“There is, Inspector. Something that I think will bring you a certain amount of pleasure.”
“Indeed?”
The black bar of moustache chopped down on the word like a moving part in some relentlessly efficient machine.
Ghote coughed. Once.
“Inspector,” he said, “for reasons I will not immediately enter into, it has so happened that during my stay in London I have felt bound to make certain investigations. And during the course of my inquiries I had occasion to visit a certain café-establishment a few yards off the Portobello Road, W.11.”
He looked up at his companion. He felt he was producing his facts with exemplary precision, and was anxious to detect any answering flicker. But the thin lips beneath the thick black bar of moustache were unmoving.
He went on.
“The name of the establishment in question is the Robin’s Nest. And in the course of my investigation there and elsewhere I discovered—”
“That the good Robin pushes whatever dope he can lay his little paws upon.”
The words were spoken sharply in that particularly cutting Scots accent.
Ghote blinked.
“Thank you for your information, Inspector,” the Scotsman said. “And now let me tell you something: your friend Robin continues his activities only just so long as we think he’ll lead us to someone worth occupying our time about, and not one moment longer.”
The thin lips twisted in a sudden spasm of pent-up irritation.
“And I hope to hell, Inspector, that nothing you’ve seen fit to do has alerted that particular gentleman.”
Ghote sought wildly for something to answer.
The Scotsman gave him a last furious glare.
“And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll say good day. I happen to have a considerable amount of work to do.”
He turned on his heel and left Ghote standing rooted to the gleamingly polished parquet floor of the lofty, dignified, quietly magnificent conference hall.
TWELVE
The last of the conference delegates, anxious to go about their business of the evening, poured past Ghote on their way out through the wide-flung doors under their stately surround of heavy wood. Occasionally one of them more eager or less observant than the others, jostled him. But he continued to stand on the very spot where he had been when the Scots inspector left, like a post jutting up in some fast-flowing stream, its weedy covering just touched by the rush of water but itself totally unmoving.
The thoughts went tumbling through his head.
So the news he had been so proud to be bringing to his British colleague for the great campaign against crime wherever it reared its head was no news at all. The telling of it had even put into his colleague’s head the notion that he himself had bungled about like a real amateur and spoilt some carefully-laid plan.
And there had not even been time enough for him to give an assurance that this had not been so. His whole well-thought-out recital had been cut short at the outset. He had had no opportunity even of making the point that this traffic in drugs from his own Bombay was so well-established that even a person like Johnny Bull knew just where they were to be bought.
Let alone had there been a chance to make any incidental remarks about a certain officious police-constable.
And, through all this, shot the thought that he had been treated with the minimum of consideration by the very man he had selected to be his informant. He had hardly even been granted courtesy. Everything his racing mind turned to was lit up and distorted by the biliously yellow light this cast.
It was the final humiliation. He had thought his investigation was going so well. And then, one after another, had come these black defeats—the rough handling by the three brothers, rescue in circumstances even more humiliating, and now this final snub from a colleague at the conference, the very conference which had all along given him that comfortable feeling of status.
He would give up the whole business.
Yes, that was it. Throw in his hand. Why not? He had done his best. He had done more, much more, than could reasonably have been expected of him. And he had met with this final, miserable rebuff. All right. That would be that. He would give up.
A doubt struck him.
Could he give up as easily as all that? Wouldn’t Cousin Vidur and Mrs. Datta have something to say? Hadn’t they after all succeeded in setting him on?
And almost in the same instant he realised that he had got the perfect answer.
He was in a position to make his own terms with the Dattas. He had at least learnt one useful thing in the course of last night. He had learnt that the stately, self-opinionated Vidur was nothing but a sneaking old afimwallah.
Suddenly he felt a gleam of pleasure, such as he had hardly expected to feel again in the whole course of his stay. Now he knew why all those bottles and packets and jars of laxatives were ranged on the Dattas’ mantelpiece: constipation was the classic side-effect of opium-eating.
He smiled to himself.
At least it should not be very difficult to see, if necessary, that Cousin Vidur took his side in any dispute about continuing the case. And Cousin Vidur would just have to lay down the law to his wife, a pastime he generally seemed pleased enough to do in any case.
Things at once began taking on a rosier hue. Freed of the burden of his investigation, he would have time to enjoy his visit. He could see all those sights—the Tower, the Houses of Parliament, the Old Bailey. And he would have plenty of time to deal with the neglected question of the present for Protima. All that that needed was sufficient opportunity to look around at things for himself. And now he would have it.
He glanced round, astonished that the lofty, high-windowed, airy hall behind him should already be empty of people, and hurried off to the now familiar Tube station.
But, when he got back to the Tagore House and began to break the news of his intention of releasing himself from the burden which Cousin Vidur and Mrs. Datta had combined to place on him, he found that after all things were not going to go as he had planned.
