Bombay Mail, page 8
Hawley, the girl, and the guard got into the restaurant car. The train started to move slowly. Xavier jumped in after the guard, leaving the door open for Martini.
The guard herded his two charges to a table at one end of the car. While Hawley’s back was turned, Xavier quickly seated himself at a table at the opposite end and unfolded a copy of the Allahabad Pioneer, behind which he could hide his face while seeming to read. Over the top of his newspaper he could see Martini’s red fez moving up toward the end of the car occupied by Hawley.
“What will you eat, please, Sahib?”
Of course. This was the restaurant car. Xavier would have to eat. The waiter was standing over him. He ordered beefsteak-and-kidney pie and returned to his paper.
Refolding the newspaper, he managed to tear a tiny hole in the crease with his fingernail. Through the little hole he could watch Hawley and remain unrecognized. Later he would introduce himself but for the time being he would watch, unobserved, from his point of vantage.
Hawley was nervous. His face showed pale through its coat of tan and he didn’t seem in the least interested in food. Good. He would be at a disadvantage, then, in dealing with men who were calm and calculating. This murder of the Governor of Bengal might work to an advantage, after all.
Hawley, obviously, was suspected of having a hand in the murder; otherwise he wouldn’t be in the custody of the armed guard. Since he was already in a jam, Xavier wondered if it wouldn’t be advisable to discredit him further. Why wouldn’t it be the simplest way of checkmating Hawley by merely denouncing him for mining rubies without a license? If the stones were found in his possession, as they undoubtedly would be, then he would be in a hopeless tangle until after the expiration of the Hawley-Burgess option, three days hence. Xavier could then step in and tie up the concession in his own right—
No, that wouldn’t do. On further consideration, Xavier decided that action of this sort might defeat his purposes. Hawley would probably say that he had dug out the rubies under his concession to prospect, and that he had no intention of disposing of the stones, which he acknowledged as being the technical property of the State. He might say he was merely taking the rubies to Bombay to show them to a prospective backer, to interest new capital. If forced to tell his story, Hawley would probably go into the details of how he and his partner had been double-crossed by Xavier. A story of that kind might enlist outside sympathy, might even find the very capital Hawley was seeking and which Xavier was determined to block. No, that wouldn’t do. The new fields must be the exclusive property of Xavier.
The informer that Xavier had planted in the Burgess-Hawley camp, the Tamil who had first brought the news of the rubies and later told Xavier that Hawley was trying to raise capital on the stones, told a glowing story of the size and qualities of the first rubies. In his greedy dreams, Xavier saw the new Bengal ruby fields as rivaling the great Mogok mines of Burma. What if the increased production did drive down gem prices somewhat? Suppose the new Bengal fields equaled the three hundred thousand carats annually produced in Burma. The figures were staggering! They indicated a yearly income of many millions—not millions of rupees, merely, but millions of pounds sterling! Millions a year! No, there must be no chances taken. The concession must belong to Xavier alone. Hawley must be robbed of his means of taking up his option.
Xavier shifted his paper slightly, so that he could see Martini. Martini was sitting at a table with two Parsees, sneaking an occasional glance at Hawley at the next table. Xavier smiled to himself. Martini seemed to be an accomplished scoundrel. He must be, of course, to work with D. K. Lal in Allahabad. There was a possibility that he might even be too great a virtuoso in crime—that, after stealing the rubies at Xavier’s behest, he might run off with them on his own account. Well, that didn’t really matter. If Martini vanished with the rubies, Xavier would not object. The value of the stones was a drop in the bucket compared to the vast wealth involved in the ultimate control of the land that produced them. The principal thing was to deprive Hawley of the rubies. It might even be a good thing if Martini did vanish after the robbery. Xavier’s hands would then be technically clean.
The waiter brought Xavier’s breakfast. He was not hungry. It was too hot to eat, anyhow. The restaurant car, despite its electric fans, was an oven. The cutlery was hot to the touch. Even the tablecloth was hot. With his fork, Xavier reduced his steak-and-kidney pie to an unappetizing mess and left it untouched on his plate. He looked out the window. The little villages of mud huts seemed to be part of the flat, thirsty plain that wheeled drearily by. A whirlwind passed from village to village, sucking up the parched dust into a swirling column of white smoke. Xavier looked at his watch. The Bombay Mail would not stop for at least another hour.
