Bengal Fire, page 17
Marvin stooped, picked up the note again. Chandernagore. Vrai. The man at the head of the stairs at Peliti’s had certainly looked like Jacques Vrai. What if Evelyn had tracked the Bosa pearl to Vrai in Chandernagore, had got into a jam, and was sincerely in need of Marvin’s help? The note had a makeshift appearance, all right-sealed with something that smelled of nail polish—as though it had been secretly written and smuggled out under suspicious eyes. Probably the girl had intended it that way. Probably she hoped to appeal to what she thought was his sentimental nature. Well, he wasn’t sentimental. He crumpled the note and went on shaving.
By mid-morning he was on his way to Chandernagore.
Marvin headed directly for the Hotel Dupleix, but he stopped his car a hundred yards from his destination when he saw another motor drive up ahead of him and the deputy inspector get out with Henry Kobayashi.
When Robbins went into the hotel, Marvin approached on foot. He stood on the veranda for some time, listening. He recognized the voices of Prike, Robbins, Henry Kobayashi, and the coarse laugh of Antoinette Vrai. He did not hear the voice of Evelyn Branch. Where was she? She certainly did not need his protection, with the C.I.D. out in force. Had he been right in regarding her note as a ruse? He sauntered to the end of the veranda and lit a cigarette. Then he saw people running toward the river front, a short distance away. He followed warily.
Pushing his way through the crowd gathering at the ghats, Marvin saw a bunder boat, a clumsy native craft with one dirty patched sail, tacking madly against the swirling current of the brown river, trying to get out of the way of a fast, trim motor launch. He shaded his eyes against the glare of the sun on the water and saw a girl standing knee-deep in a cargo of jute which was piled on the foredeck of the bunder boat like unbaled hay. Her hair, the color of the jute, blew free in the river breeze. She was shouting to the speedboat. Marvin understood the word murder. He saw Rufus Dormer rise behind Evelyn Branch to put his hand over her mouth. She struggled.
The speedboat swung farther toward the sailing-craft in a foaming circle. In the cockpit of the launch Marvin saw a tall Hindu with a pale green turban and a square-jawed European in a khaki topee—George Linnet.
The bunder boat tacked again—suddenly, awkwardly. The sail flapped with wild impatience, then bellied out with a quick gust. The bunder boat capsized.
Marvin threw off his coat and topee, leaped down the ghat steps, flung himself into the muddy water, started swimming. As he lifted his head to breathe, he saw the wet, air-filled sail lying on the wrinkled brown skin of the river like a huge blister, turning slowly in an eddy as it drifted downstream. He heard Evelyn’s breathless shout, “Stop himl He’s getting away!” He saw Rufus Dormer swimming frantically toward shore.
A few swift, powerful strokes and Marvin was alongside the girl. She was clinging to the sternpost of the capsized craft.
“Why—didn’t you—head him off?” she gasped reproachfully.
“You have three guesses,” said Marvin.
“But look!”
Marvin glanced over his shoulder. Dormer was climbing out of the water, running up the bank. The speedboat was nosing in to shore, too. George Linnet jumped from the foredeck of the launch and started in pursuit. The two men disappeared in the crowd of Hindus gathered on the ghat.
“The colonel has landed and has the situation well in hand,” said Marvin. He grasped the sternpost, and with his free arm boosted the girl out of the water to the upturned bottom of the bunder boat. Instantly she slid off the wet planks into Marvin’s arms. This time he got one knee on the rudder, and lifted both himself and the girl onto the hulk. He found with no little satisfaction that he had to keep his arm around her to keep her from slipping back.
“I hope you’re enjoying your visit to India,” said Marvin. “At least, there’s never a dull moment.”
“Travel is so broadening,” Evelyn replied. “One meets such interesting people.”
“And in such interesting places. And one does such interesting things.” Lee Marvin was wound up to get really sarcastic, but somehow he couldn’t unwind. The girl looked so damned fragile and helpless. He resented his own amazement at so much loveliness inherent in a dripping, bedraggled body which according to rules, should be either comic or definitely unattractive. No amount of cosmetic skill could possibly produce this illusion of unadorned beauty, of exquisite grace, of artless, vital charm, he mused. He could feel the warmth of her firm young shoulders through the clinging dampness of her blouse, and his pulse gained ten beats.
“I certainly didn’t expect to meet you again this way!” Evelyn smiled at Marvin. “I suppose I am a fool.”
“I still don’t know whether you’re a fool or a little crook or just a good girl with bad friends,” said Marvin. “But I have a definite feeling that you’re in great need of a sound and thorough spanking.”
“I don’t believe in corporal punishment. I hope you haven’t come all this way just to be spiteful and sadistic.”
“My explanation for being here,” said Marvin, “can wait until we get to dry land. There doesn’t seem to be much privacy in this shipwreck. We have company.”
At that moment, Chitterji Rao’s launch, manned by uniformed lascars, had just poked a sleek bow against the side of the bunder boat.
The Hindu seemed no more enthusiastic over the rescue than did Marvin, but he helped both the girl and the redhead aboard the launch, which put about immediately and streaked for shore.
George Linnet was standing on the landing ghat, shouting through cupped hands.
“One of you birds who can talk this God-awful language come ashore and yell for the police!” he called. “Dormer got away. I lost him among those warehouses back of that hotel.”
“The Hotel Dupleix is full of police—who speak English,” Marvin replied, as the launch was being made fast.
Two minutes later the strange quartet entered the hotel bar.
Deputy Inspector Robbins’s eyes bulged when he saw Marvin. “I’ll be a such of a which!” he exclaimed. “If this chap Marvin ain’t popped up again—and out of the river, this time.”
“Inspector Prike,” said Linnet, “that man Dormer you were looking for at Alipore last night is in Chandernagore. I just chased him into narrow alleys back of the hotel and he lost me. You’d better send your men after him,”
Prike said something in French to the commissaire of police. The commissaire shouted a command to the sergeant in the doorway.
“I think we’ve cut off Mr. Dormer’s escape from Chandcrnagore,” said Prike. “And now I’d like to know a little more about this—swimming party.”
“Rufus Dormer practically confessed to me that he killed Harry Hoyt!” Evelyn Branch declared.
“Thank you,” said Prike, “for solving my case for me. And congratulations on an extremely skillful job of shadowing. How long have you been following Rufus Dormer, Lieutenant—I should say Colonel—Linnet?”
“We ran into him by accident,” said Linnet. “He was taking Miss Branch up the river somewhere. Chitterji Rao and I were on our way up to Jharnpur in the Maharajah’s speedboat when—”
“We were on our way to Jharnpur,” purred Chitterji Rao, “at the suggestion of His Highness, to prepare for Colonel Linnet’s tiger hunt. We were not far from the landing ghat here at Chandernagore when we passed quite close to a bunder boat. Miss Branch, who was on the boat with Dormer, recognized us and shouted to Colonel Linnet for help. I had our helm put about quickly. The bunder boat tried to get away, and in the confusion, capsized. Both Dormer and Miss Branch were thrown into the muddy water—”
“Then Lee Marvin, who was standing on the bank, jumped in and rescued me,” Evelyn Branch chimed in.
“And I picked them both up,” added Chitterji Rao, “after putting Colonel Linnet ashore.”
“But Dormer had too much of a start on me,” said Linnet. “If I were you, Prike—”
“I’m sorry you had to interfere, Linnet,” said Prike. “I was rather expecting Rufus Dormer, just as I was expecting— Hello, Robbins, what have you done with Kobayashi?”
“Kobayashi?” Deputy Inspector Robbins scratched his head. “Why, he was sitting there half a jiffy ago. I wonder— I’m damned if that squint-eyed little bounder didn’t slip out on us! Don’t worry, inspector, I’ll—”
Antoinette’s Vrai’s husky guffaws echoed in the barroom as Deputy Inspector Robbins jumped for the door.
“Robbins!”
“Yes, inspector.” The deputy turned sheepishly.
“Let him go for the moment, Robbins. But unless you show yourself a little more alert and intelligent, Robbins, I shall have you put up for a seat in the Legislative Councils. In the meantime, you might ask Mademoiselle Antoinette to get a dry change for Miss Branch.”
“I’d rather not wear anything of hers,” Evelyn protested. “I’m not that wet.”
“It’s dangerous to keep on wet clothing.”
“I’m sure I have nothing good enough for the grande dame!” Antoinette retorted, eyeing Evelyn’s muddy raiment. “She would die if she did not wear the finest silks.”
“Very tactful, inspector, to bring Harry Hoyt’s fiancées together like this.” Evelyn Branch’s lips were pressed tightly together.
“Go along, Antoinette. I don’t want the girl to catch pneumonia. But hurry. In ten minutes I’m going to search your room.”
The two women, bristling with mutual antagonism, left the bar. Lee Marvin looked after them.
“If there’s nothing more we can dp, Prike,” began Linnet.
“Just a moment. Robbins, I want you to stay here with Marvin, Linnet, and Chitterji Rao, while I—” The inspector stopped suddenly.
During that instant of silence there was a perceptible movement in the room. Heads turned. Feet shifted. Even Prike’s expression changed.
Into the hot stillness there crawled a horrid sound that raised cold ridges of flesh on Marvin’s back. A hoarse, quivering groan, like the last muted shriek of anguish from some lost soul with no more strength to cry out but no courage to die in silence, trembled on all ears. A groan that sobbed out all of human despair, all of human pain, seemed to arise from somewhere beneath the earth, somewhere far away, then gurgled into nothingness.
The commissaire of police was on his feet.
“Monsieur l’Inspecteur,” he said, “perhaps we have delayed too long our visit to the wine cellar.”
Prike, too, sprang up.
“Break down the door!” he ordered.
Beneath the blows of an ax, the small door behind the bar disintegrated into rotten kindling.
A gust of cold, damp air surged from the opening, a smell of mold and wine lees.
Inspector Prike descended three sweating stone steps. The commissaire was close behind him. Marvin, Robbins, Linnet, and Chitterji Rao crowded into the doorway to watch.
A cone of light wheeled slowly through the gloom as Prike’s flashlamp explored the cellar.
“Au nom de la loi, je vous ordonne de vous rendre!” commanded the French police official.
The echo buzzed and hummed mockingly in the half darkness. There was no other answer.
Inspector Prike went down two more steps. He held nothing in his hands but the flashlight. He paused, but the muffled moan of anguish, the quavering cry of despair, was not repeated.
Prike was at the bottom of the stairway. He started down an alley between two wine-racks, his flashlight sliding over the down-slanting necks of scores of bottles, ranged in rows like the myriad legs of some legendary millipede. Dusty labels glowed and went out: Macon, Vouvray, Graves….
From the rafter overhead, long fingers of gray fungus reached down in ghostly garlands to brush his face with their clammy touch. Inspector Prike disappeared round the corner of a wine-rack. From the other side his light shone through the bottles like ribs of a luminous fan. There was no sound except the soft, almost fearful, tread of feet.
The inspector stooped over, rubbing the dust from several racked brandy bottles. He frowned his disapproval, rose, and continued his way. His light gleamed on the damp walls, made deformed shadows tumble across the floor in a danse macabre and slither up over the wine-racks. At the far end of the cellar an array of pot-bellied casks and barrels stood out in purple outline.
Inspector Prike stopped for a long moment in an attitude of listening. Only the rhythm of breathing and a faint dripping sound from some leaky wine spigot broke the silence.
With deliberate strides Prike walked toward the wine casks. If Jacques Vrai was still in the cellar, he must be hiding among the barrels. Prike had made a complete examination of the rest of the underground room.
Still Prike did not draw his gun. His light roved over the barrels, shimmering on a barrier of unbroken spider webs that evidently precluded the possibility of anyone hiding behind them. His left knuckles rapped against the barrel staves in the wake of the light, seeking the solid thump that would tell him the level of the wine inside.
One particularly large barrel, almost as tall as the inspector himself, stood in a corner a little apart from the others. Twice the inspector’s knuckles explored its convex wooden belly from top to bottom, getting for response only a continuous series of hollow, ringing thumps. The barrel was empty.
The inspector’s light splayed upward to illuminate the huge spider web that stretched from the top of the barrel to the low ceiling of the cellar. He pushed the glaring eye of his lamp against the web. The gossamer threads gave, but did not break. Prike put his hand behind the web, ran his fingers downward and toward him. One corner of the web pulled loose, dangling a small thumb tack.
The cobweb was made of fine silk fibers. At one corner was the almost microscopic tag, Made in Japan.
At last his revolver gleamed in Inspector Prike’s hand.
“Help me here, please.” A nod of his head summoned the commissaire.
The Frenchman stepped up, tried to budge the barrel. The barrel resisted the combined efforts of his hands and Inspector Prike’s shoulder. It seemed unusually heavy for an empty hogshead. Twenty fingers strained for a hold under the rusty iron hoops.
Suddenly the barrel gave way, tottered, crashed against Inspector Prike, upset.
Prike’s flashlight fell, rolled along the floor. Its diffused glow revealed an opening in the wall behind the barrel. A man crouched in the opening.
The Commissaire took an involuntary step backward.
“Nom d’un nom!” he exclaimed. “Shoot, inspecteur.”
But Inspector Prike did not shoot. He hurdled the barrel, grasped the crouching man’s shoulder.
The man lurched from the opening, pitched forward against Prike, bore him to the ground.
Marvin ran down the stairs to the inspector’s aid, then stopped short, aghast. The man sprawled upon Inspector Prike lay limp, motionless. The back of his drill coat was crimson, wet. The haft of a knife protruded from beneath one shoulder.
Inspector Prike writhed free from under the inert body. He got to his knees, gently turned the man over on his side.
Marvin picked up the flashlight from the floor, shone it into the man’s face. Despite the closed eyes and its ghastly pallor, the face was somehow twisted into a grim expression of cynical glee.
It was the face of Rufus Dormer.
Chapter Twenty-Four
A QUESTION OF ACOUSTICS
“Nom d’un nom!” exclaimed the commissaire. “He is dead!”
“Dormer!” Robbins helped Prike lift the bloody form. “How the hell did—? Did Jacques Vrai—?”
“Or Kobayashi,” murmured Prike. “Or—” He looked up. Lee Marvin, George Linnet, and Chitterji Rao were standing on the stone stairway to the cellar, watching with wondering eyes.
“Monsieur le Commissaire,” Prike resumed, “will you send more men to watch the boundaries of Chandernagore, to guard the roads, the ghats—?”
“Certainly. But where does this man come from? Where does this tunnel—?”
“Now!” concluded Prike.
“Certainly.” The commissaire ran up the stairs, shouting orders in French.
Prike and Robbins followed, carrying Rufus Dormer between them. They stretched him on a table in the bar.
Robbins looked accusingly at Marvin. “Every time this chap Marvin pops up,” he said, “we find another corpse.”
“Not this time, Robbins.” Prike noted that blood was still oozing rhythmically from Dormer’s wound. Quickly his deft fingers sought the journalist’s pulse, found it flickering feebly. He glanced at the knife in Dormer’s back, carefully removed it.
“Still alive,” he announced. “Blade was deflected by his scapula. Went in diagonally.”
“Then we can save his life, perhaps,” purred Chitterji Rao, over Prike’s shoulder. “The Maharajah’s speedboat is at your disposal.”
“My car’s faster,” said Prike. “Robbins?”
“Yes, inspector.”
Prike spoke to his subordinate without looking at him. He was busy inspecting the knife he had taken from Dormer’s back. Stamped into the blade near the hilt were two small letters: E.B.
“Robbins, this man’s in bad shape. Take him to Calcutta in my car as quickly as possible. Stay with him at the hospital, and if he recovers consciousness—”
“Ask him who knifed him? I’ll do that.”
“He won’t tell you, Robbins. As soon as he recovers consciousness, send for me.”
“Right, inspector.”
“And don’t lose him, Robbins—like you did Kobayashi.”
“Right, inspector. I mean—no, inspector.”
When Robbins was on his way south with the unconscious Dormer, Chitterji Rao said to Inspector Prike, “Since you don’t need us, we will go on.”
“I would suggest,” the inspector replied, “that you return to Calcutta. The Maharajah’s nao-ratna is likely to turn up there tonight.”
