messages and served us tea if we were sworn enemies of the British Crown. Every side uses Lal because they know he will not sell them out. And no side tries to lay hands on his secrets because if they did, hell would pour down on them—secrets have a way of accumulating, and he lets it be known that his untimely death would loose them. Now, tell me what sort of silk you would like to practise your scarf act with.”

  We submerged ourselves again in the souk, making small purchases such as any English visitors might, as well as two or three items that Holmes appeared to have ordered beforehand, no doubt through his diminutive friend with the conjoined Moslem-Hindu names.

  One of these purchases was at a jeweller’s shop, and we were standing at the man’s small counter examining a cunningly linked trio of bangles and conversing with the shopkeeper in Arabic when Holmes abruptly shifted his position so that the bangles disappeared into his sleeve. He continued the motion by reaching out to pluck a ring from a nearby display, saying in a loud English voice, “My dear, isn’t this very like the ring your sister lost last year?”

  As I had no sister and Holmes would no more address me as “my dear” than he would embrace me in public, it took no great subtlety of thought to know that he had spotted an intruder in the doorway. And sure enough, when I had taken the spectacularly ugly piece and turned with it to the lighter portion of the shop, there stood a familiar figure, ill concealed by his topee and dark sun-glasses. I looked up, surprised, and let an expression of recognition cross my face.

  “Mr Goodheart, so you decided to come ashore after all! What do you think of this ring?”

  He pulled the dark glasses from his bloodshot eyes and came fully into the shop, giving the ring I held out the merest glance. He seemed more interested in what we had been looking at earlier, but the bangles had vanished, and the shopkeeper was as phlegmatic as Holmes.

  “I should think it would turn one’s finger green in a day,” Tommy Goodheart told me, looking more than a little green himself. “Say, you haven’t come across my mother anywhere in this madhouse, have you? I was looking at some carpets and turned around and she was gone.”

  “I haven’t seen her, no.”

  “Maybe you could ask this fellow for me,” he said to Holmes. “Since you seem to speak the lingo.”

  So, he’d been listening outside long enough to hear the exchange. I didn’t look at Holmes while he asked the man behind the counter if he’d seen a large American woman in a flowered dress (all Mrs Goodheart’s dresses were flowered) looking lost. The man regretted that he had not seen such a person that day.

  Holmes translated the man’s reply, then told him that we would take the ring, please. I was glad to see the jeweller pick up the unspoken message, that the bangles Holmes had made away with were not to be mentioned, but would now be paid for; he made no protest, and reacted not in the least to a payment vastly greater than the price of the trinket for my “sister.” He merely wrapped the ring, thanked us profusely, and turned to the young man and asked him in English if he wouldn’t like to look at some pretty necklaces for his girlfriend.

  “I
don’t have a girlfriend,” Thomas snapped. “And if I did I wouldn’t buy her rubbish at those prices. You really should’ve got him to come down,” he said to Holmes, following us out into the street. He winced at the brightness and put his sun-glasses back on.

  “Oh, that’s my fault,” I told Goodheart. “I hate haggling over a pittance, it always seems so rude. And these people have so little, compared to us.”

  I was interested to hear the committed Communist sniff in disgust at my willingness to share the wealth.

  “Where’d you learn to speak the language?” he demanded, as if Holmes had revealed some distasteful habit.

  “Oh, it’s one of those things a person picks up,” Holmes answered blandly. “I lived in Cairo for a time.”

  “That’s right—the reason you didn’t care to take the train down to see the pyramids. You two heading for the sights here? The tanks are supposed to be quite something.”

  “Not just now,” Holmes said. “We’ve a bit more exploring down here to do. In fact,” he added as if at a sudden thought, “we might just have a meal, something good and spicy. Have you ever eaten mutton pilau, Goodheart? The Arab style of mutton is memorable. A trifle greasy, perhaps, and the eyeballs take some getting used to, lying half buried amidst the rice—”

  Goodheart flushed a most peculiar shade of puce, swallowed convulsively, and turned away, waving his hand in wordless farewell that attempted nonchalance.

  “Enjoy yourself,” I called. We turned into the nearest arm of the bazaar, and in a dozen steps had lost young Goodheart in the crowd.

