A Soul of Steel (37 page)

“Even,” Irene added, “more delicate appendages, I imagine.”

“I cannot imagine. What appendages?” I put in.

“We are speaking of savagery beyond imagining, Nell,” Godfrey said quickly. “I believe that we have a sufficient picture of the scale.”

“I do not! They would cut off his ears and his nose, put out his eyes, cut off his hands and feet... what else is there to truncate but his beard?”

“His... pride,” Irene put in. “We were speaking metaphorically, Nell.”

“Oh.” I still did not see, but did not wish to interrupt the tale for a fine point.

“We did not need to spy only on the Afghans,” Quentin went on.

“The Russians,” Godfrey suggested. “They have spent several decades dancing all over that region trying to get their bearclaws into India.”

“Yes, exactly. And while the Russians are not quite as savage as the Afghans, they are far more consistent, being a bit less casual about killing off their leaders. So any mischief against our troops was as liable to be plotted with a Russian accent as a Pashto or an Uzbek one.”

“Do you speak Russian?” Irene asked suddenly.

“A smattering, but my specialty was the difficult dialects of Afghanistan. As engagement became more inevitable, I was expected to go amongst the enemy and report his numbers and weapons.”

“Which you did at Maiwand.”

“Yes.” Quentin crushed his cigarette in a well-licked
pâté
tin. “Except that the command did not take my report of the Ayub Khan’s intimidating number of artillery pieces seriously. We were British, you know, and bound to beat the turbans off these savages who so outnumbered us.” He laughed bitterly. “And then I became suspicious of Tiger, who had not been where he had claimed to be, as I knew from my own native contacts.”

“Where
had
he been?” Irene wondered with raised eyebrows.

“Tashkent, near the Russian border.”

“Just before Maiwand?” Godfrey asked.

Quentin nodded soberly. “I did not like it either, especially since a formidable Russian spy known as ‘Sable’ was also in Tashkent, and Tiger was the senior spy on the battleground. Then, the day before the battle, Tiger laid a pretty obvious tidbit on my plate, expecting me to run howling back to the command with it.”

“Maclaine’s supposed betrayal.”

Quentin nodded again. “Mac was a friend of mine, unbeknownst to Tiger. Suspicious, I searched Tiger’s kit bag and found an odd bit of paper, not really a map but similar to one, with some backwards Russian alphabet markings on it. I took it, meaning to slip it back into his kit later if it proved innocuous.

“Then I went on an errand before returning to camp to confront Mac, who acted as innocent as a Paschal Lamb, as I expected. That was the night of twenty-six July. I had already scouted the immediate area and discovered a secondary, unreported ravine near the one our troops would defend, one at right angles to it. I slipped out of camp to explore further, but when I was digging up my native clothes I was knocked unconscious.”

“Oh!” I winced in sympathy.

“A wicked blow,” Quentin recalled, lifting his hand to the old wound, “meant to kill. I next awoke to find the ground thrumming beneath me, the sky veiled by yellow dust, and gunpowder perfuming the evil air. Men and horses screamed in tandem. Smoky figures milled in the murk. I viewed a scene from a Renaissance hell. I was frightfully dizzy, and could hardly focus my eyes, but managed to stagger up and head for what English voices I heard.

“To make a sad story short, I found myself in the ignoble retreat from Maiwand to Kandahar some sixty miles south. We left good guns behind, and horses and camels. And men. I staggered along unnoticed until I finally collapsed.

“Luckily, I’d gotten far enough from the front lines that some plucky medical officer sprinted to my side through the dust. The Sixty-sixth Berkshires had valiantly stood their ground so that the rest of us could retreat, and this surgeon must have been attached to them.

“ ‘Water,’ I croaked, and he had a canteen of warm spit that helped some. ‘Thank you, Doctor—’ I knew enough to say.

“ ‘Dr. Watson,’ said he, as if we were meeting in Pall Mall. ‘Take it easy, lad, I’ll find your wound.’

“Well, I’d bled all down my back, so he naturally thought I’d been shot and spent some time turning me over and finding me whole where I should not have been. The fighting was not hand-to-hand, and my head wound puzzled him when he found it. He seemed more a stickler for the how and why of my wound rather than just the tending of it.

“I was not coherent then, but I knew the battle had been a disaster. I did not expect to live to tell the true tale of it, so I worked the paper I’d taken from Tiger into the doctor’s kit bag. My fingers found a nice little tear in the bottom, the answer to a spy’s prayer, though one gets clever in moments of desperation, even when off one’s head.

“ I was about to drift into sleep or death or whatever would come when a piece of thunder exploded in my ear and the doctor’s fingers slip and he falls down in a faint beside me. Now it is my turn to probe for a wound, and I see that a jezail bullet has sliced into his shoulder. His uniform is slowly soaking as red as my bloody back.

“Right shoulder it is, but the heart seems safe. So I use the bandages in his bag to poke over the wound when some young fellow stops beside us.

“ ‘Tis Dr. Watson!’ says he, ‘can you help me wi’ him, soldier? I have a horse.’

“So it is patient tending doctor, and we two get him belly-down over the poor beast’s back. The orderly snatches up the bag and straps it to the saddle, leading horse and doctor off.

“I realize that I must look fairly hale from the front at least, and start walking again for the rear, knowing my paper will stand a better chance of getting to Kandahar and being found than if it was with me. That orderly was a goer, and a horse is better than gold in an out-and-out rout.

“I truly expected to die,” Quentin said, and was quiet.

“Why didn’t you?” Irene asked shrewdly.

“Irene!” I remonstrated, shocked that she would speak so. She ignored me.

“The most important part of the story is yet to come, Nell.” She leaned forward, the better to fix Quentin with her magnetic eyes. She reminded me of a queen cobra at the moment, bewitching a victim. “Why didn’t you die as Tiger intended?”

He stared at her, equally shocked, then he laughed. “Perhaps because I almost wanted to, and Maiwand was not an occasion when I got what I wanted.”

Irene, startled, settled back on her coverlet for further interrogations. Like a mongoose, she relished a foe—even a friendly one in a duel of words—capable of surprising her. And like a mongoose, she intended to ensure that she surprised him last.

If Godfrey Norton had one facility that proved invaluable on innumerable occasions, it was his ability to arrange things. Such talents are seldom hailed as they deserve.

Leaving our oddly companionable picnic under the dusty gables, Godfrey vanished into the great maelstrom of London life. He returned two hours later with a fresh carriage and assorted outer garments for our more oddly attired members, namely Irene in her street urchin’s rags. In the interim he had also obtained rooms for our party of four. Quentin, Irene and Godfrey said, must reside with them for safety’s sake until the threat to his well-being was resolved.

We were whisked to a private hotel in the Strand with as much discreet ceremony as if we had been Cinderellas in search of coronation balls rather than errant cobras and double-dealing spies.

In the company of Irene and Godfrey I often found myself being snatched from the most humble, even disreputable of circumstances to the most glorified. Certainly I never learned more of the world than when I accompanied them, and if I did not always like the nature of my lessons, I could not quarrel with their necessity.

At the new hotel once again I was provided with a sitting room. Irene and Godfrey took a two-bedroom suite that would accommodate Quentin and his trunk as well. I, for one, was relieved that the clever but lethal mongoose remained on the other side of my door.

We met again that evening, all properly attired, in Irene and Godfrey’s sitting room. This was a grandiose salon with gilt cornices crowning scarlet brocade draperies and an inordinate number of small tufted settees upholstered in shades of lavender. I finally brought myself to sit upon one of these doll-house sofas. Quentin joined me, looking utterly urbane in one of Godfrey’s city suits, which fit him surprisingly well.

“You have transformed yourself completely,” I said in some surprise. “You could walk up to the door of number forty-four Grosvenor Square and enter without a challenge.”

He frowned at the familiar address. “You have visited in Grosvenor Square?”

“We had to learn,” Irene put in quickly, “whether you had informed your relations of your return.”

His expression grew remote. “I have made a point of keeping them clear of my miserable affairs for almost a decade. If you have betrayed my existence, my condition—”

“We have not,” Irene said in firm tones. “Or rather, I should say, Nell and Godfrey have not, for they were my emissaries to Grosvenor Square. However, they did learn a useful piece of information.”

“Which is?” Quentin was not mollified, and I could not blame him.

“Which is that a certain commanding blue-eyed gentleman called upon them two months ago, seeking news of yourself.”

“Two months ago!” Quentin had risen abruptly. “That is before I was attacked, before I even left India. Why did Tiger wait to renew his persecution of me until this time?”

“Because,” Irene said thoughtfully, “something of his is at stake at this particular moment. Some... scheme which that paper you took from him years ago could harm.”

“But that scrap likely does not exist anymore. Tiger is pursuing a phantom. The piece of paper must have been lost in Afghanistan or at Peshawar years ago.”

Godfrey nodded. “Dr. Watson lay delirious with fever for many weeks, even months. He doesn’t even recall how a second wound to his leg occurred. Certainly his medical bag was taken from him during this illness, or more likely was destroyed during the month-long siege of Kandahar.”

“Still, it may survive,” Irene said. “We have little else to pursue. In fact, unless we wish to wait for Captain Morgan to find us and subject us to more reptilian chambermates, we shall have to resort to desperate measures at once.”

“How desperate?” I asked dubiously.

She sighed and shifted upon the overupholstered love seat she occupied alone, like Sarah Bernhardt reclining on her polar-bear-pelt-strewn divan.

“Some of us,” Irene answered, “will have to return to Paddington and search Dr. Watson’s residence.”

“Some?” I pursued with foreboding.

“I have not decided who will execute this delicate task,” Irene said airily.

“I will go,” Quentin said manfully. “I can identify the bag.”

“No,” Irene answered, “you will not.”

“And why not?” I asked indignantly on his behalf. Irene was entirely too high-handed with virtual strangers. Godfrey and I were used to serving as milady’s equerries, but Quentin had never enlisted in her army.

Her warm golden-brown eyes, all innocent inevitability, regarded me. “Because anyone who ventures near Dr. Watson risks seeing Sherlock Holmes, or worse, being seen by him. And that would be ruinous, since in the near future Quentin Stanhope will be in Baker Street consulting with Mr. Sherlock Holmes on precisely the problem that faces us.”

Chapter Twenty-five

A BRACE OF BURGLARS

“The matter
involves Afghanistan, I perceive,” my friend Sherlock Holmes pronounced as he viewed the dead cobra beneath my desk. “You have not moved it?”

“Not a bit. I know your methods.”

“Hmm.
Someone has, and rather rudely.” Holmes wriggled farther under my desk, lost in that utter concentration that any sort of mystery evoked in him. “There also has been someone sitting at your desk, Watson.”

“Someone sitting at my desk?”

“A woman with a small foot attired in a boot, not new, with the heel worn evenly. Most unusual, one might even say irregular. A preternaturally well-balanced lady. A Turkish rug is better than fresh-mown grass for absorbing slight imprints. I see that your leg has been bothering you again, for the shoe that leaves the lighter impression has been most active... Were it not for the interesting marks behind the head, I’d say that you yourself had kicked the snake to death. A pity that you did not apprise me of this situation sooner.”