A roar came from behind me. I spun round. Waldo was screaming, holding his gun in front of him like a sword. He’s been shot, I thought. I wanted to run to him, but my feet would not obey my brain. As I watched, frozen, Waldo raised his rifle and aimed at a large tree. It was a wild almond, sprayed with red flowers, like splatters of dried blood.
His rifle stuttered. A moment later a pistol fell out of the tree, followed by a dark figure which landed with a thud in a thorn bush. The Maharajah yelled, Aunt Hilda bellowed and the bodyguards continued to fire into the jungle. Scared out of their wits, the elephants made a deafening honking, which almost drowned out the rest of the commotion.
Finally my feet moved. I rushed to the wild almond, just a second behind Waldo, to see two brawny guards hauling a man to his feet.
A stick-thin figure, with a huge mustache, clad in a grubby shirt and loincloth. He looked befuddled, eyes peering dully from above wrinkled brown skin. The guard slapped him viciously across the face. But he barely reacted.
I was hit by a horrible stench—the wild almond as pungent as an open sewer. I staggered back, reeling. Mingled with this stink was a more delicate scent: rich, flowery, sickly sweet. A mixture of jasmine and musk. A familiar smell.
Champlon!
I blinked and gazed at the man, hanging like a skinny rag doll from the bodyguard’s hand. It couldn’t be! But it must. Those curving bullets. No one in the world could shoot quite like our French friend.
I went up to the bodyguard and shook his prisoner by the arm. “Monsieur Champlon, it’s me.”
Was I right? There was no flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes. He was seemingly unaware—or indifferent to—the commotion all around him. But the mustache, the jutting nose—the Frenchman was unmistakable. Champlon’s hand was dripping blood: the bullet had nicked one of his fingers. Why didn’t he feel the pain?
Waldo gazed at the Frenchman and gave a grunt of surprise. “It’s him,” he squealed. “That rotter Champlon.”
At that my aunt came scurrying forward and when she recognized Champlon such was her surprise that for a moment I thought she was going to faint. But she pulled herself together and glared at him, trembling slightly. Suddenly, she slapped him.
“That’s what you get for running out on me,” she hissed. “You rat!”
Champlon blinked in surprise, staring at Aunt Hilda without recognition. Aunt Hilda’s lower lip had begun to tremble at his lack of reaction. She stared at him unblinking, but his gaze back at her was dull.
“Gaston! It’s me!”
He was blank.
“Gaston. It’s Hilda!” her voice broke. “Speak to me. Please.”
By now the bodyguards were roping Champlon’s hands together, tying them so tight that the rope bit into his flesh.
The Maharajah held out his hand to Waldo, his moon face beaming:
“You saved my life.”
“No.” Waldo blushed. He was glowing with pride. “I mean … um … yes, but it was only—”
“A stroke of luck,” I interrupted, a bit meanly. But I could see how this would go to Waldo’s head. He must have blasted the gun out of Champlon’s hand! “Your Highness, that man is a sharpshooter. My friend has only just begun—”
“Hey,” Waldo bridled. “I aimed.”
“You are hero,” the Maharajah said, ignoring our tiff. He had a fluting sing-song voice, which rose over our squabble, like one of his own bulbuls. “It is because you are American, the New World they call it, no?”
Waldo nodded proudly. “It is a mighty fine country,” he said.
The Maharajah turned now to his dewan. But Aunt Hilda had intercepted the minister and was talking frantically to the king.
“I know this man, Your Highness,” Aunt Hilda blurted to the Maharajah. She towered over him, but despite his tiny, plump frame the boy king had dignity. “Something is wrong.”
“How can this be?”
“He is a Frenchman. A famous explorer.”
“He wanted to kill me.”
“There must be some mistake.”
“He will be execute at dawn tomorrow. Sonali will take care of him.”
“How do you mean?”
“She will crush him.” He brought one plump hand down, slap bang on the other. “His head will be crushed under her feet.”
I had a sudden, sickening vision of Champlon’s head disappearing under the elephant’s massive, trampling feet.
“No!” my aunt and father wailed in unison.
“Silence.” The bald Dewan held up his hand imperiously. “It is the law of the land.”
For a moment a hush fell on the scene, above which could only be heard the snorting of the elephants and the soft shushing and crackling around us. We could not let Champlon die in India, whatever he had done, so many miles away from his home.
“Your Majesty.” My aunt’s gruff voice rose in desperate appeal. “Of course you must execute anyone who dares to threaten you. But something is wrong. I know it. Something is not right with this man …
“Look at him. Your Highness, he looks like a sleepwalker.”
“A what?”
“He is not himself. I know it.”
She had piqued the Maharajah’s attention. He went up to Champlon and gazed at him closely and the Frenchman gazed back dully, as if nothing unusual was happening. As if he was at The Travelers, that famous gentleman’s club in Pall Mall.
The Maharajah said, “This is strange.” He said something in his own language—which I have learned is called Gujarati—to the guards who were holding Champlon. They seemed to protest but a sharp word from the Dewan was enough to silence them and they undid the ropes that bound the Frenchman, but remained close by his side. The Maharajah held out his hand and grasped Champlon’s in a kind of handshake. “I have seen this in my village once, long time ago. Before I was Maharajah.”
Champlon scarcely seemed to notice the king taking his hand. His bony fingers limply in the Maharajah’s plump palm and now the boy king did something very strange. He began to stroke the Frenchman’s hand, pudgy fingers flickering.
“This is fakir’s work. I have seen it in the village,” the Maharajah declared. He began to gabble excitedly to his dewan and the adviser translated:
“The Maharajah says that this man has been hypnotized. He has been put into a trance. The Maharajah believes he is doing another man’s bidding.
“The man is like a puppet on a string. Dancing to his master’s tune. The Maharajah saw this as a boy, a man driven out of his wits by a fakir.”
Aunt Hilda exclaimed angrily but the Dewan held up his hand to silence her.
“Do not despair. The Maharajah, he has learned it from his parents. How to bring someone out of a trance.”
The word “trance” gave me a jolt. Indeed there was something trance-like, about the Frenchman’s strange behavior. His lolling, vacant eyes, his drooping mouth. Not at all the energetic and impatient explorer, the Gaston Champlon we knew so well.
“It is a very powerful fakir who has done this,” the Dewan continued.
In the tangle of creepers above us I had a fleeting glimpse of a pair of yellow eyes. A wrinkled face. Almost human, but so old and ugly it couldn’t be. A powerful smell of evil surged down to me and the tiger scratch on my face throbbed, with a sudden fierce pang. The monkey, I gasped. I looked up into the screaming maroon and green of the wild almond but the thing was gone. Only the caw of the racket-tailed drongo, the whir of lizard and shrike. How could I spot one evil creature here in the midst of this flurry of animal life? I wasn’t sure if, after all, it was only an illusion.
All the while, the Maharajah held Champlon’s hand. The Frenchman drooped, his body limp, his eyes blank. Then he dropped the hand and the Frenchman gave a great cough. His head moved from side to side, his eyes darting wildly. In a heartbeat Champlon changed. Animated and anxious, he pulled away from the startled guards and trotted over to Aunt Hilda and blurted, “Madame, we must hurry. The Randolph Hotel. It is a bad business to be zo late.”
“Gaston,” Aunt Hilda gasped and the word struck him like a whiplash. He stopped short, gazing around in astonishment.
“Hyde Park?” my aunt replied tartly. “In the jungle, of course.”
“Ze monkey,” Champlon murmured. “Where is ze monkey gone?”