Bengal Fire, page 10
“I think you’d better go home and get some sleep, Mr. Marvin,” said Prike.
“But those buttons, inspector!” Robbins was outraged.
Inspector Prike almost smiled as he turned back to his deputy.
“I admit, Robbins,” he said, “that Mr. Marvin’s actions during the past twenty-four hours have been highly unusual. He has strange, old-fashioned, romantic notions —that a man should always lie, even at great jeopardy to himself, to protect a lady, for instance. Otherwise I find him not devoid of intelligence, Robbins, and therefore I can’t believe he knew that Julius was dead inside this building. If he knew, he would have thrown away those buttons; he had plenty of opportunity while I was chasing him.”
“But somebody was inside this building, inspector. Somebody unlocked the door. If it wasn’t Marvin—”
“It wasn’t, Robbins.” Prike gave the deputy inspector a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Because I happen to know who it was. Good night, Mr. Marvin.”
While Robbins watched in open-mouthed disappointment, Marvin quietly voiced his gratitude and made a hasty departure. He had scarcely left when Babu Gundranesh Dutt pounced upon Inspector Prike with a wail of despair, his fat, brown hands clutching the inspector’s wrist in their perspiring grasp.
“Am greatly fearing, Inspector Sahib,” the Babu moaned, “that by procedure of elimination you will be attributing felonious murders to me.”
“Your conscience bothers you, Babu?” Prike asked.
“Quite contrariwise,” Gundranesh Dutt protested, wagging his big head. “Conscience is tranquil as new-born babe. However, having been last eye-witness to penultimate moments in life of Kurt Julius, am greatly fearing that cast-iron chain of circumstantial evidence may give false impression—”
“In that case, Babu,” interrupted Prike quietly, “perhaps you’d better come back to the thana with us.”
The Babu covered his face with his hands, then with a mighty sigh he lifted his head proudly.
“Inspector Sahib”—despite his heroic posture the Babu’s voice was still a wail—“will you kindly send message to Mrs. Dutt and Cousin Danilal relating that head of Dutt household is maintaining innocence, despite prospect of disgrace.”
Babu Gundranesh Dutt persisted in maintaining his innocence for the next hour, despite the fact that it was never really challenged by Inspector Prike. Actually, during the succeeding interview at the Bow Bazaar police station, Prike seemed curiously unconcerned with the death of Kurt Julius. His questioning of the Babu was occupied almost exclusively with the office routine of Harrison J. Hoyt.
“Tell me, Babu,” Prike asked, “how often has Chitterji Rao been calling at Mr. Hoyt’s office?”
“Only in past weeks have visits attained great frequency,” was the reply.
“You know, of course, the object of his visits?”
The Babu wagged his head evasively. “Am not afflicted with reprehensible habit of eavesdropping,” he said.
“But you do know of certain jewels belonging to the Maharajah of Jharnpur.”
“No,” the Babu answered, looking at his fat brown hands. Perspiration broke out afresh on his round face.
“You do not?” The inspector’s unswerving glance said, Liar.
“Not officially,” the Babu amended.
“But you have seen the gems?”
“From slight distance.”
“When did you see them last?”
“At evening-time. Before departing for bachelor banquet, my employer removed same from safe.”
“Did Chitterji Rao call at the office prior to this?”
“Yes. Approximately two hours prior.”
“And the Maharajah’s jewelry was in Hoyt’s safe while Chitterji Rao was in the office?”
“Quite presumably.”
“Then why didn’t Hoyt hand over the jewels to the Maharajah’s household officer?”
“Am unable to state, sar.”
“Was Hoyt buying these jewels from Chitterji Rao?”
“Am of contrary opinion, sar. Money was mentioned, sar—in small fragments of conversation unavoidably overheard—but same was being demanded by Mr. Hoyt, not from Mr. Hoyt.”
“Why?”
“Am unable to state, sar.”
“Would it be because Hoyt was seeking payment for recovering the jewels from a third party?”
“Quite presumably, sar.”
“Who was the third party?”
