Inspector Ghote Caught in Meshes, page 8
“No, Inspector, you cannot cease your attempts.”
Ghote thought for a few seconds.
“Please,” he said at last, “I would like to know why.”
“Because orders are orders, man.”
“Sir, I am not Army officer.”
“I don’t care what you are, or who you are. You’re under my command now and you do what you’re bloody well told.”
“Sir, can I go to higher authority?”
“No, Inspector, you cannot. Understand this: there is no higher authority for you to go to. You’ve been entrusted with State secrets. Secrets no one under Prime Minister level has any right to know. So you keep them right under your hat. Now and for ever. Do you get that?”
“Yes, Colonel,” Ghote said.
It was an admission of defeat. What the colonel had said was, after all, perfectly true. In this world of darkness into which he had been plunged there were no lifelines.
“And you definitely wish me to continue to seek the professor’s confidence, sir?” he said bleakly into the telephone mouthpiece.
“I most certainly do, Inspector. I have to find out what the leakage point is at Trombay. Just remember that.”
“Yes, sir. But then, sir, may I tell the professor about the existence of the India First group? Sir, already he suspects his brother’s death is not simple dacoity. So I will never gain his trust if I continue to pretend the death in question was a straightforward matter, sir.”
There was a long pause at the other end. Ghote began to think he had lost the connection. But at last the colonel answered.
“Very well. You may tell him India First exists. But not one single word about us, do you understand? As far as Professor Gregory Strongbow is concerned there is no such thing as the Special Investigations Agency.”
“Yes, sir. And thank you.”
“You may tell him that you have been charged with his personal safety, Inspector. That’s so as to give you everything you need to stick close to him. And if you can’t learn about that conversation outside V.T. Station under those conditions, then you’ll be making a pretty poor show of things, Inspector.”
This time there was no mistaking that the phone had clicked dead. With a feeling of dull heaviness Ghote pushed open the sliding door of the dark booth.
Gregory Strongbow was alone in his suite when the inspector knocked. He came to the door, led Ghote through the curious ante-room devoted to housing a single heavy ironing-board for the use of the visitor’s bearer, and on into the sitting-room. This was a vast, airy chamber with a number of pieces of heavy furniture all grouped round a rather small wicker table placed in the exact centre of the big, somewhat threadbare Kashmir carpet. Dominating the whole was a tall decorated mirror fixed to the wall opposite the windows. As a looking-glass the mirror had disadvantages. The chief of them was that under the glass there had been ingeniously inserted a full-length coloured picture of George, King-Emperor of India. But large areas of tarnish also detracted not a little from the mirror’s usefulness.
The professor appeared to have got used to its looming presence and no longer paid it any attention. Ghote found himself constantly turning back to it.
But he made himself pay attention to business.
“Miss Brown?” he asked first. “Is she here in your suite?”
Shakuntala Brown had been causing him a good deal of anxiety. On the way up from his conversation with Colonel Mehta he had begun thinking about the close knowledge India First seemed to have of the professor’s whereabouts. And he had come to the conclusion at once that it was more than likely they had a spy close at hand. Shakuntala Brown filled the bill. He had had to admit that she was not the only possibility. Two others were clearly suspect. There was V. V. Dharmadhikar for one. He certainly seemed to be taking a very keen interest in all the professor did. And then there was Miss Mira Jehangir at the reception desk downstairs. There could hardly have been a less satisfactory encounter than his brush with her earlier on.
Nevertheless Shakuntala Brown remained the most likely candidate.
“Shakuntala?” Gregory Strongbow answered. “No, she isn’t here. She was. But she went out. She’ll be back though. Did you want her for something?”
“I would need to see her,” Ghote said. “I need to hear about the telephone call she took.”
“Yes, I guess you would. Have you any idea who that caller could have been?”
“Yes,” said Ghote, “I have.”
Gregory Strongbow looked startled.
“Already?” he said.
“There is something I ought to have told you before,” Ghote replied.
He saw the look of hope growing in the American’s face and quickly continued.
“I believe you already think there is more to your brother’s death than a simple killing. Well, I can tell you now that I think this also. Your brother was victim of a terrorist group, a group called India First.”
Gregory Strongbow frowned.
“A terrorist group?”
“What else?”
The American kept silent. Then he took a pace towards Ghote and looked down at him almost angrily.
“I’ll tell you who else,” he said. “By the Indian Government, or some outfit of theirs. Damn it, Trombay is an Indian Government affair, isn’t it? So if Hector was killed because he went there, it stands to reason he was put out of the way by Indian Government agents.”
“But it is not so,” Ghote almost shouted.
He felt a sense of outrage that anyone should make such suggestions about his country.
And the feeling must have communicated itself to the big American. At once his aggressive look softened. He put out a hand and vaguely waved Ghote down into one of the sprawling armchairs surrounding the pathetic little central wicker table, and then squatted on the edge of the next chair in the circle.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m not claiming that India is the only country in the world that would do a thing like that. Hell, if you’d asked me three days ago I’d have said India was one of the few countries that wouldn’t. But my brother is dead. I brought him over here and he’s dead. Look, I’m not saying that there aren’t guys working for the U.S. who wouldn’t kill someone to stop a security leak.”
