Bombay Mail, page 15
“Any idea who the murderer is, Inspector?”
Inspector Prike poured himself a brandy peg.
“We’ve still better than four hundred miles between us and Bombay,” he said slowly. “Good night, Luke-Patson.”
“Good night, Inspector.”
Inspector Prike quaffed his brandy. The ceiling fans whirred through the clicking song of the rails. The special car was at last asleep—or at least in bed. The murder of the Maharajah of Zunjore and the transfer of Sir Anthony’s body to the luggage van had made room for several witnesses the Inspector felt he might want to question during the night. Lady Daniels occupied her usual compartment. In the three others, Prike had the upper berths made up, so that he was able to pair Luke-Patson with Captain Worthing, Edward J. Breeze with Pundit Garnath Chundra, and Doctor Lenoir with Xavier.
The other three material witnesses Inspector Prike had sent to separate compartments in the car ahead for the night. Beatrice Jones, because Lady Daniels refused to sleep under the same roof with her; Cuthbert “Cootie” Neal, the press photographer, because he was too drunk to do anything but bellow ribald songs in a raucous voice; Jack Hawley, because the Inspector was not yet ready to question him again. He was, however, anxious to talk to Xavier. He walked down the corridor to the compartment where the Eurasian had been put to bed to see if the patient was strong enough for the inquisition.
Xavier had begun to, recover consciousness a little more than an hour after Doctor Lenoir’s injection of antivenom. After putting his patient to bed in the private car, the doctor had gone back to his own compartment where, armed with a noosed cord and two forked sticks, he had enticed his wandering cobras back into their traveling-quarters in the Gladstone bag. When the train stopped at Itarsi, the doctor had returned to administer a second injection of serum and to spend the rest of the night with his patient.
The Inspector rapped lightly on the door of the compartment and Doctor Lenoir appeared instantly.
“How’s the patient, Doctor?” the Inspector asked.
“My serum has stopped the disintegration of the nerve centers,” the doctor declared in an undertone.
“Will he recover?”
“His heart action is improving. I think he will live.”
Inspector Prike pondered a moment.
“Have you told him this, Doctor?” he asked.
“I have told him nothing. He has just regained consciousness.”
“Then I may question him?”
Doctor Lenoir hesitated.
“If you do not remain too long with him,” he said after a pause.
Inspector Prike stepped inside the compartment. He studied Xavier’s face, which was a ghastly gray in the dim night light. Xavier’s fingers moved feebly over the counterpane. His dull eyes followed the Inspector’s movements. Prike stepped to the bed.
“Is your conscience clear, Mr. Xavier?” he asked suddenly.
Xavier’s fingers stopped moving.
“What?” he asked.
“Dr. Lenoir says you may die within the hour,” said Inspector Prike grimly. “Have you nothing to tell me?”
Xavier’s eyes rolled upward, then closed as though he wanted to shut out the recurring vision of gaping serpent jaws and extended fangs.
“No, nothing,” he mumbled.
“Why did you write me concerning Captain Worthing and Madame Smeganoff?” Inspector Prike demanded.
Xavier opened his eyes. His voice had a hollow quality as he stammered weakly, “I—I wanted to mislead you, Inspector. I was— I wanted to protect a friend.”
Inspector Prike leaned forward almost eagerly. He wondered if Xavier really believed that he was dying. He read no clue in the stricken man’s eyes.
“Then a friend of yours killed Sir Anthony Daniels?”
The Eurasian struggled for breath to reply. Either he believed himself on his deathbed or he was an excellent actor.
“It is strange,” he gasped, “that my Hindu blood … which I have tried to hide all my life … should dominate me now. If I am dying … my Karma must not be burdened … by falsehood.”
“Who killed Sir Anthony?” snapped Prike.
Xavier tried to raise himself on one elbow. The effort exhausted him. He closed his eyes as he breathed the words: “John Hawley.”
He dropped back weakly on his pillow. Doctor Lenoir, who had been listening open-mouthed, stepped forward to feel his pulse. Inspector Prike stared at him for a full minute as though he hoped the man’s secret thoughts and meditations would suddenly reveal themselves. Then, without a word, he turned and left the compartment.
Closing the door behind him, the Inspector paused a moment in the corridor. His photographic mind was rehearsing line for line, inflection by inflection, the statements Xavier had just made. That they were significant, Prike was certain. Just how they were significant he was not yet sure. He was not prepared at this moment to accept them at their face value. He would file them in the neatly methodical recesses of his memory for later examination. In the meantime there was further information to be sought from Pundit Garnath Chundra in the light of recent telegrams from Calcutta.
Prike took a few steps down the corridor, knocked on the door of the second compartment. The door was opened almost instantly by Edward J. Breeze in delicate pink silk pajamas.
“What’s up, Inspector?” he asked, his eyes squinting without their spectacles. “You want me?”
Inspector Prike shook his bald head.
“I must speak to the Pundit,” he said.
Pundit Garnath Chundra slid down from the upper berth and accompanied the Inspector down the corridor to the dining-saloon.
“Pundit-ji,” said Inspector Prike, when the two men had taken seats on opposite sides of the table, “I have a telegram from Calcutta, saying that a witness has turned up who recognized you as the man in a loincloth seen running across Government House compound before the explosion of the bomb there yesterday morning. What about it?”
“The witness speaks the truth, Inspector Sahib,” said the Pundit calmly. “It was I.”
“That’s an incriminating admission, Pundit-ji.”
“Not necessarily, Inspector Sahib. I did not place the bomb.”
“What were you doing at Government House?”
“I was amusing myself, Inspector Sahib. I was delivering a message to His Excellency the Governor.”
“A bomb?”
“A card. In my youth I acquired a certain dexterity of wrist and fingers, whereby I could make a stiff card travel through the air with unerring accuracy. It pleased me to deliver my message to the Governor by tossing a card through an open window to the Governor’s desk. On the card I had written the words: ‘Do not exult over your triumph. Exultation is premature.’ ”
“Referring to the Governor’s escape?”
“Referring to the Governor’s first success in repressing the friends of Liberty in Bengal. Liberty will triumph in the end, Inspector Sahib.”
“Do you expect me to believe that story, Pundit-ji?”
“It matters little what you believe. Truth is absolute.”
“And why do you say you did not place the bomb?”
“Because another placed it, Inspector Sahib. The police are efficient. They have already arrested him. It is he who told them I was seen running. He saw me. He hoped others had seen me. That is the way of a coward, seeking safety at another’s expense. And cowards place bombs. Am I right, Inspector Sahib?”
“Failing to kill His Excellency yesterday morning,” pursued Prike, ignoring the Brahmin’s reasoning, “you killed him on the train during the night. You had cause to believe the Maharajah of Zunjore saw you. To keep the Maharajah from speaking, you killed him too.”
“Why do you say that, Inspector Sahib?”
“Because of this.”
Prike produced the square of yellow paper on which was written in Hindi script the words: Silence—or death.
Pundit Garnath studied the paper for a moment. Then he raised his eyes and said, “A Brahmin did not write this.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it was written by someone not perfectly familiar with our language. The letters are not well formed. See—this one. And this one. It appears to have been written by a foreigner who would have you believe it was done by a Hindu.”
“Or by a Hindu, Pundit-ji, who would have me believe it was done by a foreigner.”
Pundit Garnath shrugged his bare shoulders.
“As you will, Inspector Sahib.”
Prike put the square, of paper into his bulging wallet. He opened his mouth to say something, but did not speak. The hot night suddenly vibrated with a prolonged shriek of the locomotive whistle. The train shook with the grinding of brakes. Prike got to his feet. The whistle persisted ominously. The Bombay Mail stopped with a jerk and a groan.
Prike put his head out the window. They were far from a station. Dark hills were silhouetted against the glow of the setting moon. The train had stopped on a curve. The headlight of the locomotive was in full view of the private car. Someone was getting out of the cab, running down the tracks toward a huge bonfire which was licking at the darkness with long tongues of flame, only a hundred feet in front of the locomotive. The whistle hooted again and again.
Chapter Twenty-One: SNAKE CHARMER TAMES GIRL
The lugubrious hooting of the locomotive whistle roused Jack Hawley from his berth. He had not been asleep. How could he sleep with handcuffs on his wrists and the ignominious loss of the rubies on his mind? Inspector Prike had locked on the handcuffs “to keep you from the temptation of wandering about over the top of the train.” Hawley didn’t mind those so much. But the loss of the rubies, capped by the disappearance of the ungrateful thief whom he had saved from death by exposing himself to cobra bite, had been too much for him. He lay all evening in a feverish stupor.
At the sudden grinding of brakes, he sat up, listening, wondering. The train had hardly stopped when there was a rapping on the door of his compartment.
“Hawley!” called a thick voice. “Hawley! Open up!”
Hawley got up.
“The door’s latched on the outside,” he said.
A second later the door swung open. Cootie Neal was standing outside, his camera slung over his shoulder.
“Come on,” said the press photographer. “Make it snappy.”
“What—?”
“Move, dammit!” Neal ordered. “We ain’t got much time.”
He seized Hawley’s arm, hurried him along the side of the car. Hawley barely caught sight of the bonfire flaming in front of the stalled locomotive when Neal pushed him into another compartment, closed the door. The dim night light was burning inside. Neal snapped it out—just after Hawley had caught sight of Beatrice Jones’s blond head.
“Here he is,” chuckled Neal. “I told you it’d work.”
“What’s happening?” asked Hawley. “What’s that fire for? Is there a washout or something?”
“Washout, hell!” snorted Neal. “That’s my bonfire.”
“Yours?” Hawley held back, new apprehension chilling his spine with tingling fingers. “So she’s got you in on this deal, too, has she? By some miracle I didn’t die in that cobra den she sent me to this afternoon, so she got you to finish me off.”
“Sit down,” said Neal. “You’re all wrong. We’ll tell you about it. Won’t we, Sonia?”
Beatrice Jones said nothing. From outside came sounds of confusion. Men were scattering the bonfire on the line. Passengers were getting out. Scraps of excited phrases came to Hawley’s ears: “ridge out… wreck … hold-up—”
“Listen; Hawley,” continued Neal. “I just offered Madame Smeganoff here two thousand rupees for her exclusive story with exclusive pictures. You know—‘Beautiful Russian Spy Bares All. Men Killed for Me, Says Golden-Haired Smeganoff—with photos in evenin’ gown, nightgown, bathin’suit—”
“Air you taking my rubies baick to Rah-shya with you, Madame Smeganoff?” Hawley interrupted, aping the accent he had heard Beatrice Jones use in the restaurant car.
“My name is not Smeganoff,” Beatrice Jones protested.
“Shut up,” said Neal. “Of course it’s Smeganoff. All right, I offer her two thousand dibs for the story. She says she won’t do nothin’ without talkin’ to you first—”
“To me? Why me? What more does she want from me?”
“Shut up and let me finish,” said Neal. The Bombay Mail was moving again, crawling slowly over the scattered, glowing embers of the bonfire, cautiously feeling its way over possibly loosened rails. “All right. She wants to see Hawley first. That’s okay, only I want the thing settled and signed tonight, so there won’t be anybody else tryin’ to horn in on my exclusive story at Bombay tomorrow. How am I going to get Hawley and Smeganoff together, with old man Prike keepin’ Hawley away with cuffs on? An idea. Neal always gets ideas. I got a pal in Khandwa. He’s correspondent of Associated News and Photos. I sends him a telegram in pig-Latin: ‘ildbuay irefay rackstay’ and so on, givin’ full instructions on how and where to stop the Bombay Mail. All in pig-Latin—you know, like you used to talk to the kids in school. The telegrapher thinks it’s in Canarese or Pushty or what have you, and sends it through as is. It all happens like I figured. The train stops with so much excitement that I can sneak Hawley into Smeganoff’s compartment without gettin’ caught—”
“You mean you stopped the Bombay Mail just for a newspaper story?”
“Say, I’d stop the sun goin’ around the earth or vice versa for this story,” said Neal. “And what a story. It’s all there—Love, youth, beauty, intrigue, murder, royalty, money—”
Hawley smiled sarcastically at Beatrice Jones.
“Meester Xavierr ees an awld frand, Madame Smeganoff,” he mocked.
“Please don’t,” pleaded Beatrice Jones in a low voice. “I know you’re suspicious of me. I, know you think I took your rubies. I realize I hardly know you—and yet you’re the only person on the train I feel I can talk to. I wanted to tell you the story first. May I?”
Hawley did not reply.
“Don’t mind me, folks,” said Neal, taking a flask from his pocket. Despite Hawley’s silence, the girl began her story:
“First of all, I’m not Russian. I’m really Canadian. Beatrice Jones is my right name. But I wanted to be an opera singer. Can you imagine an opera singer getting anywhere with a name like Jones? It’s—well, it’s not operatic enough.”
“So you took the name of Smeganoff?”
“Several years ago in Paris,” said Beatrice Jones, “I fell in with a group of refugees who once sang at the Russian Imperial Opera. They helped me get odd jobs singing in little cabarets. I learned Russian songs, the Russian operas —Pique Dame, Boris Godounov, Sadko. I called myself Smeganoff and developed a terrific Russian accent when I talked English.”
“Paris is a long way from Calcutta,” Hawley interrupted, still incredulous. The girl ignored the interruption.
“One day one of my refugee friends told me of a Russian opera company—all refugees—that was being formed in Vladivostok to tour the Orient. Together we scraped up enough money to get to Vladivostok. I sang small parts with the company—which went broke in Singapore, leaving us stranded.”
“Still a thousand miles from Calcutta.”
“Well, I met Mr. Xavier in Singapore. He told me he was a theatrical agent, and said he had a proposition for me in India.”
“So he brought you to Calcutta!”
The girl regarded Hawley stonily. “He brought me nowhere. I went to Calcutta alone and met him there by appointment. But his proposition had nothing to do with music. I had to turn it down. I was broke, so I began selling my clothes and a few rings I owned. I had to eat. Then I met Captain Worthing—”
“Who fe?l in love with you?”
“Well, he wanted to marry me. I told him I didn’t love him. He said he’d give me twenty-four hours to think it over—but he didn’t come back.”
“Had a change of heart?”
“Change of mind, I think. That was when the gossip started that I was a Russian spy, using my wiles to coax secrets from British army officers. The Captain, of course, couldn’t afford to compromise his career.”
“And you didn’t tell him you were Canadian?”
“Naturally not. In my ignorance I hadn’t realized that Russians in India are looked upon with suspicion. I didn’t know anything about the Northwest Frontier and Russian activities in Afghanistan. But I did know that suddenly changing my name and nationality would make me seem only more Suspicious. Anyhow, I didn’t want to marry Captain Worthing.”
“So?” Hawley’s incredulity was beginning to disappear.
“Well, I felt rather badly about the Captain getting in a jam on my account, so I decided to leave the country as quickly as possible. I didn’t have any money. I’d already sold nearly all my belongings to meet current expenses. The only way out, as far as I could see, was to get deported.”
“Deported?”
“Yes. I wrote an anonymous letter to the Governor, saying that a Canadian girl named Beatrice Jones was plying her trade in Karaiya Road and ought to be repatriated for the good of white prestige in the East.”
“Wasn’t that—debasing yourself?”
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
“Not particularly—since it wasn’t true. It was the only way I could see of helping the Captain out of a situation that I’d unwittingly got him into.”
“Then you’re being deported?”
The girl laughed joylessly.
“No,” she said. “The day I mailed the letter, Captain Worthing finally came to see me. He was very embarrassed and apologetic. He brought me a railway pass and begged me to leave Calcutta.”
“Nice, tender, loving gesture from a man who wanted to marry you,” said Hawley.
“Oh, I don’t blame him,” said the girl. “I understand. I seemed to be a menace to his career. A person’s career mustn’t be menaced, Jack Hawley—”