He had had an unexpectedly chilly walk from the Tube at Marble Arch, thanks to the sudden upspringing of a hard cold wind which whipped levelly along the streets sending an occasional crinkled dried leaf skittering wildly along the bare pavement.
He hung up his big coat on one of the downstairs pegs, grateful for almost the first time for the garment’s heavy warmth. He then marched resolutely up to the sitting-room, hoping to find both the Dattas there together so that the business he had set his hand to could be dealt with at one clean blow. And surely enough, both Cousin Vidur, standing in front of the little popping gas fire, sturdy legs apart, and his wife, sitting on the edge of one of the low couches with a purple piece of knitting in her hands, were there seemingly almost too ready to hear what he had to say.
“Ah, Cousin, Cousin,” Vidur began, giving Ghote a look of keen interest, “and how is it going, your search for our lost girl?”
Ghote darted him a quick glance. As he had expected, there plain to see if they were looked for were the typical pin-pointed pupils of the opium-taker. It was pleasant to note their existence. They were an insurance. If the coming conversation did not go just as he wanted it to, he could take Cousin Vidur on one side and put certain matters to him. After which he would have no more trouble.
So he replied cheerfully enough.
“Well, Cousin,” he said, “up to a point things have been going well. I have some information for you which I know you will be able to make use of yourselves. But I regret to say that, as for me, I shall not be able to go on with the inquiry.”
It was then that Mrs. Datta put her question.
She looked up from the slowly descending oblong of deep purple that was her knitting and, with the steel spectacles glued to her face a little more askew than usual, she gave him a single direct look.
“But have you no pride in finishing the job you have begun?” she said.
And, to his own consi
derable astonishment, Ghote found that there could be only one answer: he had indeed too much pride to quit. Seen in this light, there was no possible way out.
“Pride?” he stammered. “But—Well—Well, I know what you mean. That is to say, I have not completely given up, not completely.”
Then he produced for them both a short résumé of his work the evening before. He concluded by describing, briefly, the attack the Smith brothers had made on him. But he did not say what had happened after “a passing constable in the nick of time happened to see what was going on and came to the rescue.”
During his recital Mrs. Datta had gone back to her knitting, with a steady click of needle on needle which Ghote had found obscurely irritating. At the end of it, without ceasing to move the prominent knuckles of her hands in the same vigorous rhythm, she made one comment.
“That man Robin: he is the one.”
“What do you mean?” Ghote snapped at her.
“The man Robin is the one who is hiding my Peacock.”
Ghote went over and sat seriously beside her.
“I am afraid I have bad news,” he said.
“You have more to tell?”
“No, nothing more. But it seems you have not drawn the right conclusions from what I have said.”
Mrs. Datta brought her lips together in a hard-drawn knot of disbelief. But she said nothing.
“I am afraid,” Ghote continued soberly, “that I have been forced to the conclusion that almost certainly the Peacock is no longer alive.”
But it was plain that Mrs. Datta had not really been listening. She had been prepared for politeness’ sake to pretend to give him her attention, but as soon as that charade was over her eyes glinted with purpose once again.
“Yes,” she said. “And now I will order them in the kitchens to bring you a good meal, and then you can go to the Robin’s Nest and find where he is keeping her.”
Ghote tried once more.
“Police work is largely a matter of experience,” he observed as a beginning.
“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Datta agreed vigorously. “It is good that you have plenty of experience. You will know what to say to this Robin. You will know what will make him give her up.”
“But that is not the question.”
Mrs. Datta turned round on the edge of the couch and stopped her knitting. She looked Ghote fair and squarely in the eyes through her glinting spectacles.
“It is the question,” she said. “Otherwise I would go round and deal with him myself.”
And at this the barriers broke and a fountain of pent-up rage swooshed up in Ghote’s head.
“It is not the question, not the question at all,” he shouted. “The question is: how am I going to find out what the Smith brothers know when they have threatened to knock me senseless if I go anywhere near them. And they can do it.”
He sat and glowered at Mrs. Datta.
“You should not go to the Smith brothers,” she replied with calm.
For a moment Ghote thought she was allowing him to back out. He did not know whether he was still prepared to, but the feeling that the opportunity was there opened new prospects to him. But then he realised, with the inevitability of all good anti-climaxes, that all she was saying was that he ought to be going to the Robin’s Nest instead of the Smiths’ house.
He jumped up.
“A meal can wait,” he said. “I am going round there now. To the Smiths’. You understand? To the Smiths’. To the Smiths’.”
Ghote made his way on foot to the dingy tumbledown area where the Smiths’ house was situated. He had felt altogether too enraged to wait tamely for a Number 15 bus to take him sedately to his destination. And, after having marched angrily through the wind-whipped streets of Bayswater for about a mile, he found in any case that he had come to the conclusion he ought to think things over very carefully before he actually got to the house itself.
So for the remainder of the journey—it was perhaps a couple of miles all told—he walked along more quietly, turning over in his mind the various possibilities. And, well before he had reached his destination, he had formulated a plan.
