Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

“I very much doubt they’ll be staying in the Civil Lines,” McColl added. “They’ll be avoiding any contact with the British authorities.”

Mirza looked even more interested. “Curiouser and curiouser. But that will make my job easier,” he went on. “White faces stand out anywhere else.” He put his pen down.

“May I ask how you intend to proceed?” McColl asked, hoping he wasn’t breaking some arcane rule of etiquette. “Speed is important, I’m afraid.”

“Of course. Did you happen to notice a group of boys outside?”

McColl nodded.

“They are my ‘Baker Street Irregulars,’” he said with a wide smile. “Or ‘Ballimaran Road Irregulars’ might be more correct. They will scour the city for your friends. One day, perhaps, two days at most. If these men are still in Delhi, the boys will find them.”

“Good. When they do, I want the men watched. I want to know who comes to see them, where they go, and whom they meet if they do go out. Can you manage all that?”

“Of course.”

“Excellent.” McColl removed a tattered wallet from his pocket. “Now, what are your fees?”

“We can settle accounts when the case is concluded.”

McColl demurred. “I would feel happier if you accepted a deposit. As you can see, I’m not wearing a turban today and rather more visible than I want to be.”

Mirza grinned at him. “Very well. My rates are fifteen rupees a day.”

McColl counted out three ten-rupee notes from the money Sinha had loaned him. “Take this for now,” he said, passing it across. “And you will need to know where I am staying,” he added with only the faintest of misgivings. If he wanted Mirza to do the job, he had to trust him that much.

“I was about to ask that very thing,” Mirza told him.

McColl gave him Sinha’s address, which caused the detective to raise an eyebrow. He said nothing, though.

“When you leave a message, leave it for Mr. Stuart,” McColl said.

“That is most clear.”

McColl got up. “Thank you,” he said. “I hope to hear from you soon.” He turned to wish Dr. Din farewell, but this Holmes’s Watson was fast asleep.

The Indian Mrs. Hudson was still vigorously kneading her dough on the staircase. Komarov would have been more than a little amused, McColl thought as he went down the stairs.

“You checked with the railwayauthorities?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked Nigel Morley.

As far as Alex Cunningham could tell, the IPI chief hadn’t moved since the previous day. Fitzwilliam was sitting in the same chair, wearing the same clothes, and seemed to be halfway through the same drink. His copy of the Eastern Mail , however, though lying in much the same position, boasted a different front page. And his mood was undoubtedly darker.

“Yes, sir,” Morley replied, glancing at Cunningham for corroboration. Cunningham was more concerned with the throbbing headache that a surfeit of port and the Webley butt had left him with.

“And?” the colonel asked with exaggerated indifference.

“Nothing. Only seven Europeans bought tickets at the booking office in the last twenty-four hours, and they’ve all been accounted for. If he’s traveling in native disguise, then no one noticed.”

“They wouldn’t,” Cunningham said, stirring himself. “McColl spent three months in Afghanistan and Turkestan in 1916 without getting caught. He knows the languages, knows the area, knows how to blend in. He’s very tanned. And there are so many different communities in Delhi that anyone looking at him twice would assume he came from one of the others. If he’s gone, there won’t be any traces.”

“But has he?” the colonel wondered out loud. He turned his gaze from the garden to Cunningham. “Do you think he has?”

“I don’t know.”

“What if he hasn’t?” the colonel insisted. “You talked to him. Is he likely to do anything with his knowledge? I mean, is he the sort of chap to take things personally?”

Things like your ordering his execution, Cunningham thought sourly. “Not in the way you mean,” he said, thinking back over the conversation. “He seemed more curious than anything else, and there weren’t any threats. But he was a bit of an Indian lover back in 1915; I remember how impressed he was by Bhattacharyya and Jatin Mukherjee. He always did his job, though—I have to give him that.” He shrugged. “People do change.”

Fitzwilliam shook his head. “Rarely in my experience. Could he stick his oar in if he wanted to?”

“He’d have to find them first.”

The colonel grunted, apparently in agreement.

“There’s no way he could know about Sayid Hassan’s house,” Morley added. “That business happened after he went back to England.”

“Are we going to tell the Good Indian team?” Cunningham asked Fitzwilliam.

“Good Lord, no. What would be the point?” The colonel sighed and closed his eyes. “I’ll be glad when this business is over.”

Having set the search underway, McColl and Caitlin spent almost all of the following forty-eight hours together in their room. They reminisced and read, ate leisurely meals, and took naps in the fearsome heat, and tried not to let their fears for the next few days drown out everything else.

It was midway through the second morning when a rap on their door announced the head servant, bearing a sheet of the consulting detective’s personal stationery. Mirza’s message was brief and to the point: “Success. Rendezvous, Central Post Office, Noon.” McColl passed it to Caitlin, who read it and took a deep breath. He could only guess how hard this was going to be for her.

“I don’t suppose it would be a good idea for me to come,” she said.

“No, it wouldn’t,” he agreed, looking at his watch. He had plenty of time to get into costume and walk to the post office.

She came across to him, and he thought she was going to give him an argument, but she simply held him close for a minute or so. “I suppose you want me to wind your turban?” she said playfully, releasing him.

“If you would be so kind.”

An hour and a half or so later he was climbing aboard Mirza’s tonga.

“An excellent disguise,” the detective said, studying McColl’s outfit with interest. Mirza was also dressed in Indian clothes—a simple white shirt and dhoti.

“You have found them?” McColl asked.

“Of course. Did I not announce ‘success’ in my message? We are going there now.”

“How far is it?”

“A mile? Perhaps a little more. They are staying in the home of one Sayid Hassan. He is not there, but it was arranged with him before he went away. No one seems to know where he has gone, but”—Mirza looked at McColl—“perhaps he is putting distance between himself and something particularly unsavory?”

“I don’t know,” McColl said, somewhat disingenuously.

The tonga rattled south down Faiz Bazaar, driven by a young boy whom McColl thought he recognized from the “Ballimaran Road Irregulars.” Did Mirza picture himself in a London hansom hurrying toward some leafy suburban scene of derring-do? McColl hadn’t read a Holmes story since before the war, but he remembered that several had Indian roots. Monkeys and mutiny treasure, or something along those lines.

After about five minutes, the Delhi Gate loomed ahead, but rather than pass through it, the tonga took a sharp turn to the right, heading west along the inside of the still-impressive city wall. A few minutes later the boy pulled the pony to a halt beside a semiderelict flight of steps.

Three of Mirza’s “irregulars” were sitting on the bottom tread.

The eldest reported to Mirza. The three men staying in Sayid Hassan’s house had been out for most of the morning and had only just returned. The two white men had simply driven around the city, up Faiz Bazaar and Elgin Road, along Chandni Chowk, and back through the Lal Kuan and Sitaram Bazaars. The Bengali had left the tonga in Chandni Chowk, walked to a house in a nearby street, and rented two rooms for a week, saying he and two friends would move in on the following day.