Read Online Barbara Cleverly by The Palace Tiger - Free Book Online

what you are - you’re one of those thieving monkeys that break into guests’ rooms and steal their hairbrushes! Well, you left the window open, monkey!’
    Surprised, the boy looked sideways at the window and opened his mouth to make a rude reply, distraction enough for Joe to knock his hand away, grasp his wrist and with a quick heave, flip his slight frame over the bed, grabbing the gun from him as he rolled.
    ‘Get up, monkey, and sit down in that chair!’ Joe snapped.
    The boy picked himself up, straightened his turban and sat down, eyes fixed on the gun.
    ‘Never point a gun at someone unless you intend to kill him,’ said Joe, ‘even if, like this one, it is unloaded! And never pause to have a conversation with your victim. It shows you’re not serious. Anyone who needs to hold a gun to a feller’s head to make him listen is likely to bore his target to death rather than fill him full of lead.’
    The boy swallowed, glared at Joe and said haughtily, ‘As you are speaking to me at some length, though I would hardly call it a conversation, I assume that you have not been sent to murder me?’
    ‘Sent to murder you?’ Joe was stunned. ‘Who are you? And, perhaps more important, just what do you take me for?’
    ‘My name is Bahadur Singh. I am the son of Maharaja Udai Singh. The third son,’ he said with a pride that could not be concealed even by his obvious terror. ‘Bishan is dead and now Prithvi is dead. I am the next son. I think you have been sent to kill me.’
    ‘Why on earth should you think that?’ said Joe, putting the gun down on a small table by the door.
    ‘I searched your luggage and found the gun hidden. Who but a hired assassin would hide his gun?’
    ‘Is it a custom of yours to go through guests’ things?’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ said the boy, puzzled. ‘How else can I decide who I am going to like? Shall I tell you,’ he said, relaxing now that the gun had been put out of reach, his tone changing to one of confidence, ‘what Sir Hector Munro has in his smallest black bag?’
    ‘No!’
    ‘Well, then, what Mr Troop keeps in his shaving kit?’
    Joe was ashamed that his second ‘No!’ was a betraying split second slow.
    ‘And besides,’ the boy went on cheerfully, ‘you have the face of a killer.’
    Joe must have registered dismay at being so described because the boy hurried to add, ‘Oh, it’s a nice face. A very nice face but you look as though you are accustomed to fighting. Like Yashastilak.’
    ‘Yasha who? Who’s that?’ Joe felt he was beginning to lose the thread and the initiative in this exchange.
    ‘Yashastilak. My father’s favourite fighting elephant. He is old and ugly with many scars but he has won a hundred fights!’
    ‘Well, that’s something, I suppose,’ said Joe. He grinned, sat down on the bed and put his hands on his knees in an unthreatening posture. ‘And you’re not far wrong. I was a soldier, Bahadur, in the recent war in Europe. A piece of shrapnel - that’s the casing of a shell - sliced through my face
    here.’ He touched the unsightly scar which cut through his eyebrow and skewed the left side of his face. ‘And now I have to be careful not to scare the horses but that doesn’t make me a killer. I’ve killed men. But I’m no threat to boys who behave themselves. I’m here, if anything, to protect you. Sir George Jardine sent me and he asks to be remembered to you.’
    ‘Sir George! I have only met him once when he visited my father last year but I know he is my friend,’ said Bahadur. ‘I wish he would come again. He knows nearly as much about astronomy as I do and he taught me conjuring tricks.’
    ‘Ah, yes,’ said Joe drily, ‘he does that to us all!’
    ‘And he is very jolly!’ Bahadur went on with enthusiasm. ‘And full of mischief, my nanny says. He took a pot of treacle and a pot of honey to the top of the palace and poured them both out into the courtyard. He made me stand below and note what happened. The treacle won the race. It fell on to my turban! The purdah ladies in the