Gundranesh Dutt shrugged with despair at his own ignorance. He did not know why. Neither did he know the answers to the dozen other questions which Prike fired at him in rapid succession. How had Hoyt procured the nao-ratna? For what consideration had Hoyt undertaken to restore it to the Maharajah? Did Rufus Dormer know of the transaction? Did Dormer have any part in the loss of the nao-ratna? In its recovery? At last the Babu flung up his hands in hopeless bewilderment.
“Am quite completely uninformed,” he cried. “Regret exceedingly if somewhat inaccurate reply to previous question gave impression of habitual prevarication. Am telling truth exclusively, Inspector Sahib, for past fifteen minutes. However, am aware that iron chain of circumstantial evidence cannot be disregarded.”
Again Inspector Prike almost smiled. “You had better go home to Mrs. Dutt and Cousin Danilal,” he said.
“You are completely exonerating me, inspector Sahib?”
“Temporarily,” said Prike. “At least until tomorrow morning. Good night.”
The barrel-like contours of Gundranesh Dutt had scarcely disappeared through one doorway before Deputy Inspector Robbins entered through another.
“Going to call it a day, inspector?” he asked.
Inspector Prike was drumming thoughtfully on the desk with his fingertips. “You run along, Robbins,” he said, “I’m stopping on here until I get a report from the surgeon.”
Resignedly the deputy inspector lowered himself into a chair across from Prike. Officially he had been off duty since midnight, but he was not to be outdone by Prike even in the matter of going without sleep. When the inspector had been working on the Tollygunj Gymkhana murders neither he nor Robbins had gone to bed for fifty hours.
“I’ll stick it with you,” said Robbins. “I suppose you got this menagerie murder all figured out already.”
“The motive is simple enough,” Prike answered. “Julius was probably killed because he happened to sit next to Hoyt at the banquet that night; certainly because he saw something that he should not have. Our problem resolves itself into a simple process of elimination of Hoyt’s enemies. As to the method— Hello, that’s probably the surgeon now.”
The telephone rang. Prike lifted the receiver.
“Yes, doctor…. You did? … Quick work, doctor. I appreciate it…. Yes…. I see…. You shouldn’t be surprised, doctor. I’m not…. You’ll save the stomach for Dr. Chaudry, won’t you? … Just ship it over in the morning…. Cheer-ho, doctor.”
“Well?” Robbins leaned forward as Prike hung up.
“The surgeon is amazed,” said Prike, “to discover identical conditions in the interior of Mr. Julius as he found in Mr. Hoyt. Death was due to respiratory failure—”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Paralysis of the lungs, if you’d rather,” Prike continued, “and unusual dilatation of the heart—all without apparent cause.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Robbins.
Prike arose and buttoned his coat. “Coming along, Robbins?” he asked.
“Where to?”
“I’m going to pick up the man,” Prike announced, producing a manila envelope and holding it so Robbins could see the cigar butt inside, “who dropped this in Kurt Julius’s animal-house tonight.”
“And who might that be?” Robbins frowned into the envelope.
“Unless I have lost my flair for judging Trichinopoly cheroots,” said Prike, “this butt is the remains of a smoke I gave three hours ago to a man named Rufus Dormer.”
Chapter Fourteen
VANISHING JOURNALIST
Lee Marvin picked up a ghari near Barrackpore Bridge. The walk of nearly a mile through the warm night, between shadowy rows of peepul trees aglow with the pulsating light of fireflies, had done little to resolve the confusion of his thoughts. He was still badly shaken by having just been face to face with the second corpse that day. Moreover, despite Inspector Prike’s apparent disbelief of his actual guilt, he was becoming definitely more entangled in the sinister web which Harrison Hoyt had spun.
Each new turn of the ghari wheels, as they rattled down Cornwallis Street, seemed to bring fresh questions to Marvin’s mind. Why had Evelyn Branch flung one of Kurt Julius’s silver buttons at him as she left his flat? Where had she got it? From Julius himself? From George Linnet? From Hoyt, since the girl admitted seeing him the night of the bachelor dinner? Had the girl anticipated that the sight of the tiny carved button would send him scurrying off to Dumdum Road in time to be suspected of the murder of Julius? She could not know, of course, that he had picked up a similar button in Hoyt’s office the day before, but the tiger-head buttons of the dead animal buyer were well known in every bar in Calcutta. Should he have told Prike about the girl’s visit instead of again trying to protect her, after the antagonistic attitude she had taken? Should he confront Evelyn Branch and demand an explanation? Should he find George Linnet?
