Bombay Mail, page 2
“Then Your Excellency refuses to answer my question?”
Sir Anthony put down his champagne glass with great deliberation.
“I am not at liberty to discuss the alleged strained relations between Your Highness and the Government of India,” he said. “I can only guess that since the present Secretary of State for India was a fellow student with Your Highness at Oxford, the Viceroy is conferring more than a favor in allowing Your Highness to go to London and discuss matters as one Oxonian to another.”
As Sir Anthony spoke, his sharp, steady glance seemed to bore deep into the Oriental mind that lay behind the proud black eyes of the Maharajah. The defiant poise of Zunjore seemed suddenly to crumple. He raised two slender forefingers to his temples, then bowed with stiff politeness. His voice was scarcely more than a whisper as he faltered. “I— I— Good night, Your Excellency.” Something of his regal bearing returned as he stalked from the dining-saloon into the corridor.
The Governor’s private car was the only coach of the Bombay Mail that possessed a corridor—which, incidentally, did not connect with the rest of the train. The corridor started from the other end of the dining-saloon from the kitchen and servants’ quarters and gave access to the four sleeping compartments. The first compartment was Lady Daniels’s, the second Sir Anthony’s, the third was assigned to the Maharajah of Zunjore, and the fourth was to be shared by Luke-Patson and Captain Worthing.
The Governor sat in silence as he watched the Maharajah disappear. Then, with a shrug, he resumed drinking champagne with his secretaries. At midnight he retired. As there was still three-fourths of a bottle of champagne left, the two secretaries remained in the dining-saloon.
The Mail was pulling into a station. There was a sigh of compressed air as brakes were applied. A guard outside was calling: “Asansol Junction.” During the lull of the stop, the two secretaries were startled by angry voices emanating from Lady Daniels’s compartment, which was joined by a connecting door with the Governor’s. It was Lady Daniels’s voice which predominated. Her usual aristocratic modulation vibrated with shrill overtones. Scraps of phrases came to the surprised ears of the secretaries. Curt growls bearing some semblance to the word “nonsense” came from Sir Anthony to punctuate Lady Daniels’s tirade at junctures which sounded not unlike “that woman … stood it long enough … make yourself ridiculous … at your age.”
Apparently embarrassed by being an unwilling listener to a family quarrel, Captain Worthing got up to lower the slatted shutter at one of the windows. He was surprised to see a young man standing on tiptoes, leaning his hands against the side of the car directly beneath the window.
“What are you doing here?” demanded Captain Worthing.
“I want to see the Governor,” said the youth. “It’s important.”
Luke-Patson came up beside Captain Worthing.
“What is it, Captain?” he asked.
“Some chap wants to see His Excellency.”
Luke-Patson shaded his eyes with his hands, the better to see into the semi-darkness outside.
“His Excellency has retired,” said Luke-Patson. “What do you want?”
Couplings creaked as the train started to move.
“It’s important,” called the youth, walking alongside the moving train. “I have a telegram—”
He was running now. He gave up trying to talk further and sprinted ahead toward the second-class cars.
“Know him?” asked Captain Worthing.
“Looks like a chap who called at Government House this morning about some sort of mining business,” said Luke-Patson.
He turned from the window to see the Governor standing behind him. Sir Anthony was nervously chewing the end of an unlighted cigar.
“I find I haven’t the slightest inclination to sleep,” Sir Anthony explained. “You gentlemen are at liberty to retire. Before you go, Luke-Patson, you might ring for another small bottle of champagne. I’m going to sit up and go over these files.”
“In that case,” said Captain Worthing, uneasily fingering the ends of his blond mustache, “may I suggest, Your Excellency, that L.P. and I alternate in resting on the sofa in the dining-saloon here, to be on hand should Your Excellency need one of us?”
“Not necessary,” growled the Governor.
“I think it advisable, if Your Excellency has no objection.”
“Very well, very well.”
“I’ll take the first spell, L.P.,” said Captain Worthing quickly to the private secretary. “Go and turn in for a while.”
Luke-Patson looked at the military secretary with just the suggestion of a smile in his eyes.
“All right, Captain,” he said. “I’ll take over when we pass Gomoh. Good night, Your Excellency.”
He walked down the corridor toward the last sleeping-compartment.
The Governor sank into a big leather chair before a writing-desk in one corner of the dining-saloon. He spread the papers of Secret File D out in front of him, turning them over slowly as he continued to chew his cigar.
Captain Worthing sat down on the edge of the leather sofa, watching the Governor. The monotonous clicking of the rails changed to a roar as the Bombay Mail sped across a bridge. The electric fans whined in a minor key. Captain Worthing, worrying the ends of his mustache, cleared his throat and stood up. He stepped toward the Governor.
“Your Excellency,” he began, “I think I owe you an explanation of my—my obvious hesitation this morning, when you ordered me to accompany you on this trip.”
“Do you?” growled the Governor, without looking up from his papers.
“I think I do, in view of the reports current these past few days that I was to be taken home to face charges of espionage. When Your Excellency told me this morning to pack my kit, my first reaction, of course, was to connect the order with this talk of my imminent arrest.”
The Governor said nothing.
“I realize, Your Excellency, that I have exposed myself to such talk by appearing in public on several occasions with a rather beautiful Russian opera singer—”
“Madame Sonia Smeganoff,” interjected the Governor.
“I see your Excellency knows of the matter,” said Captain Worthing, his face quite colorless. “May I ask if my actions have been officially construed as anything more serious than—indiscreet?”
The Governor looked up for the first time.
“Captain, I’ll have been in India twenty-five years next monsoon,” he declared. “In that time I’ve developed quite a flair for knowing what bazaar talk has a basis of truth and what is merely talk.”
“Then there has been no official information filed against me, Your Excellency?”
“Let’s not discuss that any further now, Captain,” snapped the Governor, plunging again into the papers of Secret File D.
If the Governor considered the matter closed, Captain Worthing evidently did not. He stood beside the desk for several seconds, moistening his very dry lips with the tip of his tongue, as though seeking words forceful enough to convey his meaning. There was a frantic note of despair in his speech when he finally began.
“Your Excellency must know that—there is nothing I wouldn’t do to prevent disgrace. My family— In other words, Your Excellency—”
“I do not wish to discuss the matter, Captain Worthing,” Sir Anthony declared flatly.
The locomotive whistled in the night.
The lights of a village station flashed by.
Captain Worthing walked to the leather sofa and stretched himself out. He lay looking at the ceiling fans, all signs of sleep gone from his eyes. The monotonous clicking of the rails was broken by the clack-clack of the trucks passing over switch frogs….
At two o’clock William Luke-Patson sauntered yawning down the corridor. He sent Captain Worthing back to the sleeping-compartment while he took up his post on the leather sofa.
The Governor was still immersed in his study of the files.
Luke-Patson loosened his shoes, stretched out on the sofa, folded his arms behind his head, and closed his eyes….
At half-past four in the morning, Luke-Patson was knocking at the door of the last sleeping-compartment. The train was standing still. “Are you awake, Captain?”
The door opened almost instantly. Captain Worthing was fully dressed.
“Is His Excellency in there with you?” demanded Luke-Patson. His breathing was rapid with suppressed excitement.
“No. What’s happened?” The Captain closed the door behind him.
“I don’t know. Sir Anthony has disappeared.”
“Disappeared! How—?”
“I’ve looked in his compartment. I’ve just come from the station platform; I’ve looked in the waiting-room—”
“What station is this?”
“Gaya.”
“When did you notice the Governor was gone?”
The two men were walking down the thick-carpeted corridor.
“I fell asleep,” said Luke-Patson. “I must have been dozing for about half an hour. I was awakened by a sharp click—probably a door closing. I lay, still half asleep, for a minute or two before I realized that the train was stopped. I sat up. I noticed that Sir Anthony wasn’t sitting at his writing-desk—”
“Are the secret files intact?”
“As far as I can tell,” said Luke-Patson. “I haven’t examined them closely, but the papers don’t seem to have been disturbed.”
“You say you’ve looked outside?”
“Yes. After a few seconds, I realized the significance of the click that woke me. I fastened my shoes. I supposed. Sir Anthony had gotten out to stretch his legs. I went out myself.”
“How long do we stop at this station?”
“Eight minutes. They must be nearly up.”
“We’d better have the train held until we locate him,” said Captain Worthing.
The air outside was chill with the fresh breath that precedes dawn. The stationmaster, a dark Eurasian with a discouraged mustache, was getting ready to signal the engineer to proceed. The locomotive was panting impatiently.
“Wait a minute, Stationmaster. You’ll have to hold the train,” said Luke-Patson, who reached him first.
“Impossible,” said the stationmaster. “Regulations expressly forbid delaying Imperial Indian Mail unnecessarily.”
“You must,” barked Captain Worthing. “His Excellency the Governor of Bengal is missing from his private car.”
“Bombay Mail must be arriving Ballard Pier precisely 11:15 o’clock Saturday,” insisted the stationmaster. “However, I will assume responsibility for slight delay of three minutes.”
“You’ll wait longer, if necessary,” said Captain Worthing.
“Five minutes at utmost,” compromised the station-master, obviously impressed by the Captain’s uniform.
“Did you see His Excellency getting down from his private car since the train has been in the station?” asked Luke-Patson.
“I have seen nobody getting down from that car but you gentlemen,” replied the stationmaster.
Captain Worthing looked at Luke-Patson.
“Do you suppose he opened a door while the train was going and fell out?” he asked.
“Not likely,” said Luke-Patson. “I’m sure the train was stopped when I heard the door click. Of course, I’m not certain which of the two doors to the dining saloon it was. Sir Anthony might have gotten out on the side opposite from the station.”
“Get the police,” Captain Worthing ordered the station-master. “And you yourself open the compartments in the first-class carriage adjoining the private car. They are occupied by the Governor’s clerical staff and the retinue of the Maharajah of Zunjore. Find out if they have seen His Excellency.”
The two secretaries returned to the private car. They rang bells to arouse the servants. They asked questions, looked again in the bathroom, kitchen, and empty compartments.
Lady Daniels appeared, trying hard to preserve the poise and composure for which all India knew her.
“What has happened?” she asked.
“Why—nothing, Lady Daniels.”
“Where is Sir Anthony?”
“His Excellency got down at the station to stretch his legs.”
“And he hasn’t come back?”
“Why—not yet, Lady Daniels. He—”
Something like a moan escaped the lips of Lady Daniels. She sank into a chair. Her calm pose deserted her. She seemed unable to speak.
At that moment the Maharajah of Zunjore appeared at the end of the corridor. He was nattily clad in an Occidental dressing-gown of peacock blue silk, and had evidently taken time to wind his turban. He had heard sounds of excitement, he said, and had come to offer his help and that of his staff, in case anything had gone wrong. No, he had not seen His Excellency the Governor since he had retired. Was His Excellency missing? How distressing!
Yes, His Excellency was very much missing. A new search of the private car revealed nothing. Captain Worthing ran the whole length of the train on the side opposite the station. A squad of Indian police had gone through the station buildings and over the ground in the vicinity. The stationmaster himself had looked into every compartment in the car indicated.
“Impossible to be further delaying Imperial Indian Mail,” said the stationmaster. “Moreover, I am regretting exceedingly that cannot detach private car at this point, since Up Dehra Dun Express will be coming on this line directly—”
Lady Daniels regained her voice, but it was scarcely more than a whisper now.
“I’m afraid it’s no use,” she said. “Something frightful has happened. I’m sure of it.”
“Here, Stationmaster,” said Luke-Patson, handing the Eurasion official a sheaf of papers. “Send off these telegrams at once. They’ll bring the police and civil officials to the next stop. Repeat this last message to every station between here and Gomoh—in case His Excellency should have accidently fallen off the train. And keep up the search in the vicinity of Gaya—”
The stationmaster saluted, left the car and closed the door. The train jerked, moaned, and pulled slowly ahead. The locomotive whistle shrieked. The Bombay Mail was again moving, gathering speed, roaring away from the dawn, into the darkness that still shrouded the west.
Chapter Three: A LITTLE MATTER OF RUBIES
The name on the passport of the American youth who almost missed the Mail at Howrah Station was Jack Hawley. The same document put his age at twenty-eight. Tanned, well-muscled limbs showed below his khaki shorts. When he removed his khaki sun helmet to wipe the perspiration from his forehead, he displayed a head of dark, slightly curly hair. He seemed exhausted—not so much from the exertion of running after the train, but at the close shave from missing it. Much depended upon his being on the Bombay Mail.
He took out a pipe and prepared to smoke, while Yatim, his Indian bearer, spread his master’s bedding roll on one of the sofa-like berths in the compartment. Only then did he notice that the compartment was already occupied.
The other passenger was an elderly Hindu, whose white mustache stood out in startling contrast to his flat brown face. He had already made himself comfortable in the stifling compartment by removing most of his clothes. He was clad only in a dhoti—a white, loose-draped loincloth. Over one shoulder and about his bare torso he wore a double length of cord—the Sacred Thread of the Twice-born upper castes. His head was shaved except for a long white strand in back which proclaimed him a Brahmin. On his forehead was the yellow caste mark of the worshipers of Vishnu.
“Good evening,” said the Brahmin in perfect English.
“Evening,” said Hawley, who of a sudden seemed embarrassed by his tobacco pouch. “Mind if I smoke?”
“What you do affects only your own Karma,” said the Brahmin.
“Thanks,” said Hawley. He lit his pipe. The Brahmin regarded him silently with eyes that were wise with the philosophy of forty centuries.
Hawley’s bearded servant, having finished making up the berth, stood near a door, waiting for the first stop, when he could go to the servants’ compartment at the end of the car, where the Indian bearers of white passengers slept on hard shelves. As there was no corridor communicating between the compartments of the car, he could not leave while the train was in motion. A door led from each side of the compartment directly to the tracks. A third door led to a small lavatory and shower room.
The Brahmin seemed disinclined to conversation and turned to his luggage, which consisted of two parcels tied in cloth. From one he extracted a book and began to read.
Jack Hawley smoked his pipe, thinking back over the turbulent events which led to his taking the Bombay Mail tonight. The whole story was contained in the tobacco pouch which he pressed tenderly between his hands before returning it carefully to his pocket. In the pouch, covered by the loose tobacco, six uncut rubies nestled. They represented his fate—and the fate of his friend Burgess.
He and Burgess had come to India because Burgess, a geologist, believed that somewhere in Northern Bengal they would find an outcropping of the oil-bearing strata that feed the oil wells of Burma. The two of them had scraped together a little money to take an option on an area Burgess selected. They found no oil. After nearly six discouraging months, however, when their money was gone, they struck a formation of crystalline limestone. Burgess was excited. This was Burmese formation—and it was surrounded by a yellow-brown clay that in Burma is called byon—“ruby earth.” Frantic digging during the next few days confirmed the fact that the Americans were on the verge of riches. Half a dozen dull-red hexagonal crystals came to light, five of them small, but the sixth as big as a nut. All of them were without doubt specimens of the valuable pigeon’s-blood ruby. Burgess rode excitedly to the nearest telegraph station and sent a wire to Xavier in Calcutta.
Xavier was black-haired, sallow-faced gentleman who had agreed to back Hawley and Burgess to the extent of furnishing capital to take up the option, in case their prospecting proved fruitful. He was generally suspected of being of mixed blood, but he was wealthy enough so that when he spoke of ancestors in Genoa, Englishmen did not express their inner convictions that Goa—Portuguese India —was more nearly the truth. Hawley and Burgess allied themselves with him because he boasted of good connections with the Indian Government Department of Mines. And neither of the Americans expected the answer they got from him, in reply to a guardedly enthusiastic telegram to take immediate steps to exercise the option expiring four days later. Xavier telegraphed:
