Golden Afternoon by M. M. Kaye

that.’
    There is no answer to that one: unless you choose to visit the great fort at Gwalior and see for yourself how easy it would have been for a single accomplice (or even half-a-dozen!) to lie hidden in one of those huge, half-ruined buildings, wait for the moon to rise, and, when the self-styled astrologer appeared with the blindfolded Maharajah in tow, follow the two into that final building, wait for them to emerge from the hidden stairway and — when only one, the panic-stricken ruler — rushed out and fled screaming into the night, cover up the entrance before making his, or her or their own escape.
    There is also, of course, another explanation. That His Highness Sir Madhav Rao Scindia of Gwalior was pulling my beloved parent’s leg. He was, let’s face it, well known for his fondness for practical jokes, and also for being no ordinary character. In his younger days he had managed to blarney himself into accompanying the British Expeditionary Force which, in the opening years of the twentieth century, was sent to China to help put down the Boxer Rising (which was probably the reason for his fondness for my father, since Tacklow, too, as a Captain in the 21st Punjabis, had seen service in North China at that time).
    Nevertheless, Tacklow himself was firmly convinced that in this case Scindia had spoken nothing but the truth. This was mainly because H. H. admitted that he had always been haunted by the conviction that if only he had kept his nerve and not given way to panic — if only he had had just a
little
more courage — he would have realized that the footsteps that he thought he heard following him were only echoes, and gone on to find that the fabulous hoard of gold and jewels was no legend, but his for the taking. It was, he insisted, the one great regret that he would take with him to the grave.
    If he
had
invented the whole story, said Tacklow (who knew him well), then he had certainly ended by persuading himself that it was all true.
    I like to believe that too. India has always been in the habit of salting away gold and jewels in the earth, and I have myself seen a fabulous hoard of gold coins, hidden centuries ago and unearthed by chance in another Rajputana state in the 1940s. In fact, the habit of burying treasurein times of war, or as an insurance against a rainy day, was so prevalent * that few Indian palaces or forts would be worthy of the name without a treasure trove having been hidden somewhere at some time under or in it. And what treasures they are! While at Gwalior we were taken to see the State Jewel House, which I had expected to be in some underground dungeon, but turned out to be a small, square, unpretentious and very modern-looking building with whitewashed walls and an armed guard standing outside the door.
    The guard, and the fact that the walls of the building looked to be a good six feet thick, while the windows were mere slits protected by solid slabs of glass and further reinforced by iron bars, gave it a forbidding look. But the interior of this modern Aladdin’s cave was, at first sight, a distinct anticlimax. It looked far more like a kitchen or a larder than a jewel house, for down the middle of it ran a long, plain wooden kitchen table, while against the whitewashed walls stood what appeared to be an unending line of kitchen dressers, with narrow shelves and row upon row of cheap brass hooks. But laid out on that table, propped on those shelves or hanging from those hooks, were some of the most incredible jewels you could possibly imagine, and I cannot begin to think what they must have been worth in that day — let alone in this one!
    Necklaces, rings and brooches, swords and sword-belts, nose-rings and bracelets, anklets and pendants, set with emeralds, rubies, sapphires and diamonds, turquoises, tourmalines, fire opals, amethysts and aquamarines, plus any other jewel you can think of; strings of enormous pearls, the size of pigeons’