Bengal Fire, page 8
“Did you see anyone else come to Mr. Hoyt’s while you were there?”
“Only two persons, sar.”
“Two? Who were they?”
“Was able to identify only Mr. Chitterji Rao. Second person arrived in taxi shortly behind you, Mr. Marvin.”
“Behind me? Was he following me?”
“Am unable to state positively, Mr. Marvin. Possibly—”
“I was there twice, Babu. Which time did he seem to be following me?”
“Approximately at two o’clock, if memory is not failing.”
“Probably you’re right. I don’t suppose you’ll be at Hoyt’s office any more, now, Babu?”
“For present am reposing quietly at home at following address.” The Babu gave Marvin a visiting-card big enough to have been dealt from a bridge deck.
“Thank you, Babu,” said Marvin, pocketing the card. “And good-by.”
Well, that explained how the thief had so easily located Marvin’s hiding-place. He could have followed Marvin home, climbed the mango tree in the compound, watched him put the nao-ratna in the gramophone, waited for a chance to steal it. Two questions remained unanswered: Who was the thief, and what was Marvin going to do about it?
Marvin decided that a drink might clarify his thought on the matter, so he stopped off at Spence’s on the way home. However, the sight of his perspiring friends, munching chini bedam and spiced crisps as they quaffed chotapegs failed to prove particularly stimulating. After the third drink he took a ghari to Theater Road.
As Marvin let himself into his flat the fragrance of cigarette smoke floated to his nostrils. He frowned pensively, closing the door silently behind him. The smoke was not the autumnal-smelling emanation of vile native fags but the agreeable aroma of Virginia tobacco. Had his bearer been into the cigarettes again? Marvin hurried down the hall to the living-room.
On the threshold he paused. Blue tendrils of smoke curled upward from the depth of his best easy chair. The high back of the chair hid the occupant. As he watched, an arm reached out to flick an ash into the brass receiver on the end table—a slender, white arm. The fingers that held the cigarette were long and graceful. Marvin cleared his throat.
Instantly the figure of a young woman sprang from the chair. Evelyn Branch turned to face him. For a brief moment fear flashed in her gray-green eyes. Her elbows were tight against her sides and her lithe body was taut with nervous defiance. When she saw Marvin she relaxed.
“You frightened me,” she smiled. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I don’t usually knock before entering. This is my own home.”
“I’m sorry,” said the girl. “Your bearer let me in. He said he was expecting you for dinner.”
Marvin advanced slowly into the room. The surge of pleasure he had felt on recognizing Evelyn Branch gave way first to surprise when he noted her frightened expression, then to suspicion.
“So you’ve come for dinner?” he asked, none too cordially.
“I—I’ve come to apologize. I’m sorry I was rude to you this afternoon.”
Marvin motioned the girl back to the easy chair. He lit a cigarette. Then he asked, “What’s happened to cause this sudden change of heart?”
“Nothing’s happened,” the girl replied.
“Then what are you afraid of? When I came in just now you jumped like a scared rabbit. Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s just—” Evelyn’s fingers fluttered in a vague gesture. “It’s just India, I guess. This city gives me the creeps. It’s so big and teeming and—and strange. Even if this awful thing hadn’t happened to Harry, I’m sure Calcutta would make me jumpy. I feel so alone— and you’ve been very kind—”
The girl’s voice faded to a whisper. Marvin walked to the back of her chair. He noted idly that her shoulders twitched nervously, that tiny silken whorls showed on the nape of her neck below the brim of her close-fitting white hat. The hat was too small for India; not enough protection against the sun. He must tell her. No, he wouldn’t tell her anything. She knew too much already— about the Bosa pearl, for instance.
“You’re not being frank with me,” he said suddenly. “What are you afraid of?”
The girl answered without looking at him. “The police,” she said. “They came after you left. First one detective and then another. They asked questions until I thought I’d go crazy. You told them about me, of course—because I wouldn’t go to Darjeeling.”
“So you think I sent the police after you?”
“Well, I—I don’t know. George Linnet says you must have.”
“Linnet? So you’ve been seeing him, too. How did he find you, since you didn’t go to the Grand Hotel, as he expected?”
“I sent for him.”
“I see.” Marvin walked around to the front of the chair. He stood with his hands in his pockets until Evelyn Branch raised her eyes to meet his gaze. “What is Linnet to you?”
“Nothing. He hasn’t even suggested—taking me to Darjeeling. I met him on the steamer for the first time.”
“Then why did you send for him?”
“I wanted to talk to him. The police told me so many disagreeable things about Harry Hoyt—they hinted that he was a blackmailer—that corresponded with what Colonel Linnet had been telling me about Harry on the steamer, I thought maybe the Colonel could help straighten me out.”
“What was Linnet’s business with Hoyt?”
“I don’t think they had any business together.” The girl paused. “Colonel Linnet came to India to do some big game hunting, and I think Harry Hoyt arranged for him to be the guest of some Indian prince; that’s all.”
Marvin started. “Not the Maharajah of Jharnpur?”
“I think that was his name.”
Marvin looked at the girl for a long moment without speaking. Linnet—Jharnpur—the Bosa pearl—Hoyt—Evelyn Branch. What was the connection here?
“Funny thing,” Evelyn continued, “but Colonel Linnet never believed I was coming out to marry Harrison Hoyt. He thought I was working some racket with Harry and tried to find out what it was.”
The shadow of a smile trembled briefly on the girl’s lips and then was gone. At first it seemed a wistful smile. Or was it roguish? Marvin was on his guard. The girl was probably acting. He must not put too much faith in the innocent expression of those big, gray-green eyes.
“Well, what kind of racket was it?” he asked abruptly.
Evelyn laughed softly. “I hadn’t the faintest idea that Harry Hoyt had turned blackmailer,” she said. “Or—”
She stood up. She was standing very close to Marvin, so close that the sense of her nearness, the warmth of her body, the fragrance of her hair, enveloped him like some subtle vapor with the occult power to make him see things in her eyes that he had never seen before—things that belonged to another universe where beauty was not fragile, and cruelty had not yet been born. He had a sudden impulse to sweep her into his arms, to hold her in his crushing embrace while he told her that he was being stiff-necked and proud and foolishly suspicious, that he had lied for her, that he would gladly lie again at the first drop of her wistful little blond head against his shoulder.
“Show me the Bosa pearl,” said Evelyn Branch.
Marvin came down to earth with a bump.
“I haven’t got it,” he said.
“Oh.” The spell was broken. Tiny hard lines formed at the corners of the girl’s eyes. Her lips were pressed firmly together. “You said this afternoon you had it.”
“But I haven’t got it now.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s been stolen.”
The girl’s eyes flashed disbelief. “Is that the best story you can tell?” she said.
“It happens to be the truth.”
Evelyn sat down again. She opened her bag, took out her compact, and began powdering her nose as a signal for imminent departure. As the open bag dropped in her lap, some papers slid partly out. Marvin stared at them.
“Do you know,” the girl said, “for a while this afternoon after you left, I flattered myself that you were one of those rare, disinterested persons who—” She stopped, saw Marvin’s stare, instantly snapped her bag closed.
“I’m sorry,” said Marvin. “I didn’t mean to pry, but I couldn’t help seeing.”
“Seeing what?”
“That cablegram in your bag. So you lied to me yesterday?”
“Lied to you?” The girl paled.
“Yes. You told me that Hoyt hadn’t tried to stop your coming out to India. But I saw that cable in your bag, addressed to you in New York: Let me quote from memory: Don’t come. Difficult situation pending. Wait for letter explaining. Is that right?”
“Approximately.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about that yesterday?”
“You don’t think any woman likes to admit to a handsome stranger that she’s been made a fool of, do you?”
“But why did you come here—in the face of Hoyt’s cable?”
Evelyn bit her lip. “I’ll tell you that,” she said, “when you’re ready to talk business on the Bosa pearl.”
“But I’ve told you the truth about that.”
“All right.” She held out her hand. Marvin took it. “Good-by.”
She stood a moment with her hand in his, then suddenly, almost fiercely, she snatched her fingers away. She retreated a few steps, looking at him with an amazingly complex expression which to Marvin seemed a composite of disappointment and pleading, of fond reluctance and fear-born determination, of deep suspicion and child-like trust, of complete bewilderment.
“I almost forgot,” she said. “Here.”
She opened her bag again, took out some small object which Marvin did not see, flung it past him. It rattled across the floor.
“Wait a minute,” said Marvin. “Don’t you think that we—?”
But Evelyn was gone. Marvin could still feel the touch of her fingers across his palm as he listened to the door slam. He started after her, took a dozen steps into the hall, then stopped. He lit a cigarette, walked slowly back into the living-room, sat down.
As he watched the smoke curl from his cigarette, Marvin congratulated himself that he had not kissed Evelyn Branch. For a moment he had trembled on the rapturous verge. She knew it, too, as she stood there close to him; the very atmosphere was electric with the tension of mutual feeling. She had even expected him to kiss her. But it was only part of her game—a game in which the Bosa pearl was patently the stake, a game in which Harrison Hoyt had lost his life. Suddenly Marvin ground out his cigarette, jumped up.
On the floor near the gramophone something glittered, the missile which Evelyn had flung at him as she left. Marvin hurried forward, stooped, picked up a silver button—a common type of detachable button made in imitation of the old-time Siamese tical.
“I’ll be damned!” he said aloud.
So she was light-fingered, too, this girl! Hesitantly, almost fearfully, he reached into his pocket for the silver button that had popped off the Dutch-style jacket of Kurt Julius in Hoyt’s office the day before. The button was still there! Wonderingly he drew it out, placed it on his hand beside the one he had picked up from the floor.
The convex surface of each silver slug was intricately carved in the shape of a tiger’s head. The two buttons were identical.
With a brusque motion he thrust the bits of silver into his pocket. Where the dickens did the girl get Kurt Julius’s button? Was Julius, too, mixed up in this business of the Bosa pearl? Unlikely, and yet— Perhaps that was the cause of the quarrel Marvin had overheard in Hoyt’s office. He would find out.
He crossed the room to a wall telephone, twisted the crank. He twisted for nearly five minutes before he finally got through to the Grand Hotel. Kurt Julius? No, Mr. Julius was not in. He had gone out, perhaps half an hour ago.
Marvin slammed down the receiver. He clapped his hands. His bearer arrived on the run.
“Get a taxi!” Marvin ordered.
Chapter Twelve
MURDER IN THE MENAGERIE
At half-past eleven that night, Inspector Prike stepped carefully around two half-naked coolies and a humpbacked sacred bull who were sleeping peacefully on the pavement outside the Bow Bazaar Police Station, and went inside. He had dropped Rufus Dormer in Dalhousie Square five minutes before.
Prike found Deputy Inspector Robbins still at work. A spinning cloud of green flies beat crazily against Robbin’s desk-light, dropping to his blotter in crawling, hopping swarms. Robbins brushed them off with his hand as Prike entered.
“Robbins,” said Prike, “I suppose that in your usual thorough manner you have been keeping an alert eye on a man named George Linnet.”
“Colonel Linnet,” corrected the deputy inspector.
“He was known as Colonel to the passengers of the Bangalore which brought him to Calcutta yesterday,” said Prike, “but his American passport mentions no military title.”
“He looks like a military man,” said the deputy inspector.
“He was,” said Prike. “I cabled the War Department in Washington this afternoon and received the reply that Linnet served as Lieutenant with the American Expeditionary Forces in France.”
“So that’s where he got his hand blown off,” said Robbins. “I was noticing he wears a gray glove on his left hand, and the hand hangs down like a shop-window dummy’s.”
“My Washington cable says that Linnet lost the first, second, and third fingers of his left hand in grenade practice behind the lines in 1918,” said Prike. “Washington also reports that Linnet was court-martialed for insubordination and dismissed from the service in June, 1919.”
Deputy Inspector Robbins favored his superior with a look of grudging admiration.
“Then his title of Colonel is just a hoax?” he asked.
“I am not sure yet,” Prike answered. “In the meantime you are aware that Linnet has left the Grand Hotel.”
“Yes,” said Robbins, consulting some papers which fluttered in the faint, warm breeze stirred up by the ceiling fan. “He left the Grand Hotel at ten-thirty-five this evening in a motorcar belonging to the household of the Maharajah of Jharnpur. He proceeded directly to the Maharajah’s Palace in Alipore.”
Inspector Prike reached across the desk toward the sheaf of papers in Robbins’s hand. “Could I have the seating plan of the Hoyt bachelor dinner?” he asked. “Where was Linnet sitting in respect to Hoyt?”
“If you are after someone who had a chance to slip a powder into Hoyt’s food or drink,” said Robbins, handing over the table diagram, “what about this chap Kurt Julius? He was sitting right next to Hoyt.”
“Yes, I know,” said Prike. For a moment he studied the diagram in silence. Marvin sat across the table; too long a reach. Dormer was several seats away. Linnet was closer. Chitterji Rao—Henry Kobayashi—and Julius—?
Prike looked up as the desk telephone rang. Robbins lifted the receiver.
“Robbins speaking … Who? … Fancy! … That is jolly! … See here, you ruddy jangli-walla, how the blooming hell could he get away from you? … Well, take another dekko … Yes, and right off!”
Robbins slammed down the receiver and looked sheepishly at Inspector Prike. “Jenkins lost his man,” he said apologetically.
“Kurt Julius?”
Robbins nodded. “Seems like he came rushing out of his hotel like a madman. Rufus Dormer was waiting for him at the Chowringhee entrance—”
“Dormer?” Prike stopped mopping his bald spot and stared at Robbins in surprise.
“Dormer,” the deputy inspector repeated. “Seems like when he saw Dormer, Julius started to go back into the hotel, but Dormer grabbed his arm. Then the two of them jumped into a ghari, very excited, and talking loud. Jenkins didn’t hear what they said but he follows them when they go galloping off down Lindsay Street. Somewhere near the Municipal Bazaar he loses sight of them and when he finds the ghari again, Julius and Dormer are both gone. No sign of either of them.” Robbins picked up the phone. “But I’ll pick them up again inside the half-hour. I’ll have twenty men on the job in two shakes of a bhain’s tail.”
Prike smiled tolerantly. “No need of it,” he said. “I rather fancy we’ll hear from Julius himself before your men find him.”
“Voluntarily?” Robbins frowned. “How so, inspector?”
“When I talked to Julius half an hour ago,” said Prike, “he was extremely agitated. At that time, I couldn’t determine whether his agitation was due to the fact that I had discovered a motive for which he might have murdered Hoyt, or whether he was boiling internally with some particularly explosive bit of information that he couldn’t quite decide to divulge to me. From what Jenkins has just told you on the phone, I’m inclined to think that Julius was definitely anxious to reveal something which he was afraid to do in the presence of Dormer. His reaction when he found Dormer waiting for him outside the hotel indicates that—assuming, of course, that Julius was on his way to see me. I would suggest, therefore, that we wait a little, Robbins, to see if he is able to get rid of Dormer.”
They waited. Midnight came and went. The suicidal swarm of green flies drifted into little heaps on the desk and on the floor. Deputy Inspector Robbins fidgeted with the waxed ends of his blond mustache, evidently spoiling for action but unwilling to take the initiative in the face of his superior’s calm determination to wait. Inspector Prike spent the interval in the adjoining office, which was that of the police surgeon. At half-past twelve he came in to Robbins bearing a thick volume on medical toxicology.
“Robbins,” he asked, “have you ever run across a case of chronic chromium poisoning?”
“I don’t believe so,” said the deputy inspector. “What are the symptoms?”
“Excoriation of the epidermis and ulceration of the septum,” quoted Prike, reading from the medical volume. “In other words, Robbins, scaly skin and a sore nose.”
“I didn’t notice that this chap Hoyt had a sore nose,” said Robbins.
“I wasn’t speaking of Hoyt,” Prike said, closing the book, “but I did notice the symptoms on Jacques Vrai of Chandernagore. Do you happen to know, Robbins, whether the chromium mines are still being worked in New Caledonia?”