Plainly, the thing to do was simply to lie in wait at some convenient point near the house and keep watch until he had made sure all three of the brothers had gone out. From all he had heard, it was clear that they were out of the house often enough—either at the Robin’s Nest drinking cups of tea and playing the juke box at little Robin’s expense, or in the Duke of Wellington public-house or presumably in other places. But their sprawling, loud-voiced mother, on the other hand, looked as if she seldom got out of her soft slippers and vast flowered apron to go trundling round the neighbourhood.
And with her sons out of the way, it might be possible to get something out of her. The only snag was that counting the three brothers out was not going to be all that simple.
Pete had after all suddenly appeared in the entrance to the alley the night before when a few minutes earlier he had been standing indoors. A careful exploration of the immediate neighbourhood of the crumbling old house was called for.
Coming down the street where he had thought he had finally lost Pete in the chase from the Robin’s Nest, Ghote began looking about him to get a more accurate picture of the lie of the land.
And then suddenly, unmistakably, he saw the constable, his rescuer. Walking towards him from the far end of the road, with that leisurely, proprietorial air he had studied the evening before, was the very same man.
Like a little furry animal darting into the safety of its hole, Ghote simply nipped round the nearest corner and broke into an undignified sprint. This was an encounter he would not face, come what might. To be taken solemnly to task for disobeying the sage advice he had been given as he was put on that Number 15 bus: that would be altogether too much to endure, summon up his patience how he might.
He slowed down and came to a stop.
But, if the fellow was on the beat in the neighbourhood, at any moment he might be surprised by him.
He turned and cautiously made his way back to the point where he had taken flight. He peered carefully round the corner, and, with a small feeling of satisfaction, located his rescuer once more. He was standing by the turning of the street where the alley leading to the Smiths’ house was. And, as Ghote watched, he seemed to make up his mind and moved ponderously off.
Quickly Ghote followed. He was in good time to see him taking up, with due deliberation, a station in a dark shop doorway about thirty yards away from the alley entrance and on the opposite side of the road.
So they had both decided to spy on the Smiths.
Ghote came to the conclusion that this suited him very well. If the constable was going to stay where he was for a little, he himself could find out undisturbed just how it was that Pete Smith had taken him in the rear the evening before.
And, without much trouble, he quickly enough hit on what looked as if it might be the answer. There seemed to be no back alley leading to the Smiths’ house, but almost at once he found between the nearest street and the house a long, single-story building which looked as if it ought not to be too much of an obstacle. It was a small factory, blank and shuttered, with a single drab painted signboard fixed to the wall saying “Easifoam Products Ltd.” in yellow letters on a green background. It had a grey-slated, gently-sloping roof.
Ghote inspected it more closely. And at one end he found there was a narrow niche about three feet deep between the factory itself and the house next door. And at the back of this niche a solid-looking drainpipe ran up to a long gutter.
There would be no difficulty in shinning up, sheltered from any passer-by in the niche. Getting across the gentle slope of the roof would present no problem. But what lay on the other side? How quickly could someone complete the journey from the house?
Ghote stepped out into the road and looked up and down it. No one in sight. For a cautious minute or two he stood pretending to stare up at the factory noticeboard in an interested m
anner. He even actually found himself wondering about the difference in English and Indian law that decreed that while at home the name of the factory would probably have been Easifoam Products (Private) Ltd. here it was only Easifoam Products Ltd.
Shaking his head to clear away such idle thoughts, he took a last quick glance at the empty street, darted into the niche, grasped the drainpipe and heaved himself upwards.
Five seconds later he was at roof level. Moving on all fours like a monkey, he clambered rapidly over the slates to the top and then down the gentle slope on the far side till he was certain he would be safe from observation from the road.
He paused to look round.
On this side of the factory there were two concrete yards, similar expanses of bare cement, one with a few oil drums stacked together in the middle and the other with a small pile of cardboard containers. They were separated by a high wall. Each of them was lit brightly and barely by an outside light from the factory itself, one protected by a thick glass cover, the other with its cover dangling loose.
To get down into either one of them would be comparatively easy. It would mean shuffling along the gutter on this side and dropping down about twelve feet. But it would be a pointless operation: once down, there was no way up on the far side from either one yard or the other.
Ghote looked out into the darkness. The bleak-looking back of a tall house which might well be the Smiths’ was not far away. In two of its windows lights shone. One was curtained and glowed a bright yellow. Through the other a glimpse of some pallid green wallpaper and the edge of a brown cupboard could be seen.
Then, as he watched, the unmistakable sprawling silhouette of Ma Smith appeared in the second window. It was there only for an instant, but that was long enough.
Ghote surveyed the space between his perch on the roof and the lighted windows with new care. And then he saw how it might be that Pete had got out. To drop down into either of the two yards directly in front of him was to be trapped, but between them there was a straight path leading right to the Smiths’ backyard: the top of the dividing wall.
Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock Page 14
