Bengal Fire, page 14
The inspector’s chief problem this morning, as he sat sipping tea and brandy, clad only in his crimson dhoti, was to find a place in the puzzle for the Hindu in the purple turban he had found unconscious in Alipore. The Hindu, a minor official of the Maharajah of Jharnpur’s household, had been quickly revived by Inspector Prike. He seemed strangely unable to account for his predicament atop the palace. He did not remember being attacked and had no idea who had strangled him or carried him inside the dome. Neither could he explain how he came to be clutching a handful of blond hair— although Prike knew the answer to this one, in spite of the Hindu’s convenient lapse of memory.
Two other new pieces for the puzzle consisted of cablegrams which had been delivered that morning-one from Nouméa, which concerned Jacques Vrai; the second from Singapore, which seemed to concern Henry Kobayashi. As Inspector Prike mulled over the significance of the latest developments, he bathed and dressed as though he had all the time in the world. He sat down to a leisurely breakfast—beefsteak and kidney pie, since the cold weather had practically started—and was well into his third cup of tea and brandy when Deputy Inspector Robbins arrived with still another piece to be fitted into the puzzle.
“I just got a report from Jenkins on those Jumbo fountain pens,” Robbins announced. “Seems like there’s twenty-nine shops in Calcutta proper that sells that model, and six in Howrah. Five shops have sold one pen each this week, and one stall in the Municipal Bazaar sold three late Thursday afternoon.”
“Three?” Inspector Prike was instantly all attention. “To the same person?”
“That’s what the bazaar walla says. He’s a Mohammedan by the name of Susti. He says the same man bought all three pens.”
“Unusual, isn’t it, Robbins?” Prike drummed with his fingers on the table-cloth. Would the three fountain pens fit into his pattern of intrigue and sudden death, or would they have to be discarded? “What sort of man bought them, Robbins?”
“The bazaar walla couldn’t say. He didn’t seem extra bright. But he says he thinks he’d recognize the man if he saw him again.”
“Good. Then tell Jenkins to bring Mr. Susti here to my rooms tonight—say, at about eleven o’clock.”
“All right, inspector.”
“By the way, Robbins. Did you locate Dormer?”
“Well, no, inspector.” Robbins was crestfallen. He had expected to be able to reproach Prike over not finding Dormer at Alipore, but his usual song about the superiority of solid, practical methods over theory was thrown somewhat off key by the fact that Robbins himself had let Dormer slip through his fingers. “You see, I’d located Dormer’s address yesterday afternoon,” he explained, “but by dinner-time he’d cleared out. Moved without leaving forwarding instructions—which is a sure sign he’s guilty, as sure as there’s sixteen annas in a rupee. Why would an innocent man go changing his domicile sudden-like, just after a murder’s been committed?”
“They can’t all be guilty, Robbins,” said Prike. “Last night you were ready to hang Lee Marvin. What do you suppose Evelyn Branch was doing at the Alipore Palace, Robbins?”
“You sure she was there, inspector?”
“There was no name engraved on that strand of blond hair I found, Robbins, but in view of the fact that Mrs. Pereira’s durwan reports her departure shortly after one o’clock this morning, I think it safe to assume that the hair belongs to Miss Branch. Has she returned to Guru’s Lane?”
“Not up to an hour ago. Maybe she’s sweet on this Colonel Linnet.”
“I’d rather think, from the uprooted hair, that she was detained against her will. I wonder if Dormer—?”
“You think Dormer carried her off?”
“Somebody was bleeding profusely on that marble stairway to the roof, and since Dormer was cut by his fall through the skylight, he could easily have been the one. By the way, Robbins, did you question Dormer on the subject of Hoyt’s bachelor dinner?”
“I did.”
“Did he tell you anything about Hoyt, before he disappeared, being called away by someone who waited at the head of the stairs in Peliti’s Restaurant?”
“He did. And it seems that when Hoyt came back he acted quite upset. He gave a package to Marvin.”
“Could Dormer identify the man at the stairs?”
“He says he couldn’t see very well, but the man looked like Jacques Vrai. Marvin thinks it was Vrai.”
