by Satyajit Ray
Mr Choudhury spoke before Girin Biswas could say anything. ‘He took an advance from me!’ he barked. ‘And then he lost that money in the races, didn’t he? Now he brings me a Cooke-Kelvey watch. Useless fellow!’
Feluda ignored Mr Choudhury. ‘That means you inherited one of Tom’s traits. Is that why you were prepared to take such an enormous risk?’
Girin Biswas made a spirited reply. ‘Mr Mitter, there’s one thing you seem to be forgetting. Anyone can bury his property in a grave. But, a hundred years after its burial, no one can make a personal claim on it. That watch is no longer Tom Godwin’s property.’
‘I am aware of that. The watch now belongs to the state. Even you cannot claim ownership. The truth is, you see, you didn’t just try to steal from the cemetery. You did something else. That is also a criminal offence.’
‘What offence?’ Girin Biswas shot back defiantly.
Feluda took out a tiny object from his pocket. ‘Let me see. Did this button come off the jacket you are wearing? Didn’t you have it cleaned at Hong Kong Laundry only the other day?’
Feluda compared the little button in his hand with the others on Mr Biswas’s jacket. ‘Yes, it’s a perfect match!’ he declared.
‘So what does that prove? That I went to the cemetery? Of course I did. I’m not denying it.’
‘If I said this jacket wasn’t your own, but your brother’s, would you deny that?’
‘What! You are talking complete nonsense, Mr Mitter!’
‘No. If anyone is talking nonsense, it is you. You came to our house yesterday, and told us a pack of lies. Now you’re doing it again. The jacket that you’re wearing belongs to your brother. He was wearing it when he visited the cemetery just before the storm. He found Godwin’s grave being dug up, and saw you there. He tried to stop you. You struck his head—with a heavy stick, or something like that. Naren Biswas lost consciousness. You would probably have killed him, but at that moment, the storm began. You tried to run away. The tree . . .’
Girin Biswas interrupted Feluda. ‘Are you saying that my brother is a liar? Didn’t he say himself that a branch broke and . . .?’
It was impossible to stop Feluda. He went on speaking, ‘ . . . the tree lost a branch. It broke and fell on your back. You were not wearing a jacket. So you took your brother’s jacket and put it on to cover your bruises. That was when that button came off, and your brother’s wallet slipped out of a pocket. From your own trouser pocket, a form-book for the latest race . . .’
Mr Biswas tried to make for the door again, but failed. This time, Feluda himself caught him and took his jacket off. Under his shirt, a bandage was clearly visible.
‘Your brother told several lies to protect you, didn’t he? He cares for you very deeply. Perhaps too much.’
Feluda picked up the watch made by Cooke-Kelvey, and the letter written by Victoria. Then he thrust them into his bag, and turned to Mr Choudhury, who was looking perfectly dumbstruck. ‘Tonight, I missed the chance to hear all your clocks strike the midnight hour. But who knows, I might yet get the chance—one day!’
Lalmohan Babu could be aroused only after our third attempt. I had no idea that he had fainted again and missed the most crucial scene in the drama.
‘The Mahadev Choudhurys of this world are very difficult to keep down. Even the police can’t do anything. A man like him is like a Hitler. He can buy people off whenever he wants,’ said Feluda.
We were now sitting by the Ganges. This particular ghat was only five minutes from Mr Choudhury’s country manor. The eastern sky had started to brighten—the sun was about to rise. Heaven knew what would have happened to us if Hari Datta hadn’t meticulously followed every instruction Feluda had given him. (‘What would have happened? Death!’ declared Lalmohan Babu.)
He had chased the car into which we had been bundled, and then gone straight to the police. Only a man with a steady nerve and a remarkable sense of responsibility could have handled such a task. Lalmohan Babu sipped tea from an earthen pot that Hari had fetched from somewhere, and said, ‘So now you’ve seen all the good a new car can do!’
‘Yes, undoubtedly,’ Feluda replied. ‘We have made several demands on your car in the last three days. When we get back to the city, I need to visit two more places. After that, I promise not to use your car—at least for a few days!’
‘Two places? Where do you want to go?’
‘First, to see Naren Biswas. We need to tell him what’s happened, and return Victoria’s letter to him.’
‘And the second place?’
‘The South Park Street Cemetery.’
‘Ag-ag-again?’
‘Do you have any idea how carefully I had to take every step? I couldn’t even fight properly with those men because of this!’
Feluda removed the hunting boot from his left foot. Then he slipped a hand into it and took out a false sole, under which was a little compartment. In it, wrapped carefully in cotton wool, was an amazing object that was still undamaged except for a broken dial, in spite of all the turmoil that had swept over it.
‘Don’t we have to put it back where it belongs?’
Dangling from Feluda’s fingers was the first reward bestowed by Nawab Sadat Ali on Thomas Godwin for his excellent cooking—a repeater pocket watch made by one of the best watchmakers in England, Francis Perigal. For two hundred years, it had lain buried underground beside the skeleton of its owner. Even so, as it caught the first rays of the rising sun, it glittered and dazzled our eyes.
The Curse of the Goddess
One
Lalmohan Babu looked up from his book and said, ‘Rammohan Roy’s grandson owned a circus. Did you know that?’
Feluda was leaning back, his face covered with a handkerchief. He shook his head.
Our car had been standing, for the last ten minutes, behind a huge lorry which was loaded with bales of straw. Not only was it blocking our way, but was emitting such thick black smