The Empress of India Read online

  Pin Dok Low turned his gaze toward the other two, and after a few seconds received a nod from one and a shrug from the other. “Sensible,” he said. “Very sensible.”

  FOUR

  THE MAHARAJA’S

  GOLDEN HOURI

  Small is the worth

  Of beauty from the light retir’d;

  Bid her come forth,

  Suffer herself to be desir’d,

  And not blush so to be admir’d.

  —Edmund Waller

  It was late afternoon on Wednesday, the nineteenth of February, when the stocky man with the sharp blue eyes presented himself at the door to 64 Russell Square. He handed his card to Mr. Maws.

  COL. SEBASTIAN MORAN

  ANGLO-INDIAN CLUB

  Pennsworth Square

  “Tell the professor his old pal is back,” he said. Mr. Maws put him in the parlor and left Mummer, Moriarty’s midget-of-all-work, to watch the stranger through the spy hole in the butler’s pantry while he went downstairs to the basement laboratory, where the professor had been working since late the night before.

  Moriarty, with his jacket off, his sleeves rolled up, and a laboratory apron covering his vest and trousers, was leaning over his workbench, a test tube in his hand. The area before him was clustered with bottles, retorts, flasks, metal stands, glass tubing, and a stack of reference books. Old Potts, the professor’s laboratory assistant, was napping on a cot in the far corner of the room.

  “One moment,” Moriarty said, slowly passing the test tube back and forth through the flame of a Bunsen burner. “If this turns red, the Mummer is going to have to make a hasty trip to Bilstone in Leicestershire. Whereas—ah!—look; a fine royal—or at least noble—blue. It is as I hoped.” He set the test tube on the rack and turned to his butler. “The trip is unnecessary, a life is secure—at least from one of the more obscure alkaloid poisons. Although how it got into the pudding is still a question. Now . . . ?”

  “A gentleman to see you,” Mr. Maws told him.

  “What sort of gentleman?” Moriarty asked, hanging up his apron and carefully washing and drying his hands at the work sink.

  Mr. Maws considered. “Something over forty years of age, I should say. Says he’s your ‘old pal,’ but his face is a new one to me.”

  He handed Moriarty the man’s card.

  Moriarty adjusted his pince-nez and peered down at the card. “Colonel Moran,” he said, flicking the pasteboard with his thumb. “I do know the gentleman.” He put his jacket on and adjusted the large knot on his red cravat. “Let’s go see what he wants.”

  _______

  Colonel Moran sat patiently in the red leather chair for the ten minutes he was kept waiting, hands folded in his lap, back straight and not quite touching the back of the chair. Occasionally he would twist one side or the other of his full mustache or pat the top of his head, where the carefully groomed hair beyond his receding hairline, parted precisely in the middle with a part as fine as the edge of a razor, was just a bit too black to be natural.

  As Professor Moriarty entered the parlor, Moran jumped to his feet and thrust forward a tanned, muscular block of a right hand. “Good to see you again, Professor. It’s been a while, but you haven’t changed a bit. But then you never do—you never do.”

  Moriarty took the hand and shook it gingerly. “Four years, or just a bit over, I fancy. I perceive that you’re quite recently back from Afghanistan, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “You’re not mistaken, Professor,” Moran assured him. “But then you’re seldom mistaken, as I remember. Has someone told you of my return?”

  “I was unaware of it until this moment. But the deduction was not a difficult one. The fact that you are living at your club proclaims that you haven’t been back in England long enough to settle into a flat; your tan suggests a hot climate, and a lot of time in the field. The current campaign in Afghanistan fits those requirements well, I believe.”

  “Quite so,” Colonel Moran agreed. “You make these little tricks of ratiocination of yours seem simple.”

  “Tricks? Come now, Colonel Moran, you must realize that the more you exercise your brain, the more you can expect from it.”

  Moran smiled. “Exercise, whether mental or physical, seems to benefit some people more than others, or so I’ve noticed.”

  Moriarty reached behind him and pulled the bellpull. “I’m going to have a cup of coffee,” he said. “Please join me. Coffee or tea, or something stronger if you like.”

  Colonel Moran twisted one side of his mustache into an even finer point, and then the other. “Well, it is well past the noon hour,” he said. “A fixed habit, sir. No indulging in spirits until the sun has begun the second half of his journey across the sky. It is such fixed habits, sir, that save us from utter ruin.”

  “That may well be,” Moriarty agreed. “But now, as it’s approaching four in the afternoon?”

  “A glass of quinine water, if you have such a thing, with a substantial splash of brandy, would not go amiss.”

  “Certainly,” Moriarty said, and passed the request on to Mr. Maws when he opened the door. “Now, Colonel, what can I do for you?”

  Moran leaned back in his chair. A wolfish grin flickered across his face and disappeared. “You have called upon me for assistance on occasion in the past, Professor, as I have called upon you. I believe our relationship has always been mutually profitable in the past. I have a tale to tell that will excite your imagination. After you have heard my story, then we can discuss how we can help each other on this occasion, you and I.” He patted his pockets and pulled out a hand-tooled leather cigar case. “May I offer you a cigar, sir? An Indian Lunkah cheroot in style, but not as vile as the native product. Made especially for the officers of the Penwali Scouts.”

  “No, thank you,” Moriarty said, shaking his head almost imperceptibly. “I don’t indulge.”

  “Do you mind if I—”

  “No, go right ahead.”

  Moran took a silver cigar tool from his pocket and clipped off the ends of his cigar. Thrusting the cheroot firmly between his teeth, he held a tubular cigar lighter with an oversized windscreen to the far end and puffed it alight. The process had the air of an oft-repeated ritual. “Ahh!” he said.

  He capped the lighter and held it speculatively in his hand. “Used to be a time,” he commented, taking the cheroot from his mouth and blowing a stream of acrid-smelling smoke into the room, “when you could impress the natives almost anywhere by producing fire from your fist. Now they ain’t so easy. It takes a repeating rifle to have any impression on most of them.” He pocketed the lighter.

  The maid came in with Colonel Moran’s drink in a tall glass, and a cup of black coffee for Professor Moriarty. She set the tray down on the small table between them.

  “That will be all, Teresa,” Moriarty said. “Thank you.” He noticed that Moran’s eyes followed the young girl as she left the room.

  “Chin-chin!” Moran said, his eyes flicking back toward Moriarty and focusing on the knot in his cravat. He set his cigar carefully on the ashtray to his right, and lifted the glass to salute Moriarty before bringing it to his lips.

  “Now, Professor, with your permission, I’ll tell you my story. I think you’ll find it worth your time.”

  “Go on,” Moriarty said.

  Moran retrieved his cigar from the ashtray. “I shall begin, then, with the maharaja of Lamapoor, which as you may know is the second largest of the independent principalities. Not his present majesty, but his—let’s see—great-great-great-grandfather. The events I am about to relate occurred, or at least began, in, as close as I can figure, about the year 1734.

  “The maharaja of Lamapoor was a drastically obese young man. In the year in question his weight exceeded thirty stone. This, he and his advisors were convinced, was most pleasing to his subjects, since they believed that their ruler should be a man of substance.” Moran paused and coughed.

  “Once every seven years, in addition to th
e annual taxes, levies, assessments, fees, fines, tolls, special charges, and bribes that gladdened the hearts of the citizens of Lamapoor, there was a special ceremony where the subjects of the maharaja matched his weight in gold. There is a much-reproduced drawing of the ceremony showing a giant balance beam with a pan at each end. On one pan sits the rotund maharaja on his special throne, and his subjects are dumping gold coins onto the other.”

  “I’ve seen the illustration, or one like it,” Moriarty commented.

  “Yes, well. It’s inaccurate in one respect, I’m given to understand,” Moran told him. “They actually used small gold ingots especially minted for the purpose, which they had to buy from the state mint—at a small premium, of course. In effect, they had to pay the maharaja for the privilege of paying the maharaja.”

  “Many governments seem to work on a similar principle,” Moriarty observed.

  “Even so. But aside from that, that’s pretty much what it must have looked like.” Moran paused to take a healthy gulp of this brandy and quinine.

  “The maharaja had one problem, though, that worried his advisors and his subjects and almost took all the fun out of being the fattest maharaja in India. He had—how can I say this—an inability to perform his connubial duties. He had difficulty in maintaining the requisite, ah, interest, and he was so large that, even during the comparatively brief periods when he could keep his interest up, he couldn’t place it where it needed to be to produce a son and heir. And a son and heir must be produced or the succession to the throne would be in doubt—up for grabs, as it were—at his passing, and the future happiness of large numbers of his subjects might be imperiled; or so it seemed to the maharaja and his advisors at the time.

  “So the maharaja’s nieces and his nephews and his cousins and his aunts, as well as the various functionaries of the court, were taking what in other circumstances might seem a vulgar interest in the condition of the maharaja’s member.” He paused.

  “Continue,” Moriarty said, “with as little obeisance to prurience as you can manage.”

  “The long and short of it is,” Moran said, obviously annoyed that his lovely anecdote was going to have to be truncated, “that the prime minister, who was the maharaja’s first cousin, commissioned a Scottish engineer named Westerby Mitchell to construct a device that would enable His Highness to, ah, function. Mitchell looked over the situation and, after spending a few weeks taking measurements and computing angles, set to work on a contraption of leather straps and bands and springs, all set into a hardwood frame, and had it installed in the royal bedroom.”

  “A simple problem, but not without some interest,” Moriarty observed. “Did it work?”

  “It solved the, ah, mechanical part of the problem. The other part was solved by the importation from Persia of three exceptionally beautiful houris who were well trained in the amorous arts. With the assistance of the device and the houris, the maharani produced a royal heir within the year. I believe that two of the houris also gave birth around the same time.”

  “What did the maharani think of this arrangement?”

  “That is not recorded.”

  “Ah!” Moriarty said. “A good story, and I appreciate it. And is the stage sufficiently set now? Can we proceed to the denouement of this farce?”

  Moran took a deep breath and let it out. “Don’t rush me unreasonably, sir,” he said. “I’m trying to tell you enough so that you can, you might say, see how it is; so that you can properly understand what follows.”

  “I think,” said Moriarty, “that whatever follows, sir, I will properly understand.”

  Moran closed his eyes for a long moment, and then opened them and stared unblinkingly at Moriarty. “I am not sure, sir, why you are being hostile to me and my story, when I haven’t even gotten around to the, ah, important part, the part that would concern you, as of yet.” He rose from his chair and jammed his cigar firmly between his teeth. “I will concede that you are the cleverest man in London, and the best at devising the sort of stratagems that I might require. I have worked with you before, and I know that this is so. Now, if you will direct me to the residence of the second cleverest man in London, I will bid you adieu.”

  Moriarty chuckled, and then began laughing, a great, full-throated laugh. Moran, startled, took a step backward and almost fell back into his seat before bouncing up again and glaring belligerently at the professor.

  “The second cleverest man in London?” Moriarty asked, and then laughed again. “Why, sir, I cannot direct you to the second cleverest man in London, for he has disappeared.”

  “Indeed?” Moran asked, looking baffled.

  Moriarty nodded, and held his hand up for a minute until he had stopped laughing. “Indeed,” he said. “And quite possibly it’s not very funny at all. He may have been injured, or even killed, or he may be being held by his enemies for reasons unknown.”

  “Then why . . . ?”

  “Because, sir, his friends fancy that I am his greatest enemy, and they imagine that I have done away with him. I cannot tell you, sir, how amusing that is.”

  Moran removed the cigar from his mouth. “I see,” he said.

  “Do you?” Moriarty asked.

  “Actually, Professor, I confess that I do not. I assume that you did not actually do away with, er, the gentleman in question?” Moran sounded bemused, rather than alarmed, at the notion.