  I laughed aloud. “Holmes, that was pure cruelty, the detail of the eyeballs.”

  “The young puppy deserved it, forcing me to guzzle all that bad champagne and giving so little in return. I’ve a head-ache myself, you know.”

  “Holmes, if we weren’t in an Arab country, I’d take your arm.”

  “If we weren’t in an Arab country, Russell, I should allow it.”

  We wandered, amicable if apart, through the ethnic potpourri for an hour or so, buying the odd item of foodstuff or decoration, dried figs and a double handful of almonds, kohl for the eyes and an ornate pair of embroidered slippers for Mrs Hudson, shopping more for the delight of the purchase than the thing itself, for the pleasure of fingering and sniffing and haggling in a variety of tongues. The sun continued to beat through the awnings, but slowly it shifted angle, until with reluctance Holmes drew out his pocket-watch to confirm the time. He snapped it shut, and I had just stepped around a small child to reverse direction when a rattling noise from over our heads was joined by a single cry of alarm from the far end of the narrow street. Without an instant’s pause, Holmes lunged, scooping up the child with one hand and tackling me with his other shoulder, shooting us through the adjacent doorway at top speed. We three tumbled headfirst into the shop, sweeping before us a group of robed matrons and landing with a stunning crash and clatter that shook the walls. I felt for a brief instant that we must have dived into a shop of pots and pans, such was the racket, but I quickly perceived that not all the softness underneath me was human, and that the boom and clatter had come from outside of the door, not all about us.

  I sat up, only half aware of Holmes, who was full of ornate apologies to the ladies and desperate attempts to soothe the terrified child before it could loose its reaction. The horrendous din outside slid away into diminuendo, then trailed off with a couple of clangs. For a moment, the world seemed a place of remarkable stillness. But only for a moment, until the child’s breath caught in its throat and it filled the air with a roar as terrifying as the crash itself. As if at a signal, a tumult of voices joined the chorus, soprano fury within the door and excited horror without. I dusted myself off and went to see what had so nearly come down upon our heads.

  It was difficult to tell at first just what had happened, since the awning of the shop—it sold carpets, which explained the softness of our landing—had been crushed and ripped, and was being further demolished by a crew of eager rescuers. The men seemed somewhat disappointed at the absence of corpses, or even bloodshed (other than one of the outraged matrons, who had broken one of her glass bangles and nicked her arm on it), but the shopkeeper’s assistant, miraculously preserved by the chance of having been leaning against the wall, was first terrified, then ecstatic at the wails of the infant. He snatched up the child, startling up a new round of screeches, and patted him all over, unable to believe him whole. In familiar arms, the child’s sounds gave way to hiccoughing cries, and his tears and those of his father mingled down the man’s shirt-front.

  When eventually the awning had been ripped from the front of the shop and we could step tentatively out onto the paving stones, it became immediately apparent how lucky we had been. Holmes’ quick reflexes had saved us from certain maiming, if not death outright, for the object that fell where we had been standing was probably three hundredweight of metal and wood.

  “What is it?” I asked Holmes.

  “I fear to ask,” he said, sounding more disgusted than troubled. I glanced over and saw that he was looking, not at the tangle of pipes and boards, but at his hands, smeared with some dark and noxious substance. He bent to appropriate a corner of the dusty awning cloth, scrubbing at his fingers.

  “I meant the thing that fell.”

  He ran his eyes over the object that had so nearly ended the eminent career of Sherlock Holmes, then lifted his gaze upwards, as half the people around us were doing. One dusty beam still clung to the rough mud-brick wall some twenty-five feet above, with a clear line of holes and dirt showing where the rest of the thing had been. A glance down the street showed a number of similar makeshift balconies, bits of wood and metal tacked onto the walls high above street level, all of them strung with drying laundry, decorated with petrol tins overflowing with flowers and herbs, furnished with cushions and rugs, and stacked high with various household goods not wanted inside. This one had linked to its apartment by way of a flimsy door, now opening onto thin air. And as we gazed upwards the door did open; the face of a horrified woman looked straight out, then down at us. She gaped down at the crowded street before belatedly realising that there were strangers looking back at her; she whipped her head-scarf across her face, gave us one last white-eyed look, and slammed the door, dislodging a few more scraps of timber and dust.

