“Even if we find a door out of the zoo, we could wander underneath the Fort for hours,” he fretted.

“Oah, Nesbit,” O’Hara said gently, “you English are so unhappy with uncertainty.”

“And you Indians are so deucedly eager to embrace it.”

The two men grinned at each other in easy understanding.

“However,” Nesbit said, struggling to get to his feet. “Tomorrow I ride to the encampment, to arrange a proper show of support once we get the gentleman across his border.”

We spread ourselves around the main room, Nesbit and myself on the narrow iron-framed beds, the others on the floor. Bindra turned down the paraffin lamp and padded back to his sleeping roll in front of the low-burning fire. We lay, silent with our thoughts, Nesbit’s bed creaking and complaining as he sought to find a comfortable position for his leg, but at last even he fell still.

But it was O’Hara who had the last word, voicing a thought that was going through my own mind, and I think Holmes’ as well.

“In the morning, when we are fresh, I should like to propose that the expedition into Khanpur be done posthaste.” Nesbit’s bed squealed in preface to his reaction, but the Irishman on the floor cut him off by saying, “I do not propose this tonight; but in the morning, we need to talk about it.”

Nesbit subsided, positively radiating distrust and suspicion. One by one, we slept.

All but O’Hara. Whenever I woke during the night, I could see him sitting before the dying embers, breathing the words to the prayer Om mane padme om, over and over again, his long rosary beads clicking softly as outside, light snowflakes whispered against the window-glass.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

In the morning, Nesbit’s green eyes glittered with fever, although he swore that it was nothing, that he was capable of riding, that he would carry the maharaja on his back if it came to that. Holmes and O’Hara glanced at each other over the wounded man’s head, and said nothing, not then. But after we had eaten the eggs and bacon the servants cooked for us, both men drifted away outside where they stood, Holmes trying to get his pipe alight, O’Hara again fingering his rosary, their breath swirling into clouds in the heatless morning sun. I gave them five minutes, then walked out onto the fresh snow after them, my unprotected scalp tightening with the cold.

I saw no reason not to come to the point. “I’ll not be left behind to play nursemaid.”

O’Hara’s hands stopped their motion as he gave me a look of surprise, but Holmes merely smiled into his troublesome pipe.