  “The gentleman in question is the self-styled ‘consulting detective’ named Sherlock Holmes, and, no, I had nothing whatever to do with his disappearance. I rather regret his passing, if indeed he has passed.” Moriarty waved Moran back to his seat. “Finish your story. Perhaps I will be able to help you, perhaps not; but at least you deserve a fair hearing.” He leaned forward. “Proceed. Continue.”

  Colonel Moran looked thoughtful. “Sherlock Holmes has disappeared, has he?”

  “Indeed.”

  “And you had nothing whatever to do with it?”

  “Even so.”

  Moran pursed his lips, considering. After a minute he nodded. “We’ll put that aside for now,” he said. “I have no reason to disbelieve you. Still, it is peculiar.”

  “It is,” Moriarty agreed.

  “Well,” Moran said, “back to my tale. For his son and heir’s fourteenth birthday, the maharaja ordered the construction of a great temple. These maharajas are always building temples, but this was something special in the way of a temple: four tall marble towers with a definite phallic feel to them at the corners of a vast marble dome. The walls of the dome were covered with erotic sculptures done in what I believe is called ‘bas-relief.’ ”

  “There are a number of privately printed books of erotica which contain illustrations of Indian temple carvings,” Moriarty said. “I have seen and admired a few such; if not for their artistic quality then for the imagination of the sculptor. Erotic carvings would seem to be fairly common on Hindu temples.”

  “The native sensibility on the subject of erotic art differs from that of the educated European,” Colonel Moran affirmed. “And the native women—But surely here I digress. These carvings are said to honor one of the manifestations of the god Shiva. Beyond that, I know nothing. But that, except in passing, is not what interests us.”

  “Ah!” Moriarty said.

  “Four years after the completion of the temple, the maharaja died and his son, now eighteen, ascended to the throne. The son, to honor his father and celebrate his own existence, commissioned two works of art to be placed in the temple. One was a construct in solid gold—full size—of the, ah, apparatus which had enabled his birth. The joints were set out in rubies and diamonds. The straps and belts were woven from the finest golden threads. A representation of the god Padersiyabi—I may have that wrong—lies prone upon the apparatus but with no visible indication of what he might be able to accomplish in that position. The casual observer is left to wonder what the function of the mechanism might be.

  “The second object was a statue, some three feet
high, representing his father’s favorite houri; the woman whose exotic dancing and, ah, exertions, had enabled, or at least encouraged, the son’s conception. Pati was her name. She is depicted standing on her right leg, the left leg bent so that her left foot rests on her right knee. Her arms are in front of her, elbows out, palms facing inward, in a particularly meaningful expression. Just what it expresses, I do not know. If the statue is to be believed, she was quite beautiful. The statue itself is worth a king’s ransom, to use a hackneyed, but in this case quite accurate, expression. It was also of solid gold, and encrusted with precious gems: emeralds set into the eyes—Pati had green eyes—and necklaces, bracelets, finger rings, anklets, and a coronet, all set with the most precious gems, fitted onto the statue by the finest jewelers in the kingdom.

  “You’ve seen it, then?”

  “I have seen a miniature representation; about six inches high, I’d say. Gilded plaster set with semiprecious stones—valuable in itself, but nothing compared to the intrinsic worth of the original. But exquisite. One feels that it would have been pleasant to know the young woman—Pati. The original is missing—looted from the temple in 1857, during the Sepoy Mutiny. It’s guesswork, pure guesswork as to whether it was taken by sepoy troops in revenge for the maharaja being pro-British, or later by the British in revenge for the maharaja being pro-sepoy. And your guess is as good as mine. I have spoken to people who were there, and have heard both stories. Which is why I have come to see you.”

  “You want to determine who took the statue thirty-five years ago?”

  “No, thank God, it won’t come to that. Or, rather, I should say, it has passed that. I know who has the golden houri now. I don’t know for sure how it came into their hands, but that, thank God, is immaterial.”

  “You wish my help in recovering the work?”

  “The current maharaja, Ramasatjit, has commissioned me to find the golden houri and return it to him. He will pay quite well—more than the intrinsic value of the piece, which, as I’ve said, is outrageously high.”