As the hoofbeats of the bony ghari horse echoed through the stillness of Bow Bazaar Street, Marvin was on the point of stopping at the police station to divulge a piece of information he had deliberately withheld from Deputy Inspector Robbins in Dumdum Road for the simple reason that Robbins had never asked him for it. On second thought he decided to keep the information to himself for a while longer—at least until he had determined its significance. He looked at his watch. One-thirty-five. He might still have time to act tonight. He leaned forward and gave the ghari-walla the address of Anglo-Bengal Times offices.
A sleepy chokidar roused himself and salaamed as Marvin got out of the ghari in the compound of the newspaper office. The tall redhead entered the building and paused a moment at the entrance to the composing-room, listening to the light brassy tinkle of linotype matrices dropping into place. Lights streamed from under a dozen green shades to glisten upon the bare brown backs of the native compositors setting type, letter by letter, in a language they did not understand. Seeing no European about, Marvin went upstairs to the editorial rooms.
A strange, almost tangible quiet pervaded the upper floor. The usual bustle of journalism was choked to a whisper by the inertia of ages, the whirl of Western enterprise reduced to a faint eddy in the unhurried flow of a civilization four thousand years old. In a bare, high-ceilinged office, two punkas, rotating feebly overhead, made no more impression on the damp, nocturnal heat than the twentieth-century presence of electric lights disturbed the somnolence of ancient India which hung heavily upon the atmosphere. Marvin saw a brown office boy, in dirty white dhoti and red turban twice as big as his head, drowsing against the copychute. He saw three Eurasian sub-editors seated at a long table, writing laboriously in longhand. He saw a fourth editing late Reuters despatches with scissors and paste-pot. He did not see Rufus Dormer.
Marvin looked about him. He knew that Dormer worked with the night staff on Mondays and Fridays, but saw no sign of him. If Dormer had gone home, Marvin would never be able to see him tonight, for none of his colleagues knew his address. He was vaguely suspected of living in the Mohammedan quarter somewhere north of Harrison Road, probably with a low-caste native woman, although none of his associates had ever taken the trouble to inquire. Dormer was simply not interesting to them socially. He was interesting professionally, despite his cynical lack of sympathy with the culture of his own race, because he had a brilliant mind, a clever pen, and because he received a ridiculously small salary—so small that the owners of the Anglo-Bengal Times despised him for accepting it.
Marvin had just concluded he had missed connections with Dormer when a voice from the shadows behind the sub-editors’ table droned, “Koi hai?”
The red-turbaned office-boy stirred himself to a state of comparative wakefulness, shuffled away from the copy-chute, yawned, pushed open a door, and vanished. Marvin leaped after him; he had recognized the voice.
In a suffocating cubicle, where his unhygienic personality could be kept from the sensitive eyes and nostrils of distinguished visitors to the editorial rooms, sat Rufus Dormer. He was handing a sheaf of copy to the office boy when Marvin entered. Dormer was surprised at first; then the stock sneer he reserved for his own people wrinkled his upper lip.
“Up pretty late for a bearer of the white man’s burden,” said Dormer. “What’s addling your massive intellect? Some new plan to help the lowly rayot live on two pounds a year?”
Marvin ignored the renegade journalist’s sarcastic greeting. Pressing both his moist palms against the edge of Dormer’s desk, he leaned far forward and, without further preliminaries, asked, “Dormer, what were you doing at Kurt Julius’s animal-house in Dumdum Road tonight?”
Dormer’s sneer persisted but it assumed a peculiar frozen quality.
“I wasn’t there,” he said. “If I were, it would probably have been to sell Kurt some rare skunks. I know several.”
“I wouldn’t be facetious, Dormer.”
Dormer laughed. “You’re not turning out to be an amateur detective, are you, Marvin?” he asked. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you doing enough for the glory of Western culture by robbing India of its mineral wealth?”
“You were in Dumdum Road tonight, Dormer.”
“I was not.”
“I saw you. You came out of Julius’s; place a little after midnight—in a great hurry.”
Rufus Dormer’s sneer straightened into a thin, grim line. He stood up. His black-bordered fingernails nervously combed his shaggy hair as he glowered silently at Marvin. Then a ghost of the sneer came back.
“If I were you, Marvin,” he said, “I wouldn’t boast about being in Dumdum Road tonight. Someone might think you killed Kurt Julius—because he knew you killed Hoyt.”
“How do you know Julius is dead?” Marvin’s voice was sharp, accusing.
Dormer’s small, glittering eyes fixed Marvin for a long instant before he replied.
“I saw the body,” he said. “That accounts for my haste in leaving, which you remarked a moment ago. I’m not fond of corpses.”
“No doubt you merely dropped in for a friendly call on the hyenas.”
“What difference can that possibly make to your superior Occidental intelligence?” Dormer’s restless fingers explored the sparseness of his moth-eaten mustache.
“I happen to be very much interested,” said Marvin.
“But my business with the late Mr. Julius happens to be none of yours.”
Marvin straightened up. “Very well, if you’d rather explain to the C.I.D.,” he announced, “I’ll be glad to tell Inspector Prike that I saw you in Dumdum Road. Until now, I’ve neglected to mention it.”
Abruptly Marvin spun on his heel and strode toward the door.
“Hold on, Marvin.” At Dormer’s words, Marvin stopped, but he did not turn around. “Are you a C.I.D. agent?”
“Of course not.” Slowly Marvin came back to Dormer’s desk.
“Then of course your consideration for me is purely altruistic,” said Dormer, dryly. “You’re acting purely out of pity for a renegade European who has lost caste with the dominant race, without even gaining the respect of the Hindus whom he admires.”
“My motives are purely selfish,” said Marvin. “You know very well that I’ve been mixed up with Hoyt— involuntarily. I happen to be in so deep that I’ve got to plow through to the other side, instead of backing out. What do you know about a nao-ratna belonging to the Maharajah of Jharnpur, that Hoyt—?” ‘
“So that’s it!” interrupted Dormer with a grin.
“What do you know about it?”
“Nothing. Only bazaar talk.”
“Where is the nao-ratna? Did Kurt Julius have it?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure.”
“That’s why you went to see Julius tonight, isn’t it?”
“It is not.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“That,” said Dormer, “is my privilege as a renegade white.”
“Are you going to tell me why you went to see Julius?”
“No.”
“You are,” said Marvin, “because I happen to be able to insist.”
The scrawny little journalist bristled. His lips twitched. He seemed on the point of parrying Marvin’s insistence with more sarcasm but something in the cool determination of the other’s stare stripped him of his usual insolence. With a conciliatory shrug, he said:
“I went to Julius for money. I needed five hundred rupees. Julius promised to take care of me when I saw him at the Grand Hotel after Prike left, but he got away from me in Corporation Street. When I found him again in Dumdum Road he was dead.”
“What was the money for?”
“A personal matter.”
“Why did you go to Julius?”
“Because Hoyt owed me the money and Julius had promised Hoyt a good deal more than that.”
Marvin lit a cigarette. “I see,” he said. “You’re carrying on Mr. Hoyt’s blackmail?”
“I needed five hundred rupees.”
“Badly?”
“Desperately.”
“Desperately enough—to kill a man?”
Dormer smiled pityingly. “Even as an amateur you’re not a very good detective, Marvin,” he said. “My credit rating in Calcutta may be less than zero, but at least my intelligence quotient is high enough to let me realize that Julius would be worth more to me alive than dead.”
Marvin shook his head. He was getting nowhere. Dormer argued logically enough, but that was a sign of mental agility, rather than honesty. Why should Dormer tell him the truth anyhow? Still— He looked out the small window which was the only means of ventilation in Dormer’s cubicle. Just below was the glow from the skylight in a wing of the composing-room that jutted out beyond the second story. Beyond, a sudden rain-squall was beating furiously upon the uneven tiled roof of a low outbuilding. Marvin whirled abruptly.
