Bombay Mail, page 17
As Prike struggled to his feet, something crashed against his skull with terrific force. His consciousness was shattered into a thousand flashing particles of exquisite pain. A shrill blast of sound rang in his ears and trailed off into nothingness as he felt his ego slipping helplessly, hopelessly into the unexplored reaches of the universe. The engineer of the Bombay Mail was whistling for a station as Inspector Prike lapsed into senselessness.
VIII. BOMBAY (Ballard Pier)
(Arrive 11:15 a.m. Saturday)
Chapter Twenty-Three: THE MISSING BODY
The ruby eye of a portable dark-room lamp glowed diabolically on the features of Cootie Neal as he fished a photographic plate from the fixing bath and squinted at it drunkenly. Nice picture, that flashlight he had made of Sonia Smeganoff and Jack Hawley. Neal had returned to his own compartment to develop the only satisfactory plate he had exposed since leaving Calcutta, and was quite pleased with the result. He was still fearful, however, that the manager of the Bombay Bureau of Associated News and Photos would not quite share his satisfaction. He still had visions of himself being fired for failing to get better graphic evidence of the murder of the Governor.
“Drunk again, were you, Cootie? Too drunk to open your shutter on the biggest news picture of the year….”
Neal shook his head violently as though to clear it of the imagined voice of his Bombay manager rumbling unpleasantly. He would have to do better. After all, he wasn’t as drunk as the Bombay manager would say he was. He plunged the dripping Hawley-Smeganoff plate into a tray of clear water, wiped his fingers on his trousers, and picked up a time-table. The locomotive whistle wailed mournfully. Neal tossed the time-table across the compartment. The Mail was approaching a station; he didn’t care what station it was. He slung his camera over one shoulder and found his flashlight gun. He would pay an unofficial visit to His late Excellency the Governor of Bengal in the luggage van. Perhaps the Bombay manager would be satisfied with a posthumous pose of Sir Anthony. He had no idea how he would get into the car, but that was the least of his worries. The train had not quite stopped when Neal opened his compartment door, jumped out, and ran along the platform.
The luggage van stood in shadow just ahead of the range of the station lights. Neil looked over his shoulder to make sure that neither guard nor stationmaster was interested in him. Then he pushed on the door of the car. It slid back two feet.
“Luck!” breathed Cootie Neal, as he scrambled inside.
There was a scurry of feet as a dark form brushed by Neal, sprang through the door, and disappeared into the night. Neal stepped back and swallowed hard to keep from biting his heart in two. He wondered briefly if Sir Anthony had suddenly been resurrected, whether he had just been treated to a vision from the astral plane, or whether he was finally succumbing to delirium tremens. To reassure himself, he struck a match. In the brief sputtering glow he saw the flag-draped body of the Governor. At least, he could make his picture.
Not daring to attract attention by using further light before he made his exposure, he groped his way toward the body, pulled back the flag a little so that his lens would recognize the face, opened his shutter, and held up his flashlight gun.
It exploded with a blinding puff of light. Neal got out of the luggage van as fast as he could travel. When the train left the station, he was back in his compartment sloshing developer back and forth in a tray that held the cream-colored rectangle of an exposed plate.
At seventeen minutes past six a.m. the Bombay Mail was standing in Manmad station. Cootie Neal was pounding violently on the door of the private car and arguing vociferously with a guard who objected to his awakening the occupants. A shutter dropped to reveal the drowsy countenance of Captain Worthing. Over Worthing’s shoulder appeared the sleep-tousled head of Luke-Patson.
“What’s all this commotion?” Worthing demanded.
Cootie Neal held up a wet photographic plate. “Hey, look at this, somebody!” he sputtered. “Here’s another murder for you!”
“Hadn’t we better call Inspector Prike?” Luke-Patson asked Worthing.
“You can’t call loud enough,” Neal declared. “Prike’s dead.”
“Dead!” echoed Luke-Patson. “Impossible!”
“Take another dekko at this plate,” Neal insisted.
Captain Worthing went to the door of the car and took the plate from Neal’s fingers. His face was pale as he stared at it.
“You can see him plain as day, lyin’ there beside Sir Anthony in the luggage van, and just as dead.”
“The man’s right,” said Luke-Patson. “Look here, Worthing.”
The photograph showed unmistakably the features of Inspector Prike slumped against a pile of luggage behind the flag-draped body of the Governor. There was blood on the Inspector’s face from a gaping wound on his forehead.
“It’s probably trick photography,” said Captain Worthing. “Double exposure, or some such thing.”
There was a gasp from Lady Daniels, who had just come into the dining-saloon and was looking over Captain Worthing’s shoulder at Neal’s photograph.
“But when did this happen?” asked Lady Daniels. “Isn’t Inspector Prike still in this car?”
A hurried search proved that Inspector Prike was indeed missing from the private car.
“I’m telling you he’s dead,” Neal repeated. “I made this picture at the last station.”
Breeze in his pink pajamas and Pundit Garnath Chundra, nonchalantly winding his turban, had also come into the dining-saloon.
“If you don’t believe me, you had better hurry and look in the luggage van before the train moves on,” said Neal.
The photographer was in the lead of the group that rushed up the platform toward the engine. A guard was on the point of fastening the padlock on the door of the luggage van.
“I found it open,” he explained.
“Open it again,” ordered Luke-Patson.
Neal, the two secretaries, Collins, a guard, and the assistant stationmaster climbed into the car. Electric torches swung beams of light through the gloom of the interior. They picked but the flag-draped body of the Governor— but not Inspector Prike.
“What kind of hoax is this chap working on us?” demanded Luke-Patson.
Cootie Neal blinked as he stared about him. He pointed with a trembling finger.
“It was right over there,” he said. “You can see it on the negative.”
“Serves us right for listening to a drunken fool,” Captain Worthing declared.
“Listen,” protested Neal with a touch of professional pride, “I ain’t denying’ to you gents that I had a couple of drinks, but my camera don’t touch a drop. You saw the picture, didn’t you?”
When the search proved fruitless, the puzzled group returned to the private car just as the stationmaster’s whistle started the Bombay Mail on its way again. When the door closed behind them, Captain Worthing and Luke-Patson sniffed and looked at one another. A strong odor of arnica pervaded the dining-saloon. Before either had a chance to speak, Inspector Prike sauntered in from the corridor. Strips of adhesive tape held a small gauze compress over his left eye.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said.
“Sweet spirits of hypo!” exclaimed Neal.
The others stared at the Inspector in silence.
“Then you—you weren’t in the luggage van at all,” stammered Captain Worthing at last.
“Oh, yes,” said Inspector Prike while he lighted a cigarette. “I’ve just come back. Sorry I missed you, gentlemen, but I got out on the other side of the tracks.”
“But we heard—” Luke-Patson began.
“That I was killed? Not quite. I was unconscious for a time, and I still have a severe headache, thank you.”
Questions rained upon the Inspector from all sides. He quieted them with a curt order. In a few terse sentences he told as much of the attack as he thought expedient. No, he had not seen his assailant. He knew only that the man’s knees were bare. Yes, possibly the man wore khaki shorts. He wan’t sure. Yes, he was aware that the American Hawley wore khaki shorts and had also exhibited some genius for slipping his bonds.
“I’ll discuss the matter more fully later,” said the Inspector. He turned his head slowly as he studied the passengers who had come into the dining-saloon: Captain Worthing in his khaki uniform; Lady Daniels in a black satin dressing-gown; the Pundit, bare to the waist in his dhoti; Luke-Patson in a crisply starched suit of drill; Edward J. Breeze, snapping his suspenders over his shirt of robin’s-egg-blue silk; Cootie Neal in the once white clothes he had slept in for two nights; and Doctor Lenoir, precisely dressed in unbleached linen.
“The patient is stronger this morning, Inspector,” said Doctor Lenoir. “Would you like to question him further?”
Inspector Prike nodded thoughtfully. “Later,” he said. He walked briskly through the door that led to the kitchen and the servants’ quarters.
Chapter Twenty-Four: ALIBIS FOR EVERYONE
All morning the Bombay Mail had been sliding down the slopes of the Western Ghats. Tricks of erosion had transformed the hills into grotesque domes and angular peaks. The dry heat of the Central Provinces had given way to the damp, sticky heat of the seacoast. The train was nearing its goal.
Inspector Prike had put in a busy morning. He had been closeted for nearly an hour with the revived Xavier and Doctor Lenoir. He had had another interview with Captain Worthing, paler than ever.
At Igatpuri he brought in Jack Hawley. Since the second disappearance of Martini and the failure to find the rubies seemed to have definitely frustrated Hawley’s mission, the American told Inspector Prike the whole story: How Xavier had double-crossed him and Burgess after the discovery of “ruby earth” in Bengal; how he had tried in vain to see the Governor; how he had set out for Bombay to try to save the option with money raised on the ruby specimens; how the rubies had been stolen; how he had tried to recover them.
Inspector Prike let him finish the story without interruption. Then he asked, “Is this man Xavier the Mr. X mentioned in the telegram I took from you yesterday?”
Hawley said yes. He also explained why he had not mentioned the fact at first. Inspector Prike asked if Hawley had seen Xavier on the train before Gaya. Hawley replied that he had not seen him until Chheoki.
“And you never actually saw the Governor?”
“I never got farther than his secretary.”
“Which secretary?”
“The big fellow with the red face.”
Inspector Prike nodded.
“Beef and Burgundy,” he said. “Luke-Patson.”
“I think that’s his name.”
The train was pulling into Kalyan. Hawley tried to tell the Inspector the story he had learned from Beatrice Jones the night before, but Prike waved him away impatiently. The Inspector gave orders for the rest of his material witnesses to be herded into the special coach. Then, leaving the crowded dining-saloon in charge of armed guards, he got out of the car and vanished on the station platform. When the train started again, he had not returned.
A tense atmosphere hung heavily over the dining-saloon. No one spoke. The unspoken questions— Where is Inspector Prike? What is going to happen next?—expressed themselves in uneasy glances, fidgety gestures. The heat was oppressive. Jack Hawley stepped to a window, lowered the shutter, stuck his head out. The train was stopping. A guard poked Hawley in the rear and ordered him away from the window. Hawley complied—but not before he had seen Inspector Prike jump from the guard’s van at the rear of the train, just as the Mail came to a halt at Kurla.
Prike re-entered the special car, took his seat at the head of the table, deliberately poured himself a brandy and soda, waited until the train was again in motion before he began to speak.
“I’ve brought you all together,” said Inspector Prike, “in order to save time in thanking you for co-operating with me in the investigation of the murder of Sir Anthony Daniels, to return your passports, and to apologize for the inconvenience some of you have suffered. I also wish to exonerate publicly those of you I have been forced, in the course of my investigation, to place under suspicion.”
Inspector Prike stopped, cleared his throat, sipped his brandy peg. The uneasy silence continued. Captain Worthing was blotting the perspiring palms of his hands on his knees. Pundit Garnath stared at the Inspector with wise, unblinking eyes. Edward J. Breeze chewed nervously on an unlighted cigar. Xavier, propped up in a leather chair, mopped the sweat from his pale, yellowish face.
“Lady Daniels,” Prike resumed, “I hope that your burden of grief has not been made heavier by the idea that I have suspected you of the murder of your husband. Despite the coincidence of Sir Anthony’s murder by cyanide and your possession of a cyanide bottle, Lady Daniels, I was certain from the first that the murder was not committed by a woman, although I was not so positive that a woman was not involved, either as motive or accomplice. Since Sir Anthony was killed outside the train, a woman would not have the strength to lift the body through the window into the lavatory of the second-class carriage where it was found.”
“Why are you so sure Sir Anthony was killed outside the train, Inspector?” asked Luke-Patson, who was standing in the rear of the little crowd.
Inspector Prike leaned forward across the table. With his elbows he brushed aside a sheaf of papers and telegrams. Within reach of his fingers were Captain Worthing’s pistol and Lady Daniels’s cyanide bottle.
“Common sense, Luke-Patson,” he snapped. “If the murder had been committed on the train, the murderer, unless he was absolutely devoid of reason, would have got rid of the corpse by pushing it off the moving train between stations. Delay in finding the body would have confused the issue and given the murderer a chance to escape. Since neither Jack Hawley nor Pundit Garnath Chundra are mentally deficient, I have eliminated them as suspects. No, Sir Anthony was killed while the train was standing in the station at Gaya, and his body placed in the lavatory of the compartment occupied by Hawley and the Pundit for two reasons. First, so that the body would not be disclosed by the train pulling out of the station. Second, to throw suspicion on innocent parties and divert it from the proper quarter.
“The actual murderer made further effort to cast suspicion on Pundit Garnath by writing a warning to the late Maharajah of Zunjore in Hindustani, using the vernacular script.”
“That lets me out,” declared Neal. “I can’t write these heathen lingoes.”
“I’d already eliminated Cuthbert Neal,” said Inspector Prike, “because uncontradicted testimony indicates that he lay all night in—shall I say a tertiary stage of supersaturation?—and did not stir from his compartment.”
“It musta been somethin’ I ate,” said Neal, grinning.
“I find, on the other hand, that Mr. Xavier is familiar with several vernacular languages. By the way, Luke-Patson, Mr. Xavier’s explanation of that letter you destroyed does not quite coincide with yours.”
“I said I was buying a race-horse from you,” said Xavier, turning to Luke-Patson with a weak gesture.
“That’s understandable, Inspector,” said Luke-Patson. “In view of the questionable ethics involved in the racing deal, as I explained it to you, Mr. Xavier would obviously try to hide the truth.”
“Obviously,” said Inspector Prike dryly. “But I have definite proof that Mr. Xavier was not on the train when the murder was committed. Furthermore, I am inclined to eliminate Doctor Lenoir, since I have been unable to discover a motive for murder in his case. Moreover, a man with so extended a knowledge of poisons as Doctor Lenoir would hardly have chosen cyanide, which is so easily detected.”
“By God!” Edward J. Breeze half rose in his chair, then sank back limply. “That narrows it down to Captain Worthing and me,” he said, making feeble motions of polishing the fog of perspiration from his horn-rimmed spectacles.
“Mr. Breeze,” said Inspector Prike, “you had a motive for wanting to kill Sir Anthony. You once threatened to kill him. And you left your compartment at Gaya, where the murder was committed. However, you made the lucky mistake of trying to get into the wrong compartment. An American lady by the name of Miss Ursula Klink, in complaining to me of the number of males who had been trying to molest her, gave me a graphic description of your activities at four-thirty Friday morning, when Sir Anthony was killed. She definitely places you, at that time, on the opposite side of the train from that on which the murder was committed. Furthermore, the assistant stationmaster at Gaya informs me by telegram that a man of your description spent the entire time the Bombay Mail stopped at Gaya inspecting the plumbing arrangements of the station.”
Edward J. Breeze murmured with incoherent relief and mopped his baby face with a silk handkerchief.
“As for Captain Worthing—” Inspector Prike hesitated. Captain Worthing’s fingers were spasmodically twisting his tiny mustache. “It was Captain Worthing’s service revolver which killed the Maharajah of Zunjore, and the Maharajah of Zunjore was shot by the same person who murdered the Governor of Bengal. That fact, to my mind, practically exonerates Captain Worthing. Even if the Captain were stupid enough to commit murder with a weapon so easily traceable to him, I hardly think him fool enough to leave the revolver in the car afterward. He would at least have tried to drop it out the window. No, I am convinced that Captain Worthing’s revolver was stolen, used, and left in evidence solely to divert suspicion again.”
Inspector Prike paused and looked about him slowly. His gaze moved from face to face until it finally rested upon Luke-Patson.
