Page 55 of The Art of Theft
He screwed the hinges back and stared at the pit before him. A stale odor rose from its unseen depths. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He had to force himself to reach in and feel for the ladder.
The ladder went down and down. He didn’t dare use the pocket lantern. The darkness seemed infinite, his footsteps on the rungs, as loud as drumbeats.
When he finally reached the bottom, the tunnel that greeted him was scarcely three feet wide and too low for him to stand up straight. Should anyone come from either direction when he was in the tunnel, he would be doomed.
He expelled a shaky breath and took a step forward. At least, if he should disappear tonight, Holmes and Leighton Atwood would know where he was, which was more than he could have said for certain risks he’d taken elsewhere.
The tunnel’s interior was brick. For a structure burrowing beneath a lake, it was watertight, no moisture seeping or collecting anywhere. The air was at once thick and somehow not enough. Hunched over, he shuffled along, already regretting his choice. His neck ached, and his calves, too, from proceeding on half-bent knees.
At last he arrived before a door. He risked a little light and saw that it was of heavy oak panels reinforced with ironwork. The wood looked to be hundreds of years old, but the thick bolt and the large padlock that must weigh half a stone were so new they shone, unmarred by rust or scratch.
He frowned. It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to see that something was wrong with the picture: The two doors at the two ends of the tunnel were both locked from inside.
He frowned some more and turned around. Had he felt any branching along the way? Or a door of some kind? He was certain he hadn’t. But then again...
Swearing under his breath, he retraced his steps and found what he sought twenty feet away: a small trapdoor on the ceiling.
This one did not have fastenings on either side and lifted at a push of his hand. He hoisted himself up—into another tunnel.
If he wasn’t too wrong about the distance he’d covered, then he must already be underneath the island. The tunnel he had been in earlier was probably the original tunnel that had been the fort’s escape route. The one he was currently in was much lower and narrower: In the other one he’d proceeded on his feet, however uncomfortably; here there was no choice except to advance on his stomach.
Was this a newer branching, so that those in the château didn’t have to go all the way to the basement—the dungeon?—to access the escape route? It was also much more crudely constructed, braced with timber to the side and overhead, but he was crawling over unimproved earth.
It sloped gradually upward. Where would it take him?
He stopped.
Faint thuds.
Was he under a hall and the guests at the reception were walking overhead? No, it was too weak and solitary a sound for that. Wait. Was the tapping in Morse code?
He let out some more light from the pocket lantern, found his notebook, and jotted down what he heard. There were no three-unit gaps to indicate how to break the signal for letters, or seven-unit gaps to show the space between words.
It was not a long message. He recorded for three pages in the small notebook, even though he could see that after the first page,the message began to repeat. He would have kept on documenting for another few pages, but the signal disappeared abruptly.
He waited for it to come back. It didn’t.
Ahead the tunnel went on, leading only into darkness. He put away his pencil and notebook, exhaled, and crawled on.
Twelve
The maharani was silent for some time. “You mean, why I did not tell you that I was not and had never been content with the fact that Britain ruled India?”
At last, that question out in the open. Mrs. Watson swallowed. “Yes.”
“I suppose one reason was that you were so earnestly unaffected by the currents that governed my life that I was, if not happy, then at least not unwilling, to let you remain in that state of blissful innocence. If you had been somewhat aware or mildly curious, then I might have decided differently.”
“I... I was unforgivably ignorant.”
The maharani sighed. “It is a profitable arrangement for Britain to have colonies. At the heart of the empire, in the homeland, even those without any connection to the colonies benefit from the general prosperity that comes of a ready supply of raw material to feed the fires of industry, and then ready markets for the sale of finished products.
“But the British have convinced themselves that in taking over India, they themselves were the benefactors and the natives of the Subcontinent the beneficiaries. Who would dare tell them otherwise?
“We have met Englishmen and -women of superlative education and refinement, who discuss the philosophies of the Enlightenment and the general human condition with piercing insight and clarity. Those same individuals then prove themselves perfectly willing to regard the people of the Subcontinent as subhuman, far better off as second-class citizens in their own land than as masters of their own destiny.
“By the time I visited Britain, I’d given up on changing British minds. By the time we were... part of each other’s lives, I was almost glad not to know what you thought on the matter. That way I could pretend that if you knew, you would be sympathetic to my position.”
“I would have been. I would!” cried Mrs. Watson.
