Inspector Ghote Draws a Line

by H. R. F. Keating

  So perhaps after all Mr. Dhebar had been telling the simple truth when he had said that he had not been inside the house. Perhaps, for all his ambition to marry Sir Asif Ibrahim’s daughter, he was not the person leaving the threatening notes. Yet perhaps he was. Perhaps he had such a note on his person now and was hoping for a chance to deliver it unobserved.

  What to do?

  Mr. Dhebar was still coming up towards the house, walking a good deal more slowly than Ghote himself had done. As if he had indeed just tramped the whole way from the village under the broiling sun. He looked as if all that he would do once he had got indoors was to collapse onto the nearest seat and sit there hoping to be brought a cooling drink.

  And the Saint was moment by moment getting further away.

  Ghote squared his shoulders and set off once again through the heat.

  The Saint, he saw, was some hundred and fifty yards distant, walking quite slowly, his unprotected head held high, apparently oblivious to the sun.

  Before very long Ghote saw that the direction in which the two of them were heading would bring them eventually to the little hillock on which was outlined, trembling a little to the eye in the heat, the ruin of the old fort.

  So the Saint was out here, in all probability, not because he had just been chased from the house with an incriminating sheet of typed paper on his person, but because he was going to visit the disciple he had possessed in those long ago days when it had seemed so important that the British should be expelled forever from India’s shores.

  Would it be worth trying to overhear what these two said to each other? Or should he turn and hurry back to the house in case after all Mr. Dhebar was not as exhausted as he looked, was even now prowling determinedly about looking for a chance to leave a new threat to Sir Asif?

  The headache which had started when he had first confronted the editor had become a real stinker now, jabbing from inside at eyeballs and eardrums with an implacable regular beat.

  It was possible that what the Saint would have to say to Sikander would have no bearing at all on the mysteries that lay concealed, like so many rats’ nests, in the life of the big house behind him. It was possible. But the chances were that, in such an intimate discussion between two people who had known the house and its ways so long, something would be said that would cast some light into the shadowed places.

  And surely Mr. Dhebar had looked really exhausted. Surely.

  He made the decision, tried with dry tongue to moisten parched mouth, and hurried onwards. The air seemed hot as the fumes of a fire.

  Ahead the Saint was walking steadily towards his objective, saffron robes hanging heavily in the stillness. When at last he reached the little outcrop on which the ruin was perched he mounted the earthen steps set here and there into it at the same unvarying pace, as if he was still progressing over the level dusty ground of the rest of the gardens.

  Halting in the shelter of the generator shed, Ghote watched the figure make his way with practised steps round to where the narrow entrance slit to the fort lay and disappear.

  The moment that saffron-clad shape had gone, he made his own way quickly forward, taking the slope of the little hill at something approaching a run and flattening himself at once against the nearest wind-eroded pinkish wall of the ruin.

  Then he sidled round as quickly as he could to the slitlike doorway, back flat against the stones. There he stood and listened. Soon, above the tiny subdued leg-rubbing squeaks of insects the sun had brought to life, he thought he could make out die sound of the Saint’s bare feet slapping their way along the tunnel immediately below.

  He counted to ten, slowly as he could force himself to, and then slipped into the entrance.

  The darkness after the white glare outside was like a wall in front of him. But now quite clearly he could hear the Saint’s bare feet progressing steadily away from him. He set himself to descend one by one the twelve deep steps he knew to be there, little though he could see them.

  When he found he had reached the bottom he stopped to listen again and as soon as he had satisfied himself that the Saint was making his way steadily on towards the barred gate of Sikander’s prison he began to make his own way forward, hands held outwards so that, as before, his finger tips just scraped the sticky bat-smeared walls to either side.

  At last he came to the corner where, when he had been here before, he had first seen the dim light that had told him definitely that there was someone hidden down here. And, though he had wondered whether after Sikarider’s escape he would still see that dim glow, it was there again. And outlined against it he could make out the robed form of the Saint.

  He stepped back round past the corner again and then squatted low and put his head round once more. Like that, he calculated, he would have no difficulty in hearing what was said at the gate while, if the Saint should chance unexpectedly to turn round, Ghote would be reasonably hard to see in the dark.

  If anything was said. If the silence-vowed Saint was going to speak at all.

  And it seemed that he was not. Instead of calling out to Sikander, by way of announcing himself he simply ran his fingers along the iron bars of the gate till they gave out a low musical ringing.

  But the sound seemed to produce no answer. Was Sikander no longer here? Or could he be sleeping? Or, perhaps, most likely, was he sulking in the depths of his lair, still furious at the failure of his escape?

  The Saint, however, appeared to be altogether unperturbed by this lack of response. After half a minute or so he gently lowered himself to the ground until he was seated cross-legged on the tunnel floor facing the cell. Then, leaning a little forward, he resumed his musical twanging along the bars. Before long the whole narrow passage was ringing with the sound.

  And then, with a suddenness made all the more shocking by its contrast with the soft musical hum, there came the crash of sheer animal noise and the madman was at the locked gate again, jerking and pounding and attacking the bars as if he was going to root them out of the solid stone and all the while yelling with full force.

  The noise racketed past him, wave on wave, till there began at last to be a slackening.

  Now he waited to hear, at last, the Saint’s voice.

  But no sound overrode the animal moaning.

  And soon Ghote recognised that no sound was going to come. The Saint’s vow held here in the darkness, with no one but the madman to hear, as firmly as it held in the stiff social world of the house.

  But he knew that in the dim light the seated cross-legged figure at the bars was communicating with the creature behind them as surely as earlier communication had taken place between Sikander and himself. The Saint, he guessed, was smiling, a force that warmed, penetrating, melting.

  Yet Sikander now began to rage again, the sound of his screams mounting in the close confines of the darkness.

  It was easy to imagine the contorted face, the impression that behind the grimaces and the writhing there was nothing but a blindly directed will wanting only destruction. Was it too strong then for that smiling force he himself had experienced and succumbed to?

  Perhaps not. The raging fit did not this time last very long. And the seated figure this side of the bars did not budge by so much as an inch.

  For minute after minute down in the darkness the battle between the two forces continued. But it was not long before it became clear that the smile of the Saint was in the ascendant. Each time Sikander heaved and rattled at his bars the assault was less loud. Each time he yelled and screamed he did so with less conviction.

  Kneeling at the tunnel’s comer, Ghote watched fascinated as the contest wore on, oblivious of strained limbs, gradually losing even his headache.

  And at last Sikander became entirely quiet. Would the Saint speak now? Would he, for the sake of this demented being, release himself from his vow?

  The silence grew. Once more Ghote was able to make out from somewhere further inside the sound, so slight that it seemed only to caress his eardr
ums, of a tiny trickling of water.

  And still there came no break in the silence. The Saint sat un-moving, and on the other side of the barred door, becoming with the passing minutes easier and easier to see, stood the chastened madman.

  It was the latter who at last spoke. A low, quiet voice speaking in English, good English, and easy to hear in the stone-surrounded silence.

  “So you have come again, my old friend?”

  Ghote did not expect the greeting to be answered, and it was not. Or not in words.

  “Well, are you going to tell me nothing again this time? Nothing? Not a word about the damned . . .”

  Sikander’s voice had begun to climb up in volume and ferocity. But it rapidly tailed off. It was not difficult to imagine the smile that had quenched its first angry glint of flame.

  “But it still goes on out there, doesn’t it? It still goes on. The oppression. The injustice. So many long years of fighting it and nothing achieved. Nothing.”

  Speak, Ghote willed the silent seated figure at the far end of the tunnel. Speak. Explain. Now that he is quiet, now that he will listen, tell him. Tell him that he need not rage any more. Tell him the days of the British oppression are long past. That it is all over. That India is free, free and proud.

  He checked himself.

  There were things it would be wrong to ask a saint to say. But surely, surely, he could at least tell this demented creature that the British days had finished. That India was, for better or worse, free. That the force that had driven him mad was no longer there.

  Surely that was the least any one human being could do for another?

  But the Saint neither spoke nor moved.

  And before Ghote himself could give way to the rash temptation rapidly growing up in him and announce, shout out, the good news, Sikander began to speak again.

  “Well, the only thing left is to fight on. To fight on and on. And if they won’t let me fight with a gun, fight with dynamite, fight with a sword even, then I will have to fight with paper. My friend, will you take another memorial for me? Will you? It’s our only hope now, to appeal to the King Emperor. And perhaps he is a just man, perhaps.”

  The lamenting voice paused, and then resumed.

  “Old friend, if I compose another memorial, will you come back tomorrow and take it to deliver. Will you? Will you?”

  There came no answer, at least not in words. But even from the distance Ghote could see on the face of the madman that the Saint had responded to his plea. Had responded, of course, with a smile.

  He decided it was time to retreat. The Saint had visited the wreck of the man who had once been his follower in war, not one of his many followers in peace of today, and he had agreed to the request. He had come and he had brought a little peace. In all probability he would end his visit now.

  And if he turned round it was not impossible, for a man with his powers, that he would spot Ghote at once, dark though it was, might see him even through the stone walls after he had backed away round the corner.

  Ghote rose swiftly to his feet, fighting stiffness, and made his way as quickly as he could back along the narrow, dark, stinking, bat-slimy tunnel to the steps and daylight.

  And the blaze of the sun again.

  But there had been no point in staying, he reflected, as he made his way down from the fort’s outcrop and into the dusty baked gardens. He had learnt plenty.

  The fact was that the madman down there—God, the sun was dizzying, but he must hurry—was in communication with the world outside. He was, for a fact, doing what Raman had vaguely talked of him as doing, “memboralising,” writing letters. And perhaps down there somewhere he had a typewriter for his own use, a toy to keep the madman happily occupied. And so it might well be that somehow he was tricking the Saint into sending threatening letters to his own father, even begging him to take them. Letters containing death threats.

  It seemed unlikely on the face of it that a person like the Saint would agree to such an activity. But saints, never forget, operate on a different logic. It might be that Anand Baba would see no reason why Sir Asif should not be threatened. It might even be that he would see no reason why Sir Asif’s life here on earth should not come to an end, on the thirtieth anniversary of the Madurai sentences. It might be.

  16

  It was still well before the time that, with the first hint of a slackening in the full heat of the sun, the house would begin to stir again when Ghote at last stepped back into its shade. He saw at once that his suitcase was still where he had let it flop down—how long ago was it?—when he had returned from the generator shed and had heard that sound of a typewriter.

  He sighed.

  Certainly he had missed that gods-given chance. But his time had not been entirely wasted after all. He had learnt an unexpected fact about the madman locked underneath the fort which had given him a whole new possibility to work on. And he had found Mr. Dhebar, too, prowling in the gardens—if prowling was not too strong a word for that dejected shuffle of his.

  Should he go at once and make sure where the editor was? Make sure, as far as he still could, that he had not planted another threatening note for Sir Asif to find when he woke from his afternoon sleep?

  Or had he not better get the damned suitcase up to the safety of his room before Sir Asif could see it and be reminded of his guests earlier appalling behaviour?

  Yes, perhaps a quick trip upstairs.

  He heaved up the case and, leaning a little to one side, head hanging, he set off as quietly as he could up the wide carved staircase.

  And then in the silence he heard from the head of the stairs above him the unmistakable sound of firm descending steps, the steps of someone wearing shoes.

  He looked up, caught in the act, suitcase hanging heavily from his stretched arm. It was Father Adam, white Naxalite.

  He forced himself into calmness.

  “Good afternoon, Father,” he said.

  “Mort. Mort, old buddy.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. I am always inclined to forget. You must excuse our altogether formal Indian manners—er—Mort.”

  “They’re just a sign, buddy boy.”

  He knew he should not ask what they were just a sign of. To begin with, he vaguely suspected he knew the answer already. And, second, if he said nothing more it was possible he could just walk past without any remarks being made about his suitcase.

  “What are they a sign of, please, our Indian manners?”

  “Of the hidebound Indian mind. Of subservience to a set of outdated social customs inherited from a conqueror race, and, essentially, of economic dependence on the bourgeois ethic.”

  He wanted to say, “Of all that?” But formal Indian good manners prevented him.

  “Well, yes,” he answered instead, “I suppose that is a point of view which can be held, though, to tell the truth, I do not altogether understand.”

  “India doesn’t altogether understand. That’s the whole trouble. And what are you lugging that valise upstairs for? Aren’t there any servants around?”

  He felt how unfair it was. The fellow should not have even noticed the suitcase. And a Naxalite priest, surely, should not think about servants. He should go about being proud to carry his own burdens, and irritatingly expect others to do so too.

  And, if the man was up and about, dressed and wearing shoes, was it not possible that he had been up earlier, using a typewriter down in that stuffy room below?

  As much to save himself from any further embarrassing remarks as to find the answer to that question, he shot out a query in his turn.

  “But you yourself, what is it you are doing up at this extremely hot hour of the day, Mort?”

  He was proud of the “Mort.” He had managed to tack it on in a way that was almost casual. But he wished he had phrased what he had asked more skilfully. The fellow could easily concoct some sort of reply to a question so directly put.

  But it seemed that the American could not. He simply stood where he
was on the broad stair above and said nothing.

  Had Ghote, by a lucky thrust, tumbled him off his seemingly secure perch at just the moment he had thought himself firm and safe?

  At last a halting sort of answer came.

  “A book. Yeah, I was fresh out of anything to read, and I thought there might possibly be something down there in the library ”

  An unlikely story.

  He pushed hard again.

  “But surely you must know very well, Mort, what is on the shelves in the library? Lawbooks and volumes of verse in Urdu.”

  And, once more, the priest, the Naxalite, looked disconcerted. But suddenly he relaxed. A smile appeared on his face and the tangle of dark interlocked eyebrows loosened.

  “I guess you got me, Ganesh,” he said.

  For one moment, for one quarter-second, against all the evidence, Ghote thought he was going to hear a confession. But he knew that the admission had been altogether too offhand to be the preliminary to a confession to anything at all serious.

  “Got you?” he prompted. “Please?”

  The priest smiled again.

  “Yup. I have to confess to a sin.”

  Can it be? he thought. Can it be, after all? Is it possible that this fellow—really if he is a priest then he should not be—takes the uttering of death threats so lightly that he can smile as he confesses to making them? Certainly he had often before spoken of sin as if it was something that no longer mattered, but is he going to joke about this?

  “Well?” he said stiffly, and even sternly.

  But the priest did not at once admit to his sin. Instead he took a couple of easy steps down the stairs towards him and then leant backwards against the carved banister in an attitude of extreme casualness.

  “You know, Ganesh,” he said, “I can remember when I was a kid —you know I was brought up in a very Catholic home, very Godfearing, very pious—well, I can remember that there was one thing I was really scared to do, scared even to think of doing it. I guess I was an average sort of kid and I never cared too much about things like telling lies. You know, I’d go to confession and if I remembered I’d tell the priest and then I'd say my penance and that’d be the end of it. But there was this one thing.”