  Holmes waded through the wreckage, searching for the end pieces of the balcony. I joined him, our search somewhat hindered by the determination of the carpet-seller to keep people away from his now-vulnerable wares. I found Holmes fingering a pair of iron bolts, both of them old, one bent into a sharp angle, the other sheared off. Neither showed any sign of a saw’s teeth.

  “We must examine the wall above,” he told me, and raised his voice in Arabic to ask how we might gain access to the above apartment. This took forever, first to brush off the teary gratitude of the young assistant whose son we had preserved and then to find a person who could show us the relevant corkscrew stairway. And once at the top, we were halted by the custom of the land, when Holmes would have gone within an apartment housing women alone.

  In the end, I suggested instead that I might be allowed to venture within. The shopkeeper’s wife had by that time appeared from their nearby house and followed us up the stairs to deliver her thanks. As soon as she understood what we were about, she added her voice to mine, begging that they grant the request of this thrice-blessed if baffling foreigner. The women within knew perhaps six words of Arabic—I wasn’t even certain what their native language was—but they gave in. With a wide smile and many appreciative noises over the squalling, snot-nosed, kohl-eyed infant one of them clutched, I crossed the two rooms to the door that now gave out onto the bazaar.

  Stretched out on the floor with my head and shoulders extending into thin air, I failed to spot any obvious saw-marks, merely holes in the walls where bolts had once stood. I ignored the fearful noises of the women behind me, the heftiest of whom had thrown herself across my ankles lest I
fly into space, and I shaded my eyes to squint at the building on the opposite side of the street. Something odd there: a gash in the wall beneath a window, fairly fresh. I made to stand, found I couldn’t move, and had to plead with the woman on my legs to allow me upright, which took a while. Before I left the apartment, I looked around for some heavy piece of furniture, finding a sort of divan that weighed nearly as much as I did, which I wrestled across the room to block the rickety door. Then, exchanging mutually incomprehensible pleasantries with the gabbling women and thanking them for the various sticky foodstuffs they thrust into my hand, I finally rejoined Holmes on the landing outside.

  “Can we get into the apartment on the opposite side of the street?” I asked him. “There looks to be a fresh bash on the wall there.” I looked around me for some place to deposit the sweetmeats, which were oozing over my palm.

  Holmes looked at the collection of unlikely shapes and colours. “What is that?”

  “By the feel of it, mostly honey.”

  He peeled one from my palm and popped it in his mouth, pausing briefly to consider it. “Sage flower,” my beekeeper husband pronounced. “And something else. Rather piquant.”

  “Holmes, we haven’t time to hunt down the source of the pollen in those ladies’ honey,” I said firmly.

  He pulled out his watch, nodded in agreement, and turned for the rickety stairs. “You’re quite right, the ship’s siren went a few minutes ago. We risk missing the launch if we delay too long.”

  I hadn’t heard the siren. “Can’t we send someone to have the ship held for us?”

  “I shouldn’t like to chance it. The P. & O. lines pride themselves on keeping to the rules. Perhaps fifteen minutes.”

  But fifteen minutes proved too little time to find the owner of the empty apartment across the street. There was indeed a bash in the wall, and the boards that had created it—a balcony railing and four or five carved supports—were lying by themselves at the very base of that wall, across the alley from the bulk of the débris. There was no convenient length of rope or chain attached to the middle of the railing, and the marks were too myriad to be certain, but it did look as if something had torn a fresh groove into the wood in the centre of the fallen railing. It was the sort of mark that might result if a person standing at a window were to toss a hooked line at an already unsteady structure across a gap of some fifteen feet, then give it a mighty pull. On the other hand, it was also the sort of mark that might come from hanging almost anything from that same railing, and the gouge in the wall could be days old. Without a look at the room to see if the window-frame bore the marks of a rope or if the opposite wall showed where a pulley had been mounted to make one man’s strength sufficient, without even a ladder to examine the wall more closely, there could be no certainty.