Bengal Fire, page 3
The people, Marvin thought. They were a strange lot. There was Linnet, for instance, again drinking gin and bitters with Hoyt; and there was Henry Kobayashi, the Hawaiian-born Japanese, a little flushed, hovering in the background, waiting to buttonhole someone to listen to his limericks. Marvin didn’t know many of the other guests. He knew Kurt Julius, of course, the plump, red-faced wild-animal buyer, who made most of his deals in the Grand Hotel bar but who talked like a mighty hunter. And he knew Rufus Dormer, the scrawny, sharp-eyed, bitter-tongued sub-editor of the Anglo-Bengal Times, the champion sneerer of Calcutta. Of the others, he knew vaguely that they were bookmakers, a jockey or two, a retail liquor dealer, a Parsi theatrical manager, a manufacturer of artificial pearls.
On the tables in the adjoining room were place cards for more stodgily respectable guests who had also been invited. Fenwick, the jute broker, for instance; Major Cotton and Mr. Justice Hope. Marvin knew they would not come. It was worth a man’s membership in the Bengal Club to be seen at a dinner like this.
The dinner itself was an insult to no man’s palate. There was sherry with the soup, a dry Rhine wine with the fish, and a very decent Bordeaux with the fowl. There was also the first onslaught of the green flies, massing for an attack on the lights, and dropping to the table in unwelcome numbers. And, with the serving of the third course, there was an odd interruption.
A khidmatgar leaned over Harrison Hoyt’s shoulder and said something in Hindustani. Without an apology Hoyt arose quickly, walked from the room. From his own seat at the table Marvin could see Hoyt pass the bar and pause at the top of the stairway to talk to someone. The man talking to Hoyt remained half-hidden in the stairway. For an instant he thought he recognized him as Jacques Vrai, father of the bride, but he couldn’t be sure from the one fleeting glimpse. Almost immediately afterward Hoyt returned to the dining-room. Marvin thought he was pale.
Hoyt, instead of going to his own place, came directly to Marvin’s. Standing very close to him, he leaned over his shoulder and whispered, “Put your hand under the table, Lee, and take the package I’m holding. Keep it out of sight. Put it in your pocket when you get a chance. And for God’s sake don’t let it get away from you. Can’t tell you any more now. Meet me at my flat at midnight.”
Marvin opened his mouth to protest, but Hoyt shoved a thin, flat parcel between his knees and went back to his chair across the table. Marvin felt the other guests looking at him: Kurt Julius, belligerently; George Linnet, curiously; Chitterji Rao, stonily; Rufus Dormer, cynically; Henry Kobayashi winked. Under the table Marvin reached for the package. It had hard corners, like a small box. He lifted it under cover of his napkin, pretended to wipe his mouth, and slipped the box into his breast pocket. Eyes were still on him. He had fooled no one, he was sure. What the dickens was in that box, anyway? The Bosa pearl? Not the right shape. What was Hoyt getting him into now? For the second time that day, Marvin wished fervently that he did not owe his life to Harrison Hoyt.
The dinner progressed. There was frozen punch and salad and dessert. The guests were getting boisterous. Champagne corks popped. George Linnet was leading an impromptu quartet at his end of the table. Men were leaving their seats to move about. Henry Kobayashi was being very American. A tipsy jockey crowned Rufus Dormer with a wreath of table decorations. The turbaned khidmatgars bustled through a haze of tobacco smoke, removing dishes, pouring champagne. Someone was saying something in a thick voice. Who was it? Marvin craned his neck.
Kurt Julius, the animal buyer, was on his feet. His normally florid face was scarlet with food and drink. He held a goblet in his hand.
“A toast,” he was saying, “to the groom. We wish him—”
He stopped suddenly, staring toward the center of the table. Marvin stared too. The groom was gone. Harrison Hoyt’s chair was empty. Marvin had not seen him slip out.
“The groom,” Kurt Julius continued, “seems to have escaped. We’ll drink to him anyhow. To the groom.”
He raised his goblet. The guests struggled to their feet. Someone started singing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow.”
Lee Marvin raised his hand to his breast to feel through his coat the corners of the box Hoyt had given him. He wondered where Hoyt had gone.
Chapter Five
MIDNIGHT CALLER
Mrs. Pereira’s boarding-house “for European Ladies and Gentlemen” was a three-story house of a rather nauseous pink stucco, with faded green shutters. It was located on Guru’s Lane, which runs between Elliots Road and Ripon Street—a neighborhood in Calcutta in which threadbare European respectability struggles valiantly to keep its head above the encroaching orientalism of squalid, lop-sided native bhustees. To what extent Mrs. Pereira’s boarders were full-blooded European ladies and gentlemen was beyond the unpracticed eye of Evelyn Branch to detect. For 120 rupees a month Mrs. Pereira would not discriminate between a country-born son of a country-born Scottish railway engineer and a Eurasian stenographer—provided the Eurasian had a European name and was not too dark. And all Evelyn Branch could tell about her companions at the dinner table was that they seemed a particularly undernourished lot of swarthy young men, and dark, scrawny young women, all of whom spoke English incessantly with a peculiar singsong intonation and a sometimes startling pronunciation. They were a uniformly dismal group, and Evelyn wished, for a moment while she was toying with a dessert that had the consistency and flavor of library paste, that she had listened to Lee Marvin and gone to a hotel. Immediately after dinner she went to her room.
“A nice, cheerful room,” Mrs. Pereira had assured her, yet for the moment nothing could be more utterly lonely, more drearily barren of all cheer. The floor was a mosaic of broken porcelain imbedded in cement. A ceiling fan (five rupees per month supplement) droned mournfully as it stirred up feeble eddies of sticky, warm air. The mosquito bar draped above the white iron bedstead reminded her painfully of a discarded wedding veil. A chameleon made small clucking noises as it ran along the picture molding, stalking the cloud of green flies swirling about the wan and sickly light globe. Outside the window a hundred huge black crows were settling for the night in a tree. Evelyn flung herself on the bed and wept for sheer loneliness.
How long she lay on the bed she did not know. She was finally aroused, not because by any Pollyana formula she had lifted herself from the bitter depths of despair, but because she was primarily a realist. She knew that the problems of life were not solved by tears, however sincere, however spectacular. And weeping would not wash out the fact that she was face to face with a problem.
She stepped into the musty-smelling bathroom, dipped some cold water from the tall Java bath jar, and washed her smarting eyes. Then she busied herself unpacking. She had hung away most of her wardrobe, when she discovered, at the bottom of her trunk, two books she did not remember were there. What unrealized premonition had caused her to bring Advanced Stenography and Manual of Speed Practice to India with her she did not know. But she was glad she had brought them. She might be looking for a job pretty soon. Unless—
That was a big “unless.” Would she have the courage to go to Harry Hoyt in a few days after she was used to the idea of his being married—to someone else? If she was the practical person she thought she was, she would not hesitate. After all, there were more sides to her friendship with Harry Hoyt than the sentimental. She was, in a way, a business associate. Would she be able to put the whole thing on that basis, forget her pride, the emotional numbness that had followed the first painful shock?
She fumbled in her suitcase for a packet of Hoyt’s letters, read through them hurriedly, searching for the ones in which he spoke of his schemes for making them both very wealthy.
Suddenly she looked up, startled. She seized her handbag, stuffed the bundle of letters into it. Someone had knocked on her door—or had she dreamed it? She glanced at her wrist-watch. Nearly midnight. Who could be calling on her at this hour?
The knock was repeated. Evelyn stood up, hesitant. She thought she knew who stood outside the door. It must be the tall, serious-faced redhead who had met her at the dock, Lee Marvin. Because he was a friend of Harrison Hoyt’s, she did not want to see him again—yet. But because of something in his steady blue eyes, something friendly in the hostile sound and clutter of a strange city, she did want to see him. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to talk to anyone—merely to hear the sound of her own voice.
“Come in,” she said.
The door swung open. Evelyn felt her knees grow weak, her heart beat violently in her throat. Harrison J. Hoyt stood in the doorway.
Evelyn stared, her lips parted. Hoyt stepped across the threshold, closed the door behind him. His weak chin jutted forward in a semblance of strength. His dark eyes glowered with a queer, mad desperation. His black, curly hair was plastered flat by perspiration.
“So you didn’t trust me?” he blurted with incredible venom. “So you couldn’t wait until I sent for you?. You had to come out and see what I was doing, if I was still true to you. Is that it?”
Evelyn said nothing. She stood on the same spot, in the same posture, as when he had opened the door. She was unable to move, or to speak.
“Well, I hope you’re satisfied!” he shouted, almost in her face. “It serves you right.”
Then Evelyn smiled. She saw suddenly that all this bluster and antagonism was the defense of a terribly weak and terribly guilty ego that sought self-justification. “Sit down, Harry,” she said.
Instantly all aggressiveness went out of Harrison Hoyt’s face. He collapsed, rather than sat, on the edge of the bed. He ran his short, stubby fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry, Ev,” he said abjectly into his hands. “I didn’t come here to yell at you. I came to tell you that I’ve—that I’m sorry.”
Evelyn moved at last. She approached Hoyt, stretched out her hand to touch his bowed shoulders, then instinctively drew back her fingers. She smiled again, wistfully. “That’s all right, Harry,” she said. “I had a nice trip out, anyhow.”
Harrison Hoyt raised his head to look at her. The hot, thick silence seemed to swirl about him, like the air stirred faintly by the whining fan. The feeling of agonized self-pity dropped from Evelyn Branch’s shoulders like an outworn cape. For she knew then, with a sudden sense of shock and relief, that she was glad, very glad, that she was not going to marry Harrison Hoyt.
The sight of her ex-fiancé completely cured her heartache. She did not love him. She could not love a perfect stranger, and this Harrison Hoyt was an entirely different person from the boy she had come out to marry. He was a stranger, yet a stranger with whom she had a mutual friend—a Harrison Hoyt who was young, breezy, clever, and pleasantly irresponsible, quite unlike this crass, smug and brutally vulgar Harrison Hoyt, whose soul seemed to have died in him. He was a stranger for whom she had the utmost sympathy and pity, because he was supremely unhappy. Her woman’s eyes knew at once that he had not come here tonight to apologize; he had come to unburden himself to an old friend, perhaps to ask a favor.
“Harry,” she said softly, “you’re in trouble.”
All the abjectness went out of Hoyt’s face. His lips stiffened. His eyes were again suspicious and hostile. “I’m not,” he said curtly, scarcely opening his mouth.
At last Evelyn laid her hand on his shoulder.
“Harry, this girl you’re going to marry tomorrow, is she— Do you love her?”
“I’m going through with it,” said Hoyt.
“That’s silly, Harry, if you don’t—”
“It’s not silly.” Hoyt sprang to his feet. “And I’m going through with it!”
He stood a moment facing Evelyn. Then with a brusque movement he crushed her in his arms, kissed her briefly, impetuously, turned and fled. The door slammed after him.
Evelyn stared at the door. Above the plaintive hum of the fan she heard his footsteps running downstairs. She opened the door. “Harry!” she called.
There was no answer.
Without a second’s hesitation, she ran down the stairs after him. He was in trouble; he had come for her help, and was reluctant to ask it, after what he had done to her. But she was still his friend, even if she did not love him. She would help him.
The street door was open. She started out, then pulled back in terror. A figure rose up before her, the figure of a bearded man who saluted and mumbled sleepily in Hindustani. It was the durwan who slept outside the entrance nightly. Evelyn did not know that, but she dashed past him—for she had just seen Harrison Hoyt running down Guru’s Lane, turning the corner into Elliots Road. Evelyn ran after him.
Chapter Six
A VERY BELATED BRIDEGROOM
Inspector Leonidas M. Prike, C.I.D., was reading the Statesman as he slowly ate his chota hazri. As usual, his appointment as chief inspector was not yet listed in the official gazette column. Made acting chief inspector after his swift solution of the murder of Sir Anthony Daniels aboard the Bombay Mail, he had been waiting a good many months for his promotion to be gazetted. However, he had been in the service long enough to be able to smile tolerantly at the tedious unwinding of official red tape.
As he sipped his tea, waiting for his bearer to prepare his bath, Prike was clad only in a crimson dhoti—a ceremonial loincloth presented to him by the Brahmans of Bisewar Temple in Benares, after his recovery of the sacred treasure stolen from that Hindu Holy of Holies. When he turned the pages of his newspaper the ripple of muscles beneath the firm skin of his bare torso indicated the development and agility of a man fifteen years his junior—although Inspector Prike was not as old as his prematurely bald head might lead a stranger to surmise. The muscles of his intelligent face, on the other hand, appeared to have been trained to expressionless immobility. Only his alert eyes, the color of gun metal, occasionally betrayed a flicker of emotion—an understanding blur of tolerance, a flash of quick anger, a shadow of disbelief. He had the earnest lips of a scholar, the strong chin of a dogged fighter, the slightly beaked, inquisitive nose of a good detective.
There were two items in the morning paper that were of particular interest to Inspector Prike. One was an announcement that the Maharajah of Jharnpur had arrived in Calcutta for the “cold weather” and was reopening his palace in the suburb of Alipore. The other was a Reuter’s dispatch from Singapore to the effect that Straits police had seized a Japanese vessel with a cargo of five thousand Japanese-made machine guns; some irregularity in the ship’s clearance papers made the ship’s destination obscure although the Straits police suspected her to be bound for Madras or Calcutta; there were no clues as to the identity of the consignees, the ship’s officers maintaining that they were to have received instructions by radio later. Inspector Prike chuckled to himself as he read the Singapore dispatch. Too bad the Japanese freighter had not been allowed to drop anchor in the Hooghly. The inspector fancied he would have better luck tracing the consignee of the machine guns than had the Straits police.
The inspector was so engrossed in his newspaper that he was unaware of the discordant chorus of bikhri-wallas outside his window. Even among the mansions of Lower Circular Road these half-naked, brown hawkers managed to get into the courtyard and shout their wares to the discomfiture of anyone foolish enough to want to sleep past six-thirty in the morning. It was now past nine, and a chutney vendor, a fortune-teller, and an itinerant cobbler were all yelling in falsetto under Prike’s window. The inspector read on. Then his telephone rang.
“Prike speaking,” said the inspector, as he picked up the instrument. “Who? … Why don’t you send a deputy from the Bow Bazaar thana. You don’t want me…. See here, I’m going off on a holiday this evening…. Puri…. I won’t be back until after the Poojas are over, so you’d better— What? Well, it’s not the first time a bridegroom has been late for his own wedding in Calcutta. Probably had a drop too much at his bachelor dinner and … Harrison Hoyt? The chap I’d been investigating in regard to the—? What church was that, again? Dharmtolla Street? Very well, I’ll go right over.”
In a few minutes Inspector Prike was converted from a bald flâneur in a red loincloth to a dynamic officer of the British Indian Criminal Investigation Department. A small man, he was nevertheless a brisk, impressive figure in his white drill trousers, black alpaca coat, and khaki topee. His walk epitomized energy and authority as he stepped into the taxi that his bearer had summoned to the compound of the flats.
The taxi rolled into Lower Circular Road, sped north to Dharmtolla Street, stopped in front of a small and unfashionable church. About the entrance to the church stood a motley group of Europeans and Westernized Orientals. Across the street was a turbaned crowd of brown men, their lips red from chewing areca nut, watching with eyes as round and expressionless as those of the sacred bull that sauntered among them. Prike jumped from the taxi.
A European constable stepped up to him.
“Glad you’re here, inspector,” said the constable. “Still no signs of the bridegroom.”
Inspector Prike nodded curtly in reply. He was studying the group of wedding guests, who stood about awkwardly, talking in unnatural tones that betrayed their tense uneasiness. A small, scrawny European, with a dirty topee and whites that were frayed at the seams, came forward as Prike approached. The inspector recognized Rufus Dormer, sub-editor of the Anglo-Bengal Times.
“Hello, Dormer,” said Prike. “You here professionally, or as a wedding guest?”
“I’m the wedding guest,” said Dormer, fingering the dark, moth-eaten mustache that straggled along his upper lip, “but I’ve not been waylaid by the ancient mariner.”
“When was Hoyt last seen?” asked Prike soberly.