“Please,” Ghote said, “I assure you in India it is not so. It must not be so. There are orders not to deal with things in that way. I can reveal that much to you. And kindly consider this: there is such an organisation as India First. It exists to make India seize an important place in the world. I assure you of this on authority I trust.”
“All right, all right,” Gregory Strongbow said.
A look of hurt was crinkling the lines round his eyes.
“Then if such an organisation exists,” Ghote argued, “is it not more likely that they killed your brother?”
Gregory Strongbow leapt to his feet.
“Okay,” he said, “I hand it to you. It is more likely. We’ll go on that—”
Someone knocked at the door.
For a moment Ghote and the professor looked at each other as if this was the first move in a concerted attack. Then the American smiled.
“Relax,” he said. “It’ll be Shakuntala.”
He went to the door and opened it. Shakuntala Brown was there.
Ghote looked at her with care. She had changed her sari since the afternoon. Indeed, she looked so fresh now that this was probably where she had been while he had been talking to Gregory Strongbow. The sari she was wearing now was silk, a deep red patterned with cream circle shapes. For a moment Ghote thought it would look well on his wife, but then he decided that it was a little too restrained to reflect her personality properly. But it suited this girl’s fair complexion.
“I think the inspector here wants to ask you a few questions,” the professor said to her.
She crossed the room and sat in a corner of one of the big chairs. Ghote went and sat next to her. Gregory Strongbow tactfully went over to a chair on the far side of the circle.
“It was you who took the telephone call for Professor Strongbow?” Ghote asked.
“Yes, it was me,” Shakuntala Brown said.
She spoke guardedly, with a hint of being anxious to say only the minimum necessary.
“How did that happen? That you took the call? Was it for you? Did the caller know Professor Strongbow had you as guide?”
“No, I was in here and the professor was out. I think he was down in the permit room.”
“I see. And what exactly was said?”
“Just that if Professor Strongbow wanted to know who killed his brother he should wait down by the Brabourne Stadium, on the Marine Drive side.”
“That only?”
“Yes. That was all.”
Ghote pounced.
“I thought there were instructions the professor should be alone? If that was not said, why did you leave him? You would have been useful. Perhaps his informant would not speak English.”
“They did say something about him having to be alone,” Shakuntala Brown answered in a sulky voice.
“Then why did you not tell? I asked carefully for exact particulars. Why did you say nothing of this?”
“I happened to forget that,” she said with rising sharpness.
“Miss Brown,” Ghote said, “what exactly is your position in this business? Who sent you to work for Professor Strongbow?”
“I am employed by the State Tourist Department.”
“But you are not Indian national?”
Her back straightened as if on a spring.
“How dare you say that? How do you know? Do you want to see my passport?”
Ghote blinked.
“All right,” Shakuntala Brown said, “I admit my father was born English. But he was an Indian citizen for five years before he died. And when he became one I became one.”
“I am sorry,” Ghote said.
He felt apologies had been called for. But he still had questions to put.
“Now,” he said, “would you kindly tell me if anything more was said by that telephone caller?”
Shakuntala Brown’s eyes ceased to flash. The wary look Ghote thought he had seen in them before returned.
“I have told you everything,” she replied.
“You said that once before. I proved that was wrong. Was there anything more?”
“Hey.”
It was Gregory Strongbow.
“Hey, listen, Inspector,” he said, “you’re questioning Shakuntala as if she was some sort of criminal. All she did was take the call.”
Inwardly Ghote could not refrain from cursing him. He wanted to do all he could for him, but if there were going to be protective, chivalrous interruptions of this sort the stock of goodwill he had for him would rapidly run out.
He turned to him now.
“Kindly understand,” he said, “that it is most necessary to establish full particulars. I was doing that only.”
He went back to Shakuntala Brown. But the interruption had given her time to reconsider.
“Inspector,” she said, leaning earnestly forward in the big chair, “believe me, I only want to help too. I genuinely forgot the bit about letting Professor Strongbow go to the appointment alone.”
“Very well,” Ghote said. “But please to remember it is important to tell everything.”
He decided to seize a chance and swung round to Gregory Strongbow again.
“Is that not so, Professor?” he said. “Is it not important to tell everything?”
He gave him a long look. From the momentary hardening of the blue eyes in the handsome face he knew his meaning had been taken. Shakuntala Brown had not been the only one to withhold information.
He waited with anxiety.
“Certainly,” Gregory Strongbow said coolly, “certainly it’s important to keep nothing back. Unless it happens to be a matter which has no concern with police inquiries.”
SIX
Early next morning Inspector Ghote hurried straight to the Queen’s Imperial Grand Hotel. The weather had improved with its usual abruptness. But he did not let himself linger to enjoy the freshness of the light breeze coming in from the sea and the sparkle of the first sun. He knew that, had anything gone wrong at the hotel during the night, he ought to have been informed. And he had posted men enough round about both outside and in. But nevertheless he realised he would not feel happy till he had seen Gregory Strongbow with his own eyes.
He felt a strong, quite irrational attachment to the tall American with the unacademically tough set to his jaw and the eyes with the tell-tale wrinkles of concern puckering the tanned skin. This man was in a way his only point of contact with reality in the different world he had so suddenly found himself in. Colonel Mehta was no use: he was too much from another world himself. And every other contact seemed barred by the terms of his orders.
On the shallow marble steps of the ornate pile of the hotel Ghote did allow himself to pause for an instant.
He needed just one second to overcome the ugly thought that it would be his duty for the next sixteen hours or more to watch Gregory Strongbow and wait for the one moment at which he might say what it was that he had learnt from his brother. And in exchange he would be feeding out half-truths about an investigation he was only pretending to control.
He ran into the hotel and made his way to the dining-room.
And there was the American, sitting equably opposite Shakuntala Brown at a big table spread with a heavy white cloth and covered with complicated silver cutlery. He looked utterly at ease. The very sight of him seemed to send Ghote’s anxieties sliding away off his back.
He went over.
“Good morning, Inspector,” Gregory Strongbow said, smiling. “It’s a better day. Have you had breakfast? Will you join us?”
He gestured at the laden table. In front of him two small greasy-looking eggs lay in the middle of a huge white plate surrounded by small and dark slivers of hard bacon. A large coffee cup stood to the right. Towards the centre of the table there was a toast rack containing sixteen small pieces of toast somehow suspiciously limp. Three pots for various sorts of marmalade lay beyond and to the left-hand side was an enormous silver cruet.
“I don’t exactly recommend the porridge,” Gregory Strongbow said. “There seemed to be lumps in it here and there.”
He smiled up at Ghote.
“In fact,” he said, “I don’t altogether recommend the breakfast at all. I have a feeling it’s a British legacy I ought to avoid.”
“Thank you,” Ghote said, smiling too now, “luckily perhaps I have already eaten—fried vegetables, pickle, crisp wheat cakes, tea.”
The professor looked thoughtful.
“I guess there must be a middle way,” he said. “Even if I have to make it just a cup of coffee like Shakuntala here.”
He looked across at Shakuntala Brown with a grin.
“Mind you,” he added, “I’m improving the situation bit by bit. The first morning they tried to bring me something called bed tea. I don’t like tea much any time, but to have to cope with it before I’d really woken up. Wow.”
But suddenly the smile left his face.
“What is it?” Shakuntala asked quickly.
Gregory Strongbow shook his head slowly from side to side.
“It’s nothing really. Just that I remembered joking over bed tea with Hector the morning he went off to Trombay. He told me he’d tipped his on to the floor.”
He sighed.
“It was somehow because of that, because of my attitude to that, we decided to go our different ways a bit,” he said.
“But you mustn’t let that worry you,” said Shakuntala. “You shouldn’t reproach yourself over what would have only been a tiny disagreement if your brother had lived. That’s attaching too much importance to just a few words. Really it is.”
She leant forward so earnestly that the American smiled.
“I guess you’re right at that,” he said. “It’s not that I should be worrying about. It’s squaring it with Hector for getting him into that trap at all.”
He swung round to Ghote.
“Inspector, what is happening? What kind of progress are you making?”
Ghote felt as if he had been slapped.
“We are doing everything possible,” he said sulkily. “But it is not just question of arresting a gangster with a tommy-gun. If it was that only, we would do it in no time whatsoever.”
Curiously, this hardly-concealed jibe at the America of films about Chicago seemed to mollify Gregory Strongbow. He leant back and took an immense swig of coffee. Ghote felt more than ever obliged to persist in his justifications.
“You must remember,” he said, “the man whose name we know in Poona and his associates would have fled their domiciles. This we now have confirmed. And it is bound to take time to track them down. We may have to wait for the advent of an informant. But be assured we are waiting and watching.”
The American began tackling some toast. It resisted his knife with rubbery stubbornness.
“I can appreciate all this,” he said. “But it doesn’t make it any easier for me. I have a duty to Hector. And I don’t feel I’m doing it by just sitting around all day.”
Shakuntala Brown, up till now sitting quietly sipping at her coffee, leant forward over the massed array of china.
“But there is no need for you to sit,” she said. “We can arrange some activity for you that will take your mind off this business.”
“I’m sorry,” Gregory Strongbow said, “but I don’t want my mind taken off this business.”
Shakuntala’s eagerness was unabated.
“But listen,” she said, “what could you do yourself to find out who killed your brother?”
The American shifted uneasily in his chair.
“I know, I know,” he said. “But all the same I must do something. I could go around with the inspector here. Keep my eyes open.”
“No,” said Ghote.
They looked at him.
“I regret, no,” he repeated. “Professor Strongbow has been seriously assaulted. It is most likely another attempt will be made. I cannot undertake his safety if he goes here and there about the country, even if he is with me.”
