Inspector Ghote Draws a Line

by H. R. F. Keating

  He could not see it. It was not possible that the young man who was to become this old man would have accepted that bribe, however easy it might have been to have slipped the large piece of paper, faintly smelling of spices no doubt like all hidden-away currency notes, up into his cuff and to have said no more about it. No, Asif Ibrahim then as now would have sent that temptingly huge sum back.

  “You returned the basket, Sir Asif.”

  “Oh yes, I returned the basket. But I returned it at the hands of my sweeper.”

  Ghote felt himself stiffen and jolt back in his chair as if he too had been subjected to that contemptuous insult.

  “Yes, Inspector, you do right to purse your lips. It was a thoroughly gratuitous action. And I was proud of it. So much so that I took the earliest opportunity of recounting the whole incident to the collector, one Brown.”

  Again he paused.

  “And I remember to this day the precise terms of the dressing down that Brown gave me before telling me that I was never to visit that village again, much less to sit there. Let me tell you just what words he used in summing up.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “He said this to me: ‘But, Ibrahim, appalling though your conduct has been, I would rather you had done that and hindered the administration of justice throughout the whole of my district than that you had, by the least hint or inclination, appeared to have accepted anything whatsoever in the way or nature of a bribe.”

  And the old man’s eyes looked into his with unflinching intent.

  13

  On his bed again that afternoon—errr-bock went the fan, errr-bock, pause, long pause, then again errr-bock—Ghote lay cursing himself. The point of the judges story down in the library had struck him with the unexpectedness of a trodden-on snake rearing up and suddenly sinking its fangs into his calf. It had been absurdly innocent of him, he realised now, not to have seen it coming. But he had been so distressed at what he had believed was Sir Asif's imminent surrender that he had gone on waiting for the old man’s reminiscence to have exactly the opposite point from what had in fact been its intention.

  Yet surely, he thought now, he ought to have known from the very beginning. Sir Asif was proof against bribery, of any sort, just as he was proof against blackmail. Neither threatening to tell the world the secret of the old fort nor offering to keep that secret when he ought to have reported it was going to affect that long matured integrity.

  But he had touched Ghote. To the depths.

  He had been right in his assessment of the situation between them all the way up to the final moments. Sir Asif could not endure the thought of an Ibrahim, of his own son, being confined to—what was the old-fashioned word he had once used?—to a madhouse. Confined with common criminals, criminal lunatics. And he had been near giving way. He had certainly contemplated the possibility. The look on his face had been too plain.

  But the possibility had been contemplated, and then stepped back from.

  Lunch had been hell, he thought with sudden inconsequence.

  His mind went back to the scene. The judge sitting balefully at the head of the long polished table in the dining room. Begum Roshan, far away at the opposite end, hands darting and plucking, rushing in with frantic bursts of talk, making fierce declarations quelled abruptly by her fathers eye or on a couple of occasions by his tongue, rebukes that might have been addressed to an overexcited child rather than to a woman in full middle age. The Saint, sitting as he always did with feet tucked up under him on the carved, dining chair, and silent. This, too, it appeared, was another day without words and only sunbeam smiles conveyed his feelings. But how they conveyed them, launched into the tension round the table like dowsing buckets of loose earth fanning out onto a creeping fire. Yet the fire had been too deep-seated to be wholly extinguished even by those all-embracing sweeps of radiant benignity. And it was always quite plain, too, from where the tension came: from the judge.

  But Ghote had been the only one to know its cause.

  The others had been simply the victims of that scalding tongue. Victims each in a different way. Raman, of course, had caught the worst of it. He was the most defenceless. It was the European-style meal that was always presented at midday: brown soup, which tasted merely oily, a roast chicken so scrawny that it was hard to get down at all, and after that what Raman called, using one of his infrequent, mangled English expressions, “secon toast,” three littlfe strips of salty tinned fish resting on small squares of oil-sogged toasted bread and distinguished from a nonexistent “first toast” only by coming at the end of the meal instead of at its beginning, and whatever the orderly did in serving it had been wrong—and had been paid for in blasting words.

  Ghote, too, had come in for his share of the plainly scathing whenever, feeling bound to do what he could to create the harmony he had been fundamentally responsible for causing to vanish, he had ventured to put in a word, either into the limping and awkward conversation or into the difficult silence.

  In the case of Father Adam, it had been open warfare. The matter of the bund and its breaching had been at the root of it. Looking back, it was hard to remember exactly how it had been raised. But he was almost certain Sir Asif had said something deliberately which he knew would cause the priest, that invalid here in the house at the request of Cousin Karim in Washington, a guest who could not by the rules of hospitality be asked to leave, to say something in his turn about the bund which would only be objectionable to him. The old man had been punishing himself. Punishing himself for that moment of weakness in the library, that moment of covetousness.

  “So you consider then, Father Adam, that a man has no right to the property held by his forefathers for generations?”

  “No, of course he hasn’t, Judge. Property is theft. We all know that.”

  “We know nothing of the kind, sir. What we know is the law. And that law here expressly includes the right to property.”

  “Well, Judge, I understood you weren’t always in agreement with the wisdom of your legislators, particularly your country’s present setup, if what I read in that thing The Sputnik is right.”

  “It is perfectly right, sir. Our present Parliament is a disgrace. A disgrace to its predecessors even, and yet more of a disgrace to that Mother of Parliaments at Westminster from which it takes its life.”

  “So you’re a Britisher rather than an Indian, is that it?”

  “I am not, sir. I am an Indian. Born in India. Of unimpeachable Indian ancestry. A man—”

  “Except your ancestors arrived in India as conquerors, isn’t that so?”

  “You so-called liberals can only think in one mould. You believe that because force exists, and force has to exist in this world, you believe that any person who exercises it must be what you would call a murderer.”

  “Oh, I know that force exists all right, Judge. I’m just concerned to see that it’s used on the right side for a change.”

  “And what might your definition of the right side be? Taking away a man’s land to give to a pack of peasants too ignorant to use it properly?”

  The priest had leant forward across the table towards Sir Asif then, his face dangerously pale.

  “Yes, Judge" he had answered. “I believe that to take a far corner of your precious gardens to divert a river and bring a better life to hundreds of poverty-stricken people is a cause that would certainly justify the use of force. Extreme force if it has to be.”

  And the judge had made no answer. He had cut the dispute off with a long glowering silence. A silence that had underlined, as nothing else might have done, the full impact of the priest’s declaration.

  Errr-bock. Errr-bock.

  All right, fan. Nothing changes, you say, in this sleepy old house. But something may. And if the old judge is killed, then will anyone afterwards stir that ancient generator into life to keep you going round? If you have not stopped of your own accord at last before that.

  But the thought of the generator and the shed bleached
by season after season of heat to a whitish grey to match the desiccated foliage round it recalled to him that there, hidden in its darkest corner still, were Mr. Dhebar’s motor scooter and his own battered tan-coloured suitcase.

  Better go out quietly now, he thought, and fetch that myself, rather than risk drawing Sir Asif’s attention to the way I came back here by asking to have it fetched when the servants are up and about.

  He slid off the high bed and got into shirt and trousers and the chappals he had mercifully changed into before he had begun his vigil in the shed. Thank goodness, too, that his one necktie was away in the servants’ quarters being ironed into respectability again after its spell of useful work keeping the unconscious Sikander safe until he had been carried back to his underground prison.

  Gripping the chappals with extra-careful sweat-sticky toes, he was able to go the length of the tall airless silent passage outside without making more than the slightest of noises.

  Around him he could feel the whole old house sleeping. Sir Asif, a volume of verse from the little bookrack On his bedside teapoy perhaps lying beside him where it had fallen. Begum Roshan, twitching restlessly no doubt in her sleep, but asleep. The Saint, stretched out on the bedcover folded on the floor, asleep and smiling perhaps through his white square of a beard. Father Adam, tangled brows at last unlocked, trumpeting out snores of protest to the unheeding world. Raman, in the servants’ quarters, free for a while from Sir Asif's scoldings and, for a certainty, with that horseshoe grin of his coming and going as he dreamed. Dreamed of what? Of the South and his boyhood, before that killing of his was ever thought of? Of perhaps slowly paddling some lazy boat through smooth waters and singing like a bird? And, somewhere nearby as well, the other servants, deeply and mercifully asleep in the suffocating heat.

  The rat colonies, too, in those deserted rooms in the other wing, they would be smothered in sleep. And the black-striped squirrels in their tree homes in the sun-locked gardens, not one of them would be venturing in now at a broken-shuttered window to finish as a little baked corpse in a long-deserted bedroom.

  And down at the far end of the gardens, under the ruin of the old fort, Sikander, would he too be sleeping? Or would he be raging still, hurling himself at his bars?

  Going down the wide wooden staircase with its elaborate carved banisters, he was conscious that his chappals were flipping and flapping a little more loudly. But he still felt confident that no one in the big sleeping house would stir at the sound.

  At the stairs’ foot he crept, more silently again, over to the tall outer doors and let himself out into the full glare of the implacable sun. He blinked and shook his head. His uniform cap or the sunglasses which he seldom felt a need for in Bombay would have been a blessing. But they could be done without.

  He moved off into the dusty parched garden. Within a few paces sweat had sprung up all over him. Within a few paces more it had dried right away again. He walked steadily on, following what must have been the exact path he had taken in the darkness when he had crept after the white shape of Raman’s jacket as the orderly had carried Sikander sahib his evening meal.

  How long ago that seemed. Time, under the deadening heat, seemed to stretch and stretch here.

  There was little shade to be had on the way with the sun high in the whitened sky above. No shrub now in this dry heat gave out more than the most grudging of odours.

  Ahead the outline of the ruined fort was black against the horizon. But not to be looked at long. Best, with that enemy there above never slackening in his bombardment, to keep eyes down to the ground. Which glared back enough in any case.

  And now, at last, the shed. Lift the tin door and hold it up as it swung open. There was probably nobody to hear its squealing grate, but better to be safe. If it disturbed Sikander and he launched into a bout of howling that penetrated outside, woke an anxious Sir Asif, caused him to rout out Raman . . .

  Inside the shed it was at least a different sort of heat. Not the assault of the direct sun but a thick and smelly mugginess, the confined odour of oil slowly drying in the baking warmth, of metal at a temperature too hot for hand to bear, of battery acid evaporating drop by drop. And it was dark, thickly dark, but hardly coolly dark.

  He groped his way with difficulty past the generator itself, then past the high bank of batteries, and finally past the fuel tank, to where, hardly to be seen, Mr. Dhebar’s scooter stood where he had pushed it at dawn, with the suitcase beside it.

  It was going to be even hotter work lugging the damn thing all the way back.

  But it ought to be done.

  True, he had put Sir Asif heavily in his debt by saving Raman. But he still needed every ounce, every half-gram, of goodwill that he could levy from the old man, because he had lost a lot of ground with his attempt at bribery, no doubt of that. Though the judge had rejected his offer in what was, for him, the gentlest possible way, it was still plain that in that scale of virtues Ghote had slid far down again. So to draw attention to himself now by this reminder of his expulsion from the house in disgrace would be stupid indeed. Worth a lot of toil under the broiling sun to avoid that.

  He gave himself a few minutes’ rest and then picked up the wretched case and lugged it out of the shed, set it down again, closed the tin door with an effort, picked up his burden once more, and set off. At once the licking sun dried up all the sweat that had beaded on him in the sticky darkness of the shed.

  Back along the now all too familiar dry-dusty path, changing the awkward weight from one arm to the other every ten yards or so, feeling the sun like a red iron pressed throbbingly on the back of his neck.

  By the time he reached the house again and leant against the doors to push them open his head was swimming and his eyes were pricking as if they had been slowly poached over a hot brazier.

  He heaved the case inside and let it flop down. It made a sound that, half an hour before, would have made him curse himself to ribbons. Yet now he could not care less.

  But he rested there just inside the blissful comparative cool waiting nevertheless to hear whether the noise had roused any of the sleeping inhabitants.

  And it was then that there came another sound. One he had not in the least expected to hear. The unmistakable tap-tap-tap of the keys of a typewriter being slowly and laboriously operated.

  He could hardly believe his ears.

  Yet the sound was beyond denying that of typewriter keys. Though it was not easy to make out just where it was coming from. The high echoing passages converging on the central hall were not the easiest of places for accurately locating sounds.

  But how splendid that the sound was there. Someone typing at this dead hour could be only someone typing in secret—could be only the person who had sent the threatening notes to Sir Asif.

  So he must work out just where the sound was coming from, creep up, fling open a door, and see then someone—who would it be? which of them?—bending over a typewriter. Step into that room and say that the plot was at an end.

  And it would be over, this whole burdensome business. Sir Asif would be out of danger and all would be well. He would be able to leave. To go back to Bombay, and its everyday bustle.

  He licked quickly at his dry lips and set out towards the nearest passage, digging sweaty toes furiously into the old leather chappals, picking the soles right up to his heels so that they made not the least sound on the wide cracked marble floor.

  But he had barely gone five yards when it became clear that he had chosen wrongly. The tap-tap-tapping, slow and painstaking, tlie work of an amateur typist—but which of them would not be that?—had died almost completely.

  Rapidly he retraced his steps, his heart thudding at the prospect of the tapping having died away because the message had been finished.

  But no.

  Back in the hall beside his suitcase the distant click-clicking was once more clearly audible.

  He set off in the opposite direction, going yet more rapidly this time, a little less
careful about keeping his chappals from making any sound.

  And in this passage, the one marked by the map of Bangladesh in mildew, the sound was not dying away. It was gradually growing louder.

  He crept along towards it, caution once more restored. No doubt the person working at that secret task would not be quite careless of any possible interruption—no doubt half his attention at least would be on any possible sound coming from outside. Perhaps it was this that accounted for the slowness of the tapping. If, say, the culprit was the American, who might be expected to be almost a born typewriter-user, then it might be just the need to listen that was making that sound so slow and laborious.

  But the next waited-for click had failed to come. The sound was no longer going on.

  For a moment he stopped just where he was, overwhelmed by dismay. But he forced himself to thrust it aside. The clicking had been coming from somewhere ahead. Silence did not mean he had chosen the wrong approach altogether. In fact it was almost certain now that the typewriter itself was in one of the rooms just round the comer in front of him, those smaller rooms he had searched when he had been looking for signs of a hidden extra member of the household, the rooms that had fallen out of use.

  Only, if he had got his geography right, the passage ahead round the corner led to the kitchen quarters. So it would have a way of escape—not an easy one for the American, or even perhaps for the Saint, but a lot more practical for Begum Roshan.

  He abandoned his stealth and went forward at a run. He reached the comer. The narrower passage ahead was empty. And the tapping still had not started up again.

  Only one thing for it. He swung round and flung wide the nearest door. One rapid glance into the room beyond. Empty. White-shrouded furniture, the air so undisturbed he could almost have poked a hole in it.

  He swung away. Ran to the next door, crashed it open. And again heavy tranquillity. Not a sign of any human being.