Xavier rustled his newspaper and peered again at Hawley. Where was Hawley keeping the rubies? On his person, certainly; he would not be fool enough to leave them in his luggage. Where on his person? The youth was wearing shorts and a khaki shirt. Xavier counted only four pockets—one in the breast of his shirt, three in his shorts. Would he hide the stones in his sun helmet? Probably not. A helmet is too easily detached from the person, knocked off, blown off. He might have them in a hollow heel on one of his shoes—the way jewel smugglers sometimes do. He might have sewed the stones into his spine pad—the thickness at the collar of his khaki shirt that protected the back of his neck against the tropical sun. Not likely, though. That sort of subterfuge seemed foreign to the character of Jack Hawley as Xavier judged him.
Xavier saw Hawley as an honest, straightforward youth, with an almost childlike lack of guile. To Hawley’s frank nature, the height of trickery would probably consist of tying the rubies in a corner of his pocket handkerchief. To a thief of Martini’s reputed ability, Hawley should be an easy mark.
Xavier noticed that Hawley had finished eating and was filling a pipe with tobacco. Xavier watched him, observed that he closed his tobacco pouch with great care and pressed it in his hip pocket. As Hawley struck a match, Xavier was smiling in gleeful, triumph behind his newspaper. The tobacco pouch, of course—the very place a man like Hawley would choose to hide his rubies! That gesture of pressing the pouch between his hands to reassure himself that the stones were still there had given him away. Leave it to a man like Hawley to give himself away. Too honest.
Xavier suppressed his smile, folded his newspaper, and made the motion of wiping his mouth with his napkin. Then he registered delighted surprise as he pretended to recognize Hawley for the first time since he had come in. He got up, walked the length of the car, his face beaming, his hand outstretched.
“Well, well, Jack Hawley,” said Xavier. “Terribly glad I’ve found you. Won’t you join me in a glass of something cool?”
“He will not,” said the guard. “He ain’t allowed to leave this table till the next station.”
Hawley looked at Xavier suspiciously, acknowledged his greeting with a nod, but said nothing.
Xavier seemed gravely concerned over the guard’s interruption.
“Why, what’s the trouble, Hawley?” he asked.
“No concern o’ yours,” said the guard. “Inspector Prike’s orders.”
“But you won’t mind my sitting down at this table, will you? I’d like to apologize to this young man for missing an engagement with him yesterday—”
“I’ll let you talk to ’im, if you don’t try to say nothin’ I can’t overhear,” said the guard.
“We have no secrets,” said Xavier. “But can’t I offer you—and your lady friend too—a drink of something cool?”
“A nice pitcher of shandygaff mightn’t be a bad idea,” admitted the guard.
Xavier signaled the waiter.
Beatrice Jones did not reply. Her lips seemed paralyzed. They remained firmly pressed together. Her big gray eyes were a shade darker with some unrevealed fear. She avoided looking at Xavier as she fumbled in her bag for her compact and set about powdering her nose with almost frenzied industry.
“Lucky I found you, Mr. Hawley,” Xavier said.
Hawley regarded him with frank unfriendliness. “Lucky for whom?”
“For all of us,” replied Xavier. “Really, I’m terribly sorry about missing you at tea yesterday, but I was called out of town unexpectedly, and I had no way of notifying you.”
“Or your servants either, I suppose,” said Hawley. “I waited an hour and a half for you at your house.”
“Terribly sorry,” said Xavier. “Oriental servants are devilishly stupid. However, when I heard that you were going on to Bombay—”
“You’re kept well-informed, aren’t you?” said Hawley dryly.
“—I made arrangements to join this train this morning, at no little inconvenience to myself, I might add.” He smiled pleasantly.
“Pardon me if I can’t believe in your great self-sacrifice,” said Hawley.
“Now, Mr. Hawley—”
“You’re a double-crosser, Xavier,” said Hawley grimly.
Xavier looked pained. “Please—” he begged.
“Didn’t you throw us down at the last minute, knowing we couldn’t take up the option alone?” asked Hawley. “And when it expires, don’t you expect to get a brand-new concession for yourself, leaving us out in the cold?”
“My dear Hawley, why would I want to do a thing like that?” asked Xavier in an injured tone.
“Because you’re just as crooked as you think I’m dumb!” Hawley’s voice had risen unconsciously to a crescendo of indignation. His body was poised tensely, as though he were preparing to leap across the table for the throat of the man he considered his arch enemy.
Collins, the guard, looked up from his glass of shandy. There was a mustache of foam on his upper lip as he glowered at Hawley.
“’Ere now, no fighting!” he warned. “No fighting!”
Hawley ignored him. He relaxed from the threat of physical hostilities, but he spoke with determination: “When you crawfished on us, Xavier, Burgess and I made other plans. We found a way to raise the capital without you.”
“Splendid,” said Xavier. “That is, I’m glad you and your partner are on the verge of success. You’ll need great material success if you intend to hold the—shall I say ‘interest’?—of this charming opera singer.”
He bowed slightly to Beatrice Jones, who stared at him for a brief instant, then turned her head away. Hawley, surprised, looked first at the girl, then at Xavier.
“Opera singer?” Hawley repeated.
“Or,” continued Xavier, “haven’t you been able to dissuade Madame Smeganoff from returning to Russia?”
Hawley’s gaze darted from one to the other of them. He looked bewildered. Then Beatrice Jones deigned to answer Xavier. Her accent was as thick as Russian sour cream.
“I mahst gaw baick to Rah-shya. The Saw-vyet Gawverm-mant haid dohn me the honorr off angaging me for the Warkarr’s Ope-rra.”
As she spoke, Hawley’s expression changed from bewilderment to amazement, then to suspicion.
“I thought—” he began. “I didn’t know—”
“Meester Xavierr ees an awld frand,” explained the girl quickly.
At the first sounds of the strange accent, the soldier had lowered his glass of shandy and listened wide-eyed. Now he leaned forward, fixing his gaze on the girl, and spoke sharply:
“’Ere! ’Ere! Wot’s this? Who’s goin’ to Rooshia? More like than not yer future address’ll be the Presidency jail, you and this ’ere Amerrikin. Rooshia! So there’s international complications in this ’ere now murder!”
“Have they got you mixed up in this rotten murder of the Governor?” Xavier turned solicitously to Hawley. “Terribly sorry. You’ll be clear in no time, though, I’m sure.”
He paused and took a beautifully colored meerschaum pipe from the pocket of his silk coat. He stole a glance across to the next table where Martini sat. Martini seemed very busy picking his teeth, but Xavier noted that he was watching out of the corner of his eyes.
Laying his pipe on the table, Xavier pretended to be looking through his pockets again.
“I say, Hawley,” he said, “I wonder if you could lend me a pipeful of tobacco? I seem to have run short.”
Hawley hesitated. The pause was but a fraction of a second, but it was enough to confirm Xavier’s suspicions. Doesn’t know how to lie, Xavier said to himself.
“Sorry,” said Hawley, “but I’m out myself. I’m smoking my last crumb in this pipeful.”
“I’ll buy a tin,” said Xavier. As he signaled the waiter, he stole another glance at Martini. Martini was smiling faintly at his toothpick. Martini had seen. Martini had understood. Martini knew that Xavier had filled his own tobacco pouch on the station platform at Allahabad.
For the next half hour Xavier talked continuously about nothing. When the Bombay Mail pulled into the station of Manikpur, Xavier rose, said something about having to send his bearer on an errand and hurried out. He was the first one to leave the restaurant car.
Jack Hawley was surprised and relieved. He had gone through a nasty few seconds when Xavier had asked for tobacco. He didn’t understand how Xavier could have found out where he kept the rubies, but he was convinced that Xavier was after the stones. Xavier’s abrupt exit puzzled him, but did not reassure him. The best he could hope for was a breathing spell.
“Come along,” said the guard, resting his rifle in the crook of his elbow. “Back to the car with you.”
The restaurant car was being generally vacated. There was a crowd around the steps. Other passengers were taking advantage of the stop to come in for tiffin. Hawley was pushed and jostled.
The heat of the noonday sun struck him in the face like a physical blow. If the inside of the car was like an oven, the withering heat of the platform was like a blast furnace. The guard was urging his two charges through the milling, noisy crowd.
Suddenly Hawley held back, stopped. He had felt a light pressure on his thigh—not the bumping of jostling passengers, but a feeling of deft movement, like a phantom hand in his hip pocket. He whirled.
He saw bobbing faces, black faces, brown faces, beards, turbans, women with gold imbedded in their nostrils.
He carried his hand to his hip pocket. His mouth went suddenly dry. The tobacco pouch was gone. He thought he saw a man moving through the crowd faster than men usually move under the midday sun. Instinctively he bolted after him.
The guard thrust the stock of his rifle between his legs. Hawley fell flat.
“No, you don’t!” said the guard. “I’m watchin’ you.”
The guard yanked Hawley to his feet, kept a tight grip on his arm. Hawley struggled. The guard poked him in the stomach with the butt of his gun. Hawley doubled up, painfully breathless.
“I’ve been robbed!” gasped Hawley, when he got his wind back. “I was chasing the—” ,
“What can you be robbed of?” demanded the guard. “Inspector Prike’s got all your valuables. I searched you myself.”
“My tobacco pouch!” said Hawley.
“Your tobacco pouch!” repeated the guard derisively. “It ain’t worth eight annas. And you said just now yourself it was empty. Come on, keep movin’.”
Hawley walked on mechanically, looking hopelessly at the panorama of faces that flashed before him, faces that all seemed a little red in the reflection of the sun from the sides of the train. He did not see Xavier. He felt a light touch on his free arm. He looked down at Beatrice Jones. He saw the same look of sympathetic interest that had come into her gray eyes when he had paled at the discovery of Xavier at Chheoki.
“I think I know who picked your pocket,” she said.
Hawley smiled sarcastically. “Do you, Madame Smeganoff?” he asked suspiciously.
She colored slightly, but ignored the implication contained in his tone.
“That man in the red fez who was sitting at the next table—I saw him following us.”
“You know exactly where he went, I suppose,” said Hawley incredulously.
“I saw him getting into that first-class compartment, third from the end,” she told him calmly.
For an instant Hawley’s suspicion wavered. He wanted to believe her. His steps lagged as his eyes instinctively followed the girl’s indicating finger. But the guard was rudely impatient.
“Keep movin’,” said the guard. “The train don’t stay here all day. The Inspector is waitin’ for you two.”
Chapter Twelve: MISS KLINK ENTERTAINS
Miss Ursula Klink was painting a water color. She had set up her easel in her compartment, unfolded her patent artist’s stool, and was hard at work on the scenes of India which she would exhibit at the Tuesday Morning Ladies’ Culture Club when she got back to Keokuk, Iowa. As a matter of fact, Miss Ursula Klink wished she were already back in Keokuk. India, she had decided, was really not a nice place for maiden ladies traveling alone. She had not felt safe for one moment since she landed, what with the heat and disease germs and wild animals and natives and all. She was cutting short her original tour, and would do her water colors of the Taj Mahal, the Amritsar Temple, and the Himalayan Mountains from a set of picture postcards she had purchased in Calcutta.
The scenes in the railway stations, however, she could paint from life. She would have felt a little nervous had she been forced to get out on the station platform among the half-naked brown men and the women with their ears and noses laden with barbaric jewelry. But she could do very nicely, sitting in her compartment and looking through the car window. There were drawbacks, of course. Every so often she had to remove her tinted sun glasses, to make sure she was getting the colors right. Then the Bombay Mail did not stay very long in each station. Eight minutes in Chheoki was all the schedule indicated and two minutes had already gone. Miss Klink made a hurried splash of red on her drawing-paper. That was for the turban of the bearded police officer on the platform.
Someone knocked sharply at the door of her compartment. Miss Klink looked up, annoyed at this interruption of her already harried pursuit of art.
