Inspector Ghote Plays a Joker

by H. R. F. Keating

  Soon he felt the silence growing really oppressive, and there was still not the least sign that Sir Rustomjee’s trained politeness had conquered his deep inward-turning.

  In the garden it was beginning to get a little dark and the big room was already very gloomy with the heavy draping of the red curtains lessening the light from the windows. It was no longer easy to see Sir Rustomjee’s face, protected as it was by a wing on the back of his high red-plush covered chair. But Ghote hardly needed to see the face: the sheer immobility of the body told him that the old man was still plunged in stony blackness.

  Abruptly Ghote found he could bear it no longer. For a moment he wondered whether he could get up and just creep away, leaving Bunny Baindur and old Homi Currimbhoy discussing sport wherever they were, and go back to the ordinary round he better understood. But then he knew what he must do instead.

  He leant forward in his big chair.

  “Sir Rustomjee,” he said sharply.

  The old man jerked a little more upright.

  ‘Yes, yes, dear fellow?” he said, though it was evident he had little idea whom he was talking to.

  “Sir Rustomjee, you have been the victim of a joke that was most extremely cruel. Almost as cruel as murder. But that is not the whole matter. Other people have been victims also.”

  He leant forward intently in the gathering gloom of the big, heavily furnished room. The eyes in the oval face opposite him seemed to be bright.

  “Sir Rustomjee,” he went on, putting all he could into each word, “I am the officer charged with investigating these cases. I wish to prevent the occurrence of anything similar in future. Would you show me your laboratory?”

  There was a long silence. But Ghote did not feel the need to say anything more now. He could clearly see once more the deep-set eyes opposite him in the recesses of the tall wing-backed chair. And they were not screened.

  A big black marble clock standing in the centre of the white overmantle was ticking softly and discreetly, as it had ticked for years. .

  “Yes, I will,” said Sir Rustomjee.

  As they were about to leave the house by a side door Sir Rustomjee stopped and took a large, slightly rusty key off a hook. A cheerful voice hailed them from behind. It was the Rajah of Bhedwar.

  “Off to the lab, are you?” he called. “Hang on, I want to come too, you know. I can hear Homi recalling his game bags any day: but this is my first chance to do some real detective-work.”

  Ghote went cold. For a moment he feared that Sir Rustomjee would change his mind about re-opening the old wound. But the old man’s long-nosed, sunken-eyed face remained set and he slipped the key into his pocket without making any acknowledgement of the Rajah's remark.

  He stood aside at the slightly crumbly white-painted door and ushered Ghote through, and when Bunny Baindur came up hastily he made no objection.

  “Allow me to lead the way,” he said.

  Ghote and the Rajah followed him in silence through the now dark garden, sweet with the scent of old flowering bushes, to a narrow gate in the high wall at the back. This seemed to have jammed fast and it needed all Ghote’s strength allied to Sir Rustomjee’s feeble efforts to free it.

  “There has not been occasion to open it recently,” the old man said after it had at last been heaved back.

  Once more they went in silence across a narrow side-road, dimly lit by a street lamp at the far corner, and along a lane between two big gardens. This led steeply downwards and within a few moments Ghote could smell the strong odour of the sea and hear the sombre slapping of the swell on the rocky shore. On they went without a word, descending sharply with every pace they took. The high-walled gardens on either side stopped and the path continued for a little through an open rocky area. Ghote could see the white line of the surf ahead, stretching on either side in the dark. The smell of seaweed and the freshness of the air blotted out everything else.

  The line of the surf was broken only by a rectangular area of black, which Ghote realised in a moment was a big asbestos-clad hut. This must be Sir Rustomjee’s laboratory.

  The old man marched up to the only door and took the rusty key from his pocket. He fitted it fumblingly into a heavy padlock.

  “The door has always been secured by a padlock only?” Ghote asked, as Sir Rustomjee fiddled with the lock in the dark.

  “Yes, always just like this,” the old man replied. “There is really very little here worth a thief’s attention, you see. The apparatus is mostly pretty heavy. It would need a lorry to get it away, and I used to give some cash to the chowkidar at the house up there from time to time. He would have raised the alarm if anyone had tried to make off with the whole lot.”

  “I see,” said Ghote. “But he would hardly be likely to hear a single fellow who worked quietly on this padlock with a screw-driver ?”

  “No, hardly likely,” Sir Rustomjee said sadly. “I dare say the chowkidar sleeps half the night in any case.”

  The padlock sprang open with a heavy click. Sir Rustomjee slipped it out of the hasp and pushed the door open.

  He felt inside it and found a light switch. A dazzling white bar of light cut out across the rocky foreshore.

  Blinking, they entered the hut.

  Under the harsh glare of a dozen big flat lights ranged in two rows along the ceiling every detail of the laboratory was mercilessly shown up. Heavy machinery, thick black electrical cables, a wide canvas pipe running out of the far end of the building to bring in the supply of sea-water for conversion, a flat wooden table still littered with papers and sheets of calculations. And here and there in the uncompromising light, patches of bright light-orange rust.

  Sir Rustomjee wiped at one of them with his bare hand.

  “Well,” he said, “everything is just as it was the morning the pump was discovered.”

  Ghote looked round.

  There is a good deal of heavy stuff here,” he said. “Did you have assistance with it?”

  “Yes,” said Sir Rustomjee. “I had two men. Two men who had been with me for twenty-five and thirty-one years respectively. I can give you their names and addresses, of course. I still pay them a certain sum, though they no longer work for me.”

  “And other people must have had access here?” Ghote asked.

  “Oh yes. A great many. I was always showing friends over my little establishment.”

  The deep-sunk eyes were blank.

  “And servants?” Ghote asked.

  “I suppose they did not often come here,” Sir Rustomjee replied. “You see we have a field telephone rigged up over there. So there was no need for anyone to come with messages. And my assistants used to make tea and so forth.”

  He was silent for a moment.

  “Often we used to work late into the night,” he said.

  “Yes,” Ghote said. “But I suppose it would be quite easy to tell whether you were here or not?”

  Sir Rustomjee looked at him as if he had not understood what was being said.

  “I mean whoever inserted the pump into the system would have known the field was clear,” Ghote explained.

  “Oh, I see. Yes. Yes. Oh, you could tell quite easily that we were here. To begin with the machinery makes a certain amount of noise. I have had complaints occasionally from the people in the houses up there. And then, you know, these lights are strong, they show through little holes in the asbestos here and there, even though there are no windows.”

  “It could not have been easier to obtain access then,” Ghote said.

  He looked at Sir Rustomjee. It seemed to him that the old man was making a special effort to stand particularly upright. He ploughed on.

  “The pump, Sir Rustomjee. May I see it?”

  Without a word Sir Rustomjee led him along the building, stooped beside a thick iron pipe and pointed deep under it. Ghote stooped in his turn. It was at once obvious from this uncomfortable angle what it was that Sir Rustomjee was showing him : a small piece of machinery fixed to a heavy board and
crudely connected to a joint in Sir Rustomjee’s apparatus.

  The words “Made in Britain” could be distinctly seen.

  “I assume the presence of this extra piece of machinery is really quite obvious,” Ghote said.

  “Oh yes. If you have occasion to stoop just here and peer into the machinery. But no one had. There was no reason why they should have. This is what you might call a standing part of the apparatus. It was basic to every experiment we made. We none of us had looked at it, except perhaps during an occasional inspection, for years.” “I see. And you would explain all this to your visitors?” “Yes, I think so. They ask very simple questions, you know. But they liked to see something.”

  “And you gave them pretty simple answers too, didn’t you?”

  It was the Rajah. He had been standing by the door, looking quietly on while Ghote began his questions. But evidently feeling now it was time he staked out a claim for himself he came forward.

  Sir Rustomjee looked at him across the twists and turns of his forlorn apparatus.

  “I suited my answers to my company, as you should know,” he said in answer to the question.

  The Rajah’s eyes lit up.

  “So, in fact,” he said with a pounce, “by no means everybody was told enough to know where to put that pump in.” Sir Rustomjee considered the point. Ghote, standing near him, saw the effort it cost him not to let the protecting screen slip mercifully over his eyes again. At last he gave his reply.

  “It’s a good point,” he said. “And it’s about, say, ninety-nine per cent true. I suppose I haven’t fully explained the workings of the whole apparatus to more than a dozen people in the last ten years, fellow scientists all of them, from Europe or America generally. I could name you the three much respected Indian scientists whom I would have told. But on the other hand there is nothing intrinsically incomprehensible about the basic apparatus. Any good intelligence could have worked out where to put a pump like that to play that ridiculous trick, especially if they already knew something about the set-up.”

  The explanation was delivered entirely to the Rajah, who had in his turn begun to squat down and peer about inside the apparatus. Ghote was able to note that the old man seemed completely to have forgotten his own presence. The Rajah’s quick appreciation of the points the old scientist raised was equally evident.

  It was plainly time to take back the initiative. Only with what ?

  “Sir Rustomjee,” he blurted out.

  The old man turned towards him reluctantly.

  “Sir Rustomjee, I- Er—— Sir Rustomjee, do you know a man called Cooper, Mr. Jack Cooper?”

  It was a foolish question. He fought to keep a rising blush under control.

  Sir Rustomjee looked a little irritated. But his instilled courtesy triumphed.

  “Yes,” he said unexpectedly, “I think I do know a Mr. Jack Cooper. Or rather Homi does, my brother does. He is one of his turf cronies, a trainer, I believe.”

  A thought came into Ghote’s head, a glimmer of almost unreason.

  “Has he been to the house then?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes, of course. How else should I have met him? I very seldom go about anywhere these days. My work,

  you know, keeps me too-”

  And the screen abruptly descended.

  CHAPTER VI

  They had got no more out of Sir Rustomjee. Ghote alternately cursed himself for so clumsily pitching the old man back into the heart of his misery after succeeding against expectation in jerking him out of it and congratulated himself morosely on having at least put a stop to the Rajah of Bhedwar’s activities as a detective. Because the plain fact had been that the old man was, if anything, more icily determined to get away from the whole subject of the hoax with the Rajah than he was with Ghote. But neither of them had got a word more about the hoax from him, and soon they had made excuses and left.

  It was only as they had parted that Ghote had got an awkward shock.

  “I suppose you’re off to see Jack Cooper now?” the Rajah had said.

  “How did- Naturally, I have to interview Mr.Cooper. He is connected with both parties.”

  “Well, good hunting, old man. But I don’t think you’ll see Jack to-night. Anil Bedekar had an unexpected winner in the last race to-day, so Homi told me.”

  “I am afraid I do not understand racing results.”

  “You should : they affect you. That win means old Jack will be out on the tiles celebrating to-night. I doubt if you’ll find him.”

  And, infuriatingly, the Rajah had been right. Ghote had spent till midnight searching, asking people who might know the trainer, going to places he was reputed to frequent, and all to absolutely no avail.

  Sunday morning found him early in his office, pleased by only one thing, that Sgt. Desai was keeping strict office hours and was nowhere in the building. But there was scarcely any pleasure to be got in that: looming over everything and blotting out any chance of optimism was the thought that the Minister’s P.R.O. expected him to telephone in a little over twenty-four hours now with a report that would justify an immediate interview with the great man himself. With, in short, a solution to the whole matter.

  He sat at his scratched desk with a pile of scrap paper in front of him and wrote down the name Jack Cooper. He wrote it again. But that did not help connect Mr. Anil Bedekar’s trainer with those dead flamingoes in the zoo. All right, there was a connection between the two other incidents but-

  His telephone rang.

  He picked it up in a blaze of indignation. That damned switchboard, they might know he did not want to be disturbed, and to ring his phone with something meant for someone-

  “Inspector Ghote here,” he said furiously.

  “Ganesh, my dear chap. You are hard to get hold of. Your switchboard swore you weren’t there. But I told them : a conscientious officer on a case. Really.”

  The Rajah of Bhedwar.

  “What do you want?” Ghote said. Or even snarled. “Just to make sure you don’t make any other appointments for eleven o’clock to-day, old man.”

  “I do not know what I shall be doing at that hour. But I am afraid I cannot see you. As you told, I am on a case.”

  “We’re both on the case, old man. That’s why you must be free at eleven o’clock. That man is going to try walking on the water at twelve and we mustn’t be late. There’ll be an enormous crowd. It’s taken everyone’s fancy. You know Bombay.”

  : : : :

  At first when the Rajah had abruptly rung off Ghote had been just plainly furious. It was bad enough having an amateur like that round one’s shoulders, but that he should attempt to start dragging one off to the most ridiculous display the city was likely to see for months was worse.

  But as the minutes passed the tiny suspicion that the Rajah’s words had just implanted in his mind grew and grew. And consequently when at eleven on the dot the phone rang to say that the Rajah was waiting for him downstairs, he did not hesitate to leave. Because there could be no doubt about it: if ever anything was ripe for the activities of the joker it was this much heralded attempt at this hathayoga feat.

  “Ah,” said the Rajah, when he saw him, “I thought it was about time we got some initiative in this case. Glad you see it my way.”

  Ghote was strictly honest.

  “I had not thought that this might be a time that the joker would strike again,” he said. “But when you suggested it, I did see that it was likely.”

  “My dear Watson,” the Rajah said with that infuriating raised eyebrow.

  And he led the way out of the Headquarters building, down the wide steps towards a waiting taxi.

  “I only hope you’re right,” Ghote said with sternness. “Otherwise a great many hours of police time are going to be wasted.”

  “Oh, not wasted, dear boy.”

  The Rajah held open the taxi door himself.

  “Not wasted, dear boy. We’re going to enjoy this.”

  After that Ghote sat in si
lence for the whole of the short journey.

  As they neared the temple outside which the water walk was to take place their progress got slower and slower. Although it was still well before the much advertised time for the event, and although everyone surely knew that in any case it would start very late, crowds of people of all sorts were converging towards the spot. The Rajah was right: the business had caught the Bombayites’ fickle fancy in no uncertain way. Their taxi joined a long line of other vehicles, stopping and starting and edging forward with pedestrians and cyclists by the hundred slipping in between them in a highly dangerous way at the least opportunity.

  Eventually their driver turned round, an expression of determination on his bearded face under the soft whiteness of his muslin turban.

  “This is as near as anybody could get,” he announced.

  Ghote and the Rajah got out and joined the pushing throng on foot.

  Stirrings of alarm crossed Ghote’s mind.

  “If what we think is going to happen does happen,” he said, “will we be near enough to spot anything?”

  The Rajah smiled.

  “We think it will happen now, do we?” he said.

  Ghote glared at him.

  “In any case we ought to be quite close,” he answered.

  The Rajah smiled.

  “Then it’s a good thing I bought the two-hundred rupee tickets,” he said.

  This silenced Ghote. Two hundred rupees, he thought. Each ticket that much. It did not disconcert him that the Rajah had evidently been happy to pay not only for himself at this price but had bought a number of tickets, but it did upset him that such prices were being paid at all to watch such a ridiculous spectacle. Two hundred rupees: a man like that newspaper seller over there might be happy to pull in half the sum every month.

  Evidently his thoughts were betraying themselves on his face.

  “Of course,” the Rajah said, “I could have tried to get one or two of the really best seats, the five-hundred rupee block. But right beside the tank there everybody’s eyes would be on you, you’d lose your freedom of action. We’ll see everything from our humble station.”