Bengal Fire, page 5
Chitterji Rao laughed. “Not at all,” he said. “I was looking for a trinket that His Highness entrusted to Mr. Hoyt several days ago—a small piece of ceremonial jewelry that Mr. Hoyt persuaded His Highness to exhibit at some international exposition in California. In view of Mr. Hoyt’s untimely death, I thought it best to reclaim the Maharajah’s property and avoid possible complications with the executor of the dead man’s estate.” Prike fixed Chitterji Rao with an expressionless stare for several seconds before speaking. Then he asked, “And did you find the—trinket?”
“I did not. I recall now that Mr. Hoyt intended sending the trinket to California by registered post in yesterday’s mail. Undoubtedly he has done so.”
“In that case,” said Inspector Prike, “you have no further business here.”
“None whatever.”
“Good afternoon, Chitterji Rao.”
“Salaam, inspector.”
The household officer touched the fingers of his right hand to his forehead three times in quick succession. The inspector nodded impersonally. Chitterji Rao left the room, walking backward, in the manner of an inferior leaving the presence of a prince. But the sarcastic smile still hovered about the corners of his mouth.
Before the outer door slammed, Prike was rapidly running through the contents of the safe. He seemed interested only in a receipt for two insurance policies of ten thousand dollars each, on which a loan had been made. A third policy for a thousand pounds sterling named as beneficiary one Evelyn Branch. The inspector slipped the papers into his pocket and stepped to the desk.
For the next ten minutes Prike opened drawers and sorted papers. In the bottom drawer he found a leather frame which was moldy. Within the frame was a photograph of a rather pretty girl, with a contre-jour light that made a halo effect of her blond hair. For a long moment he studied the high-lights on the full lips and the large, wondering eyes. Then he put down the photograph and took from his pocket a silk handkerchief, containing the two objects he had found in the ghari in Dharmtolla Street. Without touching the stub of a pencil, which lay half-hidden in the silken folds, he reread the few lines which had been scribbled on a soiled scrap of paper— the second of the two objects in the handkerchief. He could make out only, Raffles 82335 he. The rest was illegible.
Prike arose, carefully rewrapped the paper and pencil, and called into the next room, “Babu, do you know the address of a man named Lee Marvin?”
The Babu came forward almost obsequiously.
“Quite, Inspector Sahib, he is residing at number nineteen and one-half Theater Road.”
Inspector Prike replaced the handkerchief in his pocket. “Thank you, Babu,” he said. “Please call me a taxi.”
Chapter Eight
NOT SO INNOCENT
When the body of Harrison J. Hoyt tumbled from the shabby ghari in Dharmtolla Street, the blood drained from Lee Marvin’s sun-tanned face until it was nearly the color of his freshly chalked topee. He had never been shocked by the sight of death in the abstract, and he certainly felt no personal grief at the revelation that Hoyt’s unsavory career had come to a sudden end. He was not even surprised. Yet the apparition of Hoyt’s corpse struck Marvin with the force and symptoms of a blast of May sun on his cervical vertebrae. Icy droplets oozed from his pallid forehead, chill moisture formed in the palms of his twitching hands. His knees flexed. His eyes closed for a brief instant—as though to shut out the realization that he was surely and horribly involved in tragedy.
Marvin had known since the night before that the tangled web of Hoyt’s life, which he had been precariously skirting for more than a year, had finally enmeshed him. He sensed the fact when Hoyt had given him the small, flat package at the banquet table. After the bridegroom had disappeared from his own bachelor dinner, Marvin had gone to the rendezvous at midnight, determined to give up the package and make a definite break with Hoyt. He had waited until past one o’clock but Hoyt had failed to appear. Marvin returned to his own flat, and for his own protection decided to open the package. When he saw the contents he knew he was in for it.
The package contained a flat ebony case with a nacre inlay of the crest of the Maharajah of Jharnpur surrounded by a quotation from the Bhagavad Gila in Hindi characters of filigree gold. Marvin opened the case and his eyes bulged. Reposing on a tiny cushion of spun Benares silver was a flashing circlet of nine gems. Wonderingly, more than a little fearfully, Marvin lifted the ornament from its case. Simply mounted, in the traditional manner of Hindu craftsmen, were a pale-yellow diamond as big as his thumb nail, a pigeon’s blood ruby, a sky-blue sapphire, a flawless emerald, a topaz, a jacinth, and a Ceylonese cat’s eye, fastened with a huge coral clasp and tipped with a pendant of a pear-shaped pearl!
Marvin turned the jewels over in the palms of his hands. The light from his desk-lamp struck fire from the heart of the ruby, flung brilliant, trembling reflections into his astounded face from the facets of the great diamond, coaxed into life the satiny, iridescent luster of the pearl. It was the pearl that fascinated Marvin. The other gems were worth a small fortune, but the pearl, a hundred grains of shimmering beauty, was worth as much as all of them together. He knew its value from having seen it once in Bombay, just before its purchase by the Maharajah of Jharnpur. It was the Bosa pearl.
Marvin bent closer over the oddly assorted jewels and frowned. He recognized the ensemble as a nao-ratna, a nine-jewel talisman mounted in accordance with Vedantic astrology, which rich and pious Hindus offer to a temple when they wish to curry favor with some particular god. For what great undertaking was the Maharajah of Jharnpur seeking divine protection, that he had included so valuable a gem as the Bosa pearl in his votive offering? How had the nao-ratna come into Hoyt’s possession? What was his true relationship with the Maharajah? Why had Hoyt been so desperately anxious to get rid of the jewels, so frantically furtive in passing them to Marvin at the banquet table? Had the rendezvous at midnight been intended for detaching the Bosa pearl from the talisman and selling it to Marvin, as he had promised? Why had Hoyt failed to keep the rendezvous?
Whatever the answers to these questions which surged through Marvin’s bewildered mind, there was no doubt about the exciting fact that the Bosa pearl was in his possession. His first impulse was to hurry to his office and put the nao-ratna into the safe of Orfèvre, Ltd. On second thought he decided against involving his firm, until he was sure he was not handling stolen property. He could not take the gems back to Hoyt, because Hoyt’s flat had been locked tight. To return them directly to the Maharajah of Jharnpur might involve him in some unknown and dangerous intrigue. To take them to the police would be ridiculous should Hoyt’s possession of them prove legitimate. And, since he certainly was not going to toss the Bosa pearl into the dustbin, he decided to hide the precious case until he knew more of its history.
Slowly, methodically, Marvin strolled through the three rooms of his bachelor flat, examining possible places of concealment. The mattress? Too obvious. The chest of drawers? His bearer would probably be rummaging among his linen, looking for buttons to sew on. He finally decided on the gramophone in his living-room, a tall mahogany cabinet standing next to the window that looked out on Theater Road through the heavy foliage of a mango tree. Opening the back of the cabinet, Marvin tucked the ebony jewel-case between the motor and the speaker, closed the panel, and pushed the instrument back against the wall.
The whole mad sequence of last night’s events rushed back upon Marvin as he stood upon the steps of the church in Dharmtolla Street, nervously mopping the cold perspiration from his face, staring at the dead body of Harrison Hoyt. The brutal realization that he could notv never extricate himself from the mystery of the nao-ratna by the simple expedient of returning it to Hoyt filled him with near panic. Even a lifetime of methodical scientific thinking could not relieve the anxious hours that followed, hours spent in pacing the anteroom of the little church awaiting his turn to be questioned by Inspector Prike. Even the casual and cursory nature of the inspector’s examination did not reassure him. The very calmness of the precise little detective’s apparently offhand questions alarmed him. When Prike thanked him and informed him politely that he was free to do as he pleased, he knew that this was merely the beginning.
Marvin caught a taxi not far from the church and gave his address to the bewhiskered driver. He had hardly turned the corner of Wellington Street, however, before he leaned forward to countermand his directions.
“Guru’s Lane jao! Jeldi!” he now ordered.
He must see Evelyn Branch. It would seem that he was to be the perpetual bearer of unpleasant tidings to Evelyn Branch, but this time, at least, he was acting on his own volition. The girl, friendless in Calcutta, should not be allowed to learn of Hoyt’s death through the newspapers, brutally, without preparation. Someone ought to break the news to her, and since Marvin was the only person who knew where she was, he did not hesitate to assume the task himself. Besides, the girl should be warned that there might be trouble if Inspector Prike discovered that Harrison Hoyt’s jilted fiancée had arrived in India on the eve of his murder.
Marvin dismissed the taxi at the corner of Elliots Road and walked down Guru’s Lane to Mrs. Pereira’s boarding-house. For ten minutes he breathed the musty atmosphere of Mrs. Pereira’s parlor before Evelyn Branch received him upstairs.
She greeted him with a curt nod. There was still cautious doubt in the contour of her full lips yet some indefinabie change had taken place in the girl since Marvin had last seen her. Perhaps the tilt of her blond head was a trifle less proud, less defiant. Perhaps the expression in her gray-green eyes was a little less bewildered, less lonely. But she was not a whit less lovely.
“Have you come to report that Harrison is safely married?” she asked, with light sarcasm.
“Worse,” said Marvin.
“Worse? What happened? Did he fall off the altar steps and break a leg?”
“Look here,” said Marvin, trying to look solemn. He wasn’t doing a very good job of preparation. “I’m sorry to be always bringing you bad news, but—”
“Don’t tell me. Let me guess,” said the girl gaily. “Is he dead?”
“Yes,” said Marvin bluntly.
Evelyn Branch smiled incredulously. “Is this another of Harry’s jokes?”
“It’s a pretty grim joke,” said Marvin. “The police think he’s been murdered.”
“Murdered?”
Little eddies of dust arose from Mrs. Pereira’s red plush sofa as the girl sat down weakly. Her right hand made a futile gesture and dropped limply in her lap. She stared at Marvin as though she had not understood. “He can’t be dead,” she said. “I saw him last night.”
“You saw him?”
“Yes. He came here. At midnight.”
“But he was to have met me at midnight. Why did he come here?”
The girl ignored the question. “How was he killed?” she asked, dry-eyed.
Briefly Marvin told of the arrival of the dead bridegroom at the church. A slight tremor of the girl’s lips was her only reaction as she listened. She seemed remarkably self-possessed, under the circumstances. She had been remarkably self-possessed yesterday, too, when he told her that Hoyt was marrying Antoinette Vrai. Hadn’t this girl any feelings? Or was she—
Marvin stood up, struck by sudden suspicion. What did he know about this girl anyhow, except that she was damned attractive and that he felt sorry for her? Did he know the true story of her relations with Hoyt, after all? Why, after his elaborate precautions not to meet Evelyn Branch at the boat, had Hoyt deliberately come to see her at midnight—instead of meeting Marvin? Perhaps it was the girl who prevented Hoyt from keeping his rendezvous. Perhaps there had never been any sentimental attachment between Hoyt and Evelyn Branch. Perhaps their engagement had been an invention of Hoyt’s. Marvin felt both disturbed and strangely elated by this last thought.
“I suppose,” said Evelyn Branch, “that you’ve come to tell me I’d better get out of town.”
“As a matter of fact, I was about to suggest it. You could go to Darjeeling for a week or so, until this thing blows over.”
“I’m not going.”
“If it’s the financial side that worries you, I’m still ready to help out.”
“Still trying out your rebound theories?”
“Look here.” Abruptly Marvin reached down and seized the girl’s shoulders. “You may not realize it, but you’re heading for an awful jam. The investigation of Hoyt’s death is going to raise some loud and unpleasant odors around here, and as long as no one knows you’re in Calcutta, you may as well stay out of smelling range.”
“Your interest in me is purely impersonal, of course.” Evelyn arose and gently disengaged herself from Marvin’s grasp.
“Of course it’s not,” said Marvin. “But it’s honorable-for the moment. You don’t know me well enough to trust me, but at least you have no reason to distrust me.”
“Yes, I have,” said the girl. “Why are you trying so hard to get rid of me?”
“I just told you—”
“Isn’t it because of—the Bosa pearl?”
Marvin’s teeth clicked. He stared, speechless with the surprise of hearing the girl mention the gem that had been so much on his mind these last hours. Evelyn laughed softly, not unpleasantly.
“You see,” she said, “when you told me your name yesterday, it didn’t mean anything. I was too upset by the news about Harry Hoyt. But last night, after I’d had a chance to collect my thoughts, I connected up everything. Harry Hoyt wrote me about you—Lee Marvin and Orfèvre, Ltd. Have you got the Bosa pearl?”
Marvin hesitated an instant. Then, “Yes,” he said.
“I thought so. Are you going to keep it?”
“I—I don’t know,” said Marvin truthfully.
“And you expect me to trust you!”
“Is that why Hoyt came to see you last night—to tell you about the Bosa pearl?”
“The Bosa pearl wasn’t even mentioned.”
“You’re not doing very much yourself to establish mutual confidence,” said Marvin.
“Suppose you start the return of confidence by telling me your version of the story. Just how do you figure in Harry Hoyt’s deal for the Bosa pearl?”
“I was about to ask you the same question. You seem to be in possession of more facts than I am.”
“But you’re in possession of the pearl,” said Evelyn.
“Almost in spite of myself. Hoyt handed it to me last night a little while before he disappeared. He didn’t get a chance to tell me a word about it, and I haven’t the slightest idea of how he came to have it or what he expected me to do with it. That’s the truth.”
Evelyn Branch looked at him in silence for a moment. Then she walked slowly to the door, opened it.
“When you have a more plausible story,” she said, “come back and tell it to me. Then I might believe that you’re really trying to help a damsel in distress. Good-by.”
“Good-by,” said Marvin. He picked up his topee, bowed stiffly. “But I won’t come back. I’ve already gone pretty far out of my way to be a good Samaritan, and it begins to look as though I’d taken the wrong turning. The next move is yours.”
As he went down the steps, Marvin had a peculiar, empty feeling inside of him. It was damned unpleasant, this business of dusting off a pedestal for a subtly charming girl, only to find that the girl isn’t at all what she seems. Evelyn Branch was certainly not the innocent, helpless little thing he had imagined. She was obviously very much in on the mystery of the Bosa pearl and the Maharajah’s nao-ratna which now reposed behind the motor of Marvin’s gramophone. Just as obviously, she was not going to talk about it. The problem, therefore, was exclusively Marvin’s. He hurried past the crooked, tile-roofed, mud-and-bamboo huts that lined Guru’s Lane and hailed a taxi in Elliots Road.
When he reached his address in Theater Road, another car was just drawing up in front of the house. While Marvin was paying the taxi-walla, a dynamic little European in white trousers, black alpaca coat and khaki sun-helmet leaped nimbly from the first car.
With a sinking sensation, Marvin recognized Inspector Prike.
Chapter Nine
UNDER THE MANGO TREE
“Will you have a drink, inspector?” asked Marvin, as he climbed the stairs to his flat with Prike.
“Thank you,” said Inspector Prike, “a brandy peg. It might make our interview seem a little less—shall I say, formal?”
“More questions, inspector?” asked Marvin as he opened the door into the second-story hallway.
“Several,” said Prike. He removed his topee. The glistening arch of his bald head was dewy with perspiration.
“Anything I can do, inspector—” Marvin began.
“Yes, I know,” Prike broke in, dryly, “you’ll be glad to help.”
The two men entered the living-room. Marvin looked about him anxiously. On the floor, near the window which looked out upon the mango tree and Theater Road, were the shattered fragments of a phonograph record. Damn that bearer! How often did he have to tell him to be careful with records. Last week he had smashed the second movement of Beethoven’s Fifth, and today— Marvin bent down to look at the broken disc. La Forza Del Destino. Marvin glanced up. Prike was watching him sharply.
“Bearer!”
Instantly Marvin’s white-bearded Mohammedan servant appeared in the doorway, adjusting his red turban.
“Sahib.”
Marvin was about to read him the riot act on the subject of broken phonograph records, but something in Prike’s small, flinty eyes, which had never left him for a moment, changed his mind.
“Do-to brandy peg lao,” he ordered simply. Then he sat down.
“Mr. Marvin, by any chance do you know a woman named Evelyn Branch?” the inspector asked without further preliminaries.
A spasm of cold gripped Marvin’s viscera. He hesitated, then closed his eyes, as though trying to remember where he had heard the name before. Should he protect this headstrong girl, who not only refused his protection but seemed to regard him as an adversary? Or should he tell Prike all he knew—which was little enough.
“I did not. I recall now that Mr. Hoyt intended sending the trinket to California by registered post in yesterday’s mail. Undoubtedly he has done so.”
“In that case,” said Inspector Prike, “you have no further business here.”
“None whatever.”
“Good afternoon, Chitterji Rao.”
“Salaam, inspector.”
The household officer touched the fingers of his right hand to his forehead three times in quick succession. The inspector nodded impersonally. Chitterji Rao left the room, walking backward, in the manner of an inferior leaving the presence of a prince. But the sarcastic smile still hovered about the corners of his mouth.
Before the outer door slammed, Prike was rapidly running through the contents of the safe. He seemed interested only in a receipt for two insurance policies of ten thousand dollars each, on which a loan had been made. A third policy for a thousand pounds sterling named as beneficiary one Evelyn Branch. The inspector slipped the papers into his pocket and stepped to the desk.
For the next ten minutes Prike opened drawers and sorted papers. In the bottom drawer he found a leather frame which was moldy. Within the frame was a photograph of a rather pretty girl, with a contre-jour light that made a halo effect of her blond hair. For a long moment he studied the high-lights on the full lips and the large, wondering eyes. Then he put down the photograph and took from his pocket a silk handkerchief, containing the two objects he had found in the ghari in Dharmtolla Street. Without touching the stub of a pencil, which lay half-hidden in the silken folds, he reread the few lines which had been scribbled on a soiled scrap of paper— the second of the two objects in the handkerchief. He could make out only, Raffles 82335 he. The rest was illegible.
Prike arose, carefully rewrapped the paper and pencil, and called into the next room, “Babu, do you know the address of a man named Lee Marvin?”
The Babu came forward almost obsequiously.
“Quite, Inspector Sahib, he is residing at number nineteen and one-half Theater Road.”
Inspector Prike replaced the handkerchief in his pocket. “Thank you, Babu,” he said. “Please call me a taxi.”
Chapter Eight
NOT SO INNOCENT
When the body of Harrison J. Hoyt tumbled from the shabby ghari in Dharmtolla Street, the blood drained from Lee Marvin’s sun-tanned face until it was nearly the color of his freshly chalked topee. He had never been shocked by the sight of death in the abstract, and he certainly felt no personal grief at the revelation that Hoyt’s unsavory career had come to a sudden end. He was not even surprised. Yet the apparition of Hoyt’s corpse struck Marvin with the force and symptoms of a blast of May sun on his cervical vertebrae. Icy droplets oozed from his pallid forehead, chill moisture formed in the palms of his twitching hands. His knees flexed. His eyes closed for a brief instant—as though to shut out the realization that he was surely and horribly involved in tragedy.
Marvin had known since the night before that the tangled web of Hoyt’s life, which he had been precariously skirting for more than a year, had finally enmeshed him. He sensed the fact when Hoyt had given him the small, flat package at the banquet table. After the bridegroom had disappeared from his own bachelor dinner, Marvin had gone to the rendezvous at midnight, determined to give up the package and make a definite break with Hoyt. He had waited until past one o’clock but Hoyt had failed to appear. Marvin returned to his own flat, and for his own protection decided to open the package. When he saw the contents he knew he was in for it.
The package contained a flat ebony case with a nacre inlay of the crest of the Maharajah of Jharnpur surrounded by a quotation from the Bhagavad Gila in Hindi characters of filigree gold. Marvin opened the case and his eyes bulged. Reposing on a tiny cushion of spun Benares silver was a flashing circlet of nine gems. Wonderingly, more than a little fearfully, Marvin lifted the ornament from its case. Simply mounted, in the traditional manner of Hindu craftsmen, were a pale-yellow diamond as big as his thumb nail, a pigeon’s blood ruby, a sky-blue sapphire, a flawless emerald, a topaz, a jacinth, and a Ceylonese cat’s eye, fastened with a huge coral clasp and tipped with a pendant of a pear-shaped pearl!
Marvin turned the jewels over in the palms of his hands. The light from his desk-lamp struck fire from the heart of the ruby, flung brilliant, trembling reflections into his astounded face from the facets of the great diamond, coaxed into life the satiny, iridescent luster of the pearl. It was the pearl that fascinated Marvin. The other gems were worth a small fortune, but the pearl, a hundred grains of shimmering beauty, was worth as much as all of them together. He knew its value from having seen it once in Bombay, just before its purchase by the Maharajah of Jharnpur. It was the Bosa pearl.
Marvin bent closer over the oddly assorted jewels and frowned. He recognized the ensemble as a nao-ratna, a nine-jewel talisman mounted in accordance with Vedantic astrology, which rich and pious Hindus offer to a temple when they wish to curry favor with some particular god. For what great undertaking was the Maharajah of Jharnpur seeking divine protection, that he had included so valuable a gem as the Bosa pearl in his votive offering? How had the nao-ratna come into Hoyt’s possession? What was his true relationship with the Maharajah? Why had Hoyt been so desperately anxious to get rid of the jewels, so frantically furtive in passing them to Marvin at the banquet table? Had the rendezvous at midnight been intended for detaching the Bosa pearl from the talisman and selling it to Marvin, as he had promised? Why had Hoyt failed to keep the rendezvous?
Whatever the answers to these questions which surged through Marvin’s bewildered mind, there was no doubt about the exciting fact that the Bosa pearl was in his possession. His first impulse was to hurry to his office and put the nao-ratna into the safe of Orfèvre, Ltd. On second thought he decided against involving his firm, until he was sure he was not handling stolen property. He could not take the gems back to Hoyt, because Hoyt’s flat had been locked tight. To return them directly to the Maharajah of Jharnpur might involve him in some unknown and dangerous intrigue. To take them to the police would be ridiculous should Hoyt’s possession of them prove legitimate. And, since he certainly was not going to toss the Bosa pearl into the dustbin, he decided to hide the precious case until he knew more of its history.
Slowly, methodically, Marvin strolled through the three rooms of his bachelor flat, examining possible places of concealment. The mattress? Too obvious. The chest of drawers? His bearer would probably be rummaging among his linen, looking for buttons to sew on. He finally decided on the gramophone in his living-room, a tall mahogany cabinet standing next to the window that looked out on Theater Road through the heavy foliage of a mango tree. Opening the back of the cabinet, Marvin tucked the ebony jewel-case between the motor and the speaker, closed the panel, and pushed the instrument back against the wall.
The whole mad sequence of last night’s events rushed back upon Marvin as he stood upon the steps of the church in Dharmtolla Street, nervously mopping the cold perspiration from his face, staring at the dead body of Harrison Hoyt. The brutal realization that he could notv never extricate himself from the mystery of the nao-ratna by the simple expedient of returning it to Hoyt filled him with near panic. Even a lifetime of methodical scientific thinking could not relieve the anxious hours that followed, hours spent in pacing the anteroom of the little church awaiting his turn to be questioned by Inspector Prike. Even the casual and cursory nature of the inspector’s examination did not reassure him. The very calmness of the precise little detective’s apparently offhand questions alarmed him. When Prike thanked him and informed him politely that he was free to do as he pleased, he knew that this was merely the beginning.
Marvin caught a taxi not far from the church and gave his address to the bewhiskered driver. He had hardly turned the corner of Wellington Street, however, before he leaned forward to countermand his directions.
“Guru’s Lane jao! Jeldi!” he now ordered.
He must see Evelyn Branch. It would seem that he was to be the perpetual bearer of unpleasant tidings to Evelyn Branch, but this time, at least, he was acting on his own volition. The girl, friendless in Calcutta, should not be allowed to learn of Hoyt’s death through the newspapers, brutally, without preparation. Someone ought to break the news to her, and since Marvin was the only person who knew where she was, he did not hesitate to assume the task himself. Besides, the girl should be warned that there might be trouble if Inspector Prike discovered that Harrison Hoyt’s jilted fiancée had arrived in India on the eve of his murder.
Marvin dismissed the taxi at the corner of Elliots Road and walked down Guru’s Lane to Mrs. Pereira’s boarding-house. For ten minutes he breathed the musty atmosphere of Mrs. Pereira’s parlor before Evelyn Branch received him upstairs.
She greeted him with a curt nod. There was still cautious doubt in the contour of her full lips yet some indefinabie change had taken place in the girl since Marvin had last seen her. Perhaps the tilt of her blond head was a trifle less proud, less defiant. Perhaps the expression in her gray-green eyes was a little less bewildered, less lonely. But she was not a whit less lovely.
“Have you come to report that Harrison is safely married?” she asked, with light sarcasm.
“Worse,” said Marvin.
“Worse? What happened? Did he fall off the altar steps and break a leg?”
“Look here,” said Marvin, trying to look solemn. He wasn’t doing a very good job of preparation. “I’m sorry to be always bringing you bad news, but—”
“Don’t tell me. Let me guess,” said the girl gaily. “Is he dead?”
“Yes,” said Marvin bluntly.
Evelyn Branch smiled incredulously. “Is this another of Harry’s jokes?”
“It’s a pretty grim joke,” said Marvin. “The police think he’s been murdered.”
“Murdered?”
Little eddies of dust arose from Mrs. Pereira’s red plush sofa as the girl sat down weakly. Her right hand made a futile gesture and dropped limply in her lap. She stared at Marvin as though she had not understood. “He can’t be dead,” she said. “I saw him last night.”
“You saw him?”
“Yes. He came here. At midnight.”
“But he was to have met me at midnight. Why did he come here?”
The girl ignored the question. “How was he killed?” she asked, dry-eyed.
Briefly Marvin told of the arrival of the dead bridegroom at the church. A slight tremor of the girl’s lips was her only reaction as she listened. She seemed remarkably self-possessed, under the circumstances. She had been remarkably self-possessed yesterday, too, when he told her that Hoyt was marrying Antoinette Vrai. Hadn’t this girl any feelings? Or was she—
Marvin stood up, struck by sudden suspicion. What did he know about this girl anyhow, except that she was damned attractive and that he felt sorry for her? Did he know the true story of her relations with Hoyt, after all? Why, after his elaborate precautions not to meet Evelyn Branch at the boat, had Hoyt deliberately come to see her at midnight—instead of meeting Marvin? Perhaps it was the girl who prevented Hoyt from keeping his rendezvous. Perhaps there had never been any sentimental attachment between Hoyt and Evelyn Branch. Perhaps their engagement had been an invention of Hoyt’s. Marvin felt both disturbed and strangely elated by this last thought.
“I suppose,” said Evelyn Branch, “that you’ve come to tell me I’d better get out of town.”
“As a matter of fact, I was about to suggest it. You could go to Darjeeling for a week or so, until this thing blows over.”
“I’m not going.”
“If it’s the financial side that worries you, I’m still ready to help out.”
“Still trying out your rebound theories?”
“Look here.” Abruptly Marvin reached down and seized the girl’s shoulders. “You may not realize it, but you’re heading for an awful jam. The investigation of Hoyt’s death is going to raise some loud and unpleasant odors around here, and as long as no one knows you’re in Calcutta, you may as well stay out of smelling range.”
“Your interest in me is purely impersonal, of course.” Evelyn arose and gently disengaged herself from Marvin’s grasp.
“Of course it’s not,” said Marvin. “But it’s honorable-for the moment. You don’t know me well enough to trust me, but at least you have no reason to distrust me.”
“Yes, I have,” said the girl. “Why are you trying so hard to get rid of me?”
“I just told you—”
“Isn’t it because of—the Bosa pearl?”
Marvin’s teeth clicked. He stared, speechless with the surprise of hearing the girl mention the gem that had been so much on his mind these last hours. Evelyn laughed softly, not unpleasantly.
“You see,” she said, “when you told me your name yesterday, it didn’t mean anything. I was too upset by the news about Harry Hoyt. But last night, after I’d had a chance to collect my thoughts, I connected up everything. Harry Hoyt wrote me about you—Lee Marvin and Orfèvre, Ltd. Have you got the Bosa pearl?”
Marvin hesitated an instant. Then, “Yes,” he said.
“I thought so. Are you going to keep it?”
“I—I don’t know,” said Marvin truthfully.
“And you expect me to trust you!”
“Is that why Hoyt came to see you last night—to tell you about the Bosa pearl?”
“The Bosa pearl wasn’t even mentioned.”
“You’re not doing very much yourself to establish mutual confidence,” said Marvin.
“Suppose you start the return of confidence by telling me your version of the story. Just how do you figure in Harry Hoyt’s deal for the Bosa pearl?”
“I was about to ask you the same question. You seem to be in possession of more facts than I am.”
“But you’re in possession of the pearl,” said Evelyn.
“Almost in spite of myself. Hoyt handed it to me last night a little while before he disappeared. He didn’t get a chance to tell me a word about it, and I haven’t the slightest idea of how he came to have it or what he expected me to do with it. That’s the truth.”
Evelyn Branch looked at him in silence for a moment. Then she walked slowly to the door, opened it.
“When you have a more plausible story,” she said, “come back and tell it to me. Then I might believe that you’re really trying to help a damsel in distress. Good-by.”
“Good-by,” said Marvin. He picked up his topee, bowed stiffly. “But I won’t come back. I’ve already gone pretty far out of my way to be a good Samaritan, and it begins to look as though I’d taken the wrong turning. The next move is yours.”
As he went down the steps, Marvin had a peculiar, empty feeling inside of him. It was damned unpleasant, this business of dusting off a pedestal for a subtly charming girl, only to find that the girl isn’t at all what she seems. Evelyn Branch was certainly not the innocent, helpless little thing he had imagined. She was obviously very much in on the mystery of the Bosa pearl and the Maharajah’s nao-ratna which now reposed behind the motor of Marvin’s gramophone. Just as obviously, she was not going to talk about it. The problem, therefore, was exclusively Marvin’s. He hurried past the crooked, tile-roofed, mud-and-bamboo huts that lined Guru’s Lane and hailed a taxi in Elliots Road.
When he reached his address in Theater Road, another car was just drawing up in front of the house. While Marvin was paying the taxi-walla, a dynamic little European in white trousers, black alpaca coat and khaki sun-helmet leaped nimbly from the first car.
With a sinking sensation, Marvin recognized Inspector Prike.
Chapter Nine
UNDER THE MANGO TREE
“Will you have a drink, inspector?” asked Marvin, as he climbed the stairs to his flat with Prike.
“Thank you,” said Inspector Prike, “a brandy peg. It might make our interview seem a little less—shall I say, formal?”
“More questions, inspector?” asked Marvin as he opened the door into the second-story hallway.
“Several,” said Prike. He removed his topee. The glistening arch of his bald head was dewy with perspiration.
“Anything I can do, inspector—” Marvin began.
“Yes, I know,” Prike broke in, dryly, “you’ll be glad to help.”
The two men entered the living-room. Marvin looked about him anxiously. On the floor, near the window which looked out upon the mango tree and Theater Road, were the shattered fragments of a phonograph record. Damn that bearer! How often did he have to tell him to be careful with records. Last week he had smashed the second movement of Beethoven’s Fifth, and today— Marvin bent down to look at the broken disc. La Forza Del Destino. Marvin glanced up. Prike was watching him sharply.
“Bearer!”
Instantly Marvin’s white-bearded Mohammedan servant appeared in the doorway, adjusting his red turban.
“Sahib.”
Marvin was about to read him the riot act on the subject of broken phonograph records, but something in Prike’s small, flinty eyes, which had never left him for a moment, changed his mind.
“Do-to brandy peg lao,” he ordered simply. Then he sat down.
“Mr. Marvin, by any chance do you know a woman named Evelyn Branch?” the inspector asked without further preliminaries.
A spasm of cold gripped Marvin’s viscera. He hesitated, then closed his eyes, as though trying to remember where he had heard the name before. Should he protect this headstrong girl, who not only refused his protection but seemed to regard him as an adversary? Or should he tell Prike all he knew—which was little enough.