“Good,” Prike said. “Because in ten minutes I’m running up to Chandernagore to talk to Monsieur Vrai in the light of a cable I just received from the prefect of police at Nouméa, New Caledonia. To the extent of four closely packed telegraph forms, the prefect is highly honored to be of service, and furnishes lengthy details on the rather surprising career of one Jean George Jules Honoré Marie Vorais, who undoubtedly, under the alias of Jacques Vrai, is the man to whom I refer. I am advised that Vorais, dit Vrai, is wanted in New Caledonia, and if he is at present in Calcutta, he is to be detained until extradition can be arranged.”
“Shall I go with you to Chandernagore, inspector?”
“No,” said Prike, “because I have another cablegram here, from the Straits police. It seems that the cargo of machine guns and ammunition which was seized in Singapore Wednesday, on a Japanese freighter, was destined for Calcutta. Moreover, they were consigned to Harrison J. Hoyt. Inasmuch as the arms were packed in cases labeled cotton goods, I think you might drop around and pick up Henry Kobayashi. It might serve a double purpose if you brought him to Chandernagore. Meet me at the Hotel Dupleix. I’ll question him there.”
“All right, inspector.”
“And another thing, Robbins. On your way, I wish you’d stop at the Municipal Bazaar and buy me three of those Jumbo fountain pens.”
Chapter Nineteen
ONE MESS AFTER ANOTHER
As Dormer’s ghari rumbled into the dawn, north of Harrison Road, Evelyn Branch found it difficult to keep from nodding. Dormer had said nothing for twenty minutes, and the girl’s fear and excitement were gradually giving way to fatigue. When the vehicle left the broad avenues which, for military reasons, allow the southwestern quarters of Calcutta breathing space, she forced herself to open her eyes. Through the latticed doors of the carriage she saw that she was moving through the narrow, tortuous lanes of the purely native parts of town. She could make out the dim façades of tightly shuttered houses, three-storied homes of purdah families, intricately carved wooden arches, shop fronts with overhanging second stories, stone scrolls, stucco ornaments in high relief. Then lopsided mud huts slipped by, whole lines of them, with crooked, bulging tile roofs that seemed to be dripping off the eaves like molasses; and narrow pavements littered with trash and spattered with the crimson juice of areca nut; half-naked, homeless men, sleeping against leaning walls.
After what seemed an interminable ride, the ghari stopped.
“Get out!” Dormer ordered.
The girl squared her shoulders. If this man was a murderer—
“Get out!” Dormer repeated.
“Listen, Mr. Dormer,” Evelyn began. She sparred for time. If this man was a murderer, there was nothing she could do about it, here, alone with him. She had a plan. “You say you need money. If you heard my bargain with Chitterji Rao, why don’t you come in on the deal with me. I’ll split with you.”
“I know you will,” said Dormer.
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
“Then why don’t you take me to Lee Marvin?”
“He hasn’t the Maharajah’s nao-ratna,” said Dormer.
“But he has. I’m sure he has. Even Chitterji Rao said Lee Marvin had the Bosa pearl.”
“Rot. Marvin came to see me only a few hours ago. He asked a dozen questions about the jewels. If he had them, why did he come to me?”
“I don’t know. Where are they, then?”
“For that information,” said Dormer. “you’re going to pay—and well.”
“You’re boasting,” said Evelyn. “You don’t know where the nao-ratna is. If you knew as much as you want me to believe, you’d take the whole reward for yourself. Why are you offering to share with me?”
“Because I—prefer to remain in the background,” said Dormer with his stock sneer. “Prike is a hard man to fool.”
“And how am I supposed to fool him?”
“You won’t. All you can hope for is to twine your pretty fingers around the Maharajah’s beads before Prike gets around to it. After all, the inspector is busy these days.”
“And where are these—beads?”
“Right back where they were before Hoyt got his hands on them. At Chandernagore.”
“Chandernagore?”
“Yes. And in getting them you’ll probably meet a charming lady who should be of great interest to you— a Mademoiselle Antoinette Vrai.”
Evelyn’s eyes widened. “You mean Harry Hoyt’s—! No! No, I don’t want to meet her!”
“You’ll have an hour or two to get used to the idea,” said Dormer. “I want to make a few arrangements before we start. Get out, now!”
Evelyn got out of the ghari with alacrity. She was piloted down a narrow, odorous alley, at the end of which was a wooden door in a mud wall. Without another word, Dormer opened the door, pushed her through, slammed it. She heard the key turning in the lock outside before she began to kick and pommel the wooden panels.
“Mr. Dormer! You don’t have to lock me in. Wait, Mr. Dormer.”
She pounded and shouted for five minutes; then she began to laugh at herself. She certainly had a genius for picking the wrong people, for getting herself into one mess after another.
She took a cigarette lighter from her bag, snapped a flame from it, looked about her new prison. She was in a small room, not larger than ten by ten, with a single small window, high in one wall. The walls and floor were brushed with mud. The furniture consisted of a chipped enamel bowl and pitcher and some shaving things on a wooden box, a kerosene lamp on the floor, and a cot, consisting of leather strips stretched across a wooden frame, in one corner. There was a battered pasteboard suitcase under the cot. Evelyn tried to open it, but found it locked. She sat down wearily on the edge of the cot, closed her eyes. Before she found the strength to open them again, she had fallen asleep.
She was awakened by the hot, moist impact of a shaft of sunshine streaming in through the little window. She was surprised to find she had slept sitting on the crude cot, leaning against the wall. Her bewilderment on awakening changed swiftly to dread when she realized where she was. She sprang up—and grimaced at the pain and stiffness of her joints. She tried the door; it was still locked. She discovered that by standing on tiptoe she could see out the window.
The window looked out upon a compound, swarming with men. Brilliant, multi-colored turbans moved in a shifting mosaic of red and green and saffron. Boards wagged as brown hands gesticulated. The morning hummed with the confused din of a dozen dialects and the clink of money—copper pice, nickel annas, silver rupees. At first Evelyn thought she was looking at some sort of bazaar. Gradually it dawned upon her that she was in a gambling-establishment. Corpulent Bengalis, crowded about six lumps of sugar, were betting on which lump a fly would first settle upon. A group of squat, smug Marwaris, their tightly wound pugarees bobbing like so many flat, thick-brimmed derbies in pastel shades of pink, blue, and yellow, were gathered around a tin spout that terminated a peculiar section of slanting roof and gutters made of hammered-out petrol tins. The Marwaris looked anxiously at the sky, watching for scurrying scraps of clouds, while a tall, one-eyed Kashmiri droned a continuous and unintelligible announcement. In the background stood two olive-skinned Afghan money-lenders—huge scowling, bobbed-haired men with sleeveless jackets of black velvet and long clubs with which to collect their exorbitant interest.
Evelyn watched for several minutes, fascinated by the color and movement, before she realized that here was a contact with the outside world. She had only to shout for the police, and she would no longer be a prisoner. She drew a deep breath—but she did not shout.
After all, what had she to gain by shouting? Her freedom, of course. But didn’t she have more to gain by playing along with Dormer a while longer? What if he was a murderer? She wasn’t afraid of him now that the sun was shining and she could hear other voices. There was no denying the fact that she still had her heart set on digging up the Bosa pearl—of which Dormer apparently knew a great deal and he wouldn’t harm her as long as she continued to be useful to him.
Furthermore, if he was a murderer, she would have a better chance of bringing him to justice if she remained with him than if she put him on his guard by running off.
Evelyn moved away from the window and sat down on the crude bed. She opened her bag, cut the back off an old envelope with a nail file, hurriedly wrote a message. From a tiny vial of nail polish she poured a thread of coral liquid around the inside edge and folded the paper. The nail polish should seal it effectively; that was the way she stopped the runs in silk stockings. Then she wrote an address on the outside of the paper, took out a silver rupee, closed her bag, and returned to the window. Brandishing the money in one hand and the note in the other, she shouted;
“Will someone please come here?”
The Marwaris standing around the tin spout turned and looked at her in open-mouthed wonder. Evelyn called again. A gray-haired Oriental in a gold-embroidered pillbox cap of red velvet detached himself from the group. As he approached, Evelyn saw that he was cross-eyed.
“Hello,” he said, with one eye on the girl’s face and the other on the silver rupee. “I am speaking English. Good morning. Are you wishing to place wager? What game, please? Rain game is offering attractive odds now.” He glanced at the sky. “Offering twenty to one for rain in ten minutes, ten to one for rain in twenty minutes, five to one for rain in half an hour, four to one for—”
“I don’t want to bet,” interrupted Evelyn. “I’m just looking for someone to carry a message for me. Can you read?”
“Message?” echoed the cross-eyed Oriental. “Ah, yes, chit.” He took the rupee and the folded paper. “Yes, can read English. ‘Mister—Lee—Marvin— 19½ Theater— Road.’ Yes. All right. Chokra, idhar ao.”
He called a half-naked boy from the fly-and-sugar game, gave him the note and explained the address. Then he deposited Evelyn’s silver rupee in a leather bag from which he took out a four-anna coin to give the boy.
Evelyn was anxiously following the boy’s progress through the crowd when she heard the door open and close behind her. She turned abruptly from the window. Rufus Dormer came in with a brass pot full of buffalo milk.
“Here’s your breakfast,” he said.
Evelyn tasted the milk. It had a peculiar, sweet, rich flavor. She put it down after the first swallow.
“Afraid of being poisoned?” Dormer asked with mock politeness.
“Not hungry.” She wondered if he had seen her pass the note out the window.
Dormer picked up the brass pot, tilted it to his lips and drained it.
“Now give me your passport,” he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
“What do you want with my—?”
“Give it to me!” Dormer repeated. There was menace in his voice.
Evelyn opened her bag, handed Dormer the little red-backed document that proclaimed her an American citizen. Dormer took it, dragged the battered pasteboard suitcase from under the cot, unlocked it, tossed the passport in, locked it again.
“That’s just to make sure you won’t run away from me before we get back,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“To Chandernagore,” Dormer announced.
Chapter Twenty
DRAMA AT CHANDERNAGORE
When Inspector Prike entered the Hotel Dupleix at Chandernagore, the lobby was deserted, except for the fourth assistant administrateur and the sub-secretary to the municipal council, who were seated in red plush chairs at a marble-top table, sipping their noonday apéritif. An instant later, as Prike was bending over the desk examining the register, the room was populated with people who seemed to have materialized suddenly from nowhere. An Anamite waiter appeared in a doorway, over which was the sign Buvette. A dusky half-caste Tamil clerk elbowed Prike. Two giant bobbed-haired Pathans, with watchmen’s clubs, hovered in the background. A door behind the desk opened and Jacques Vrai, his tiny Mongoloid eyes smoldering sullenly in his scaly face, strode forward to snatch the register from Prike’s hands.
“No, monsieur!” he exclaimed, slamming the heavy book shut. “You have no right here. You are an English policier. Chandernagore is French.”
Prike nodded curtly. “Very well,” he said quietly, “I was merely glancing at the names of recent arrivals. However, since you object I’ll send for my friend, the commissaire. He has jurisdiction and perhaps he will find reason to exercise it.”
“Wait, monsieur.” As Prike started away, Jacques Vrai leaned across the desk and caught his sleeve. His desperate effort at a conciliatory smile resulted only in an unsightly display of yellow, horse-like teeth. “I ask pardon, monsieur. Since the death of my poor Antoinette’s fiancé, I am confused and agitated. What is it you wish, monsieur? We have no new guests.”
“And the lady in room 22?” Prike asked.
“Ah, yes, I had forgotten. She came this morning. An American mistress of school with gray hairs and spectacles. Do you wish to speak with her?”
“Not now,” said Prike. “I should like to speak to you first, Mr. Vrai.”
“But certainly. Shall we go into the bar? We will be more tranquil—”
The bar was a dark, shuttered room, with the combined odors of sour beer, stale tobacco smoke, and citronella arising from the stone floor. The silvering was peeling off the back of the cloudy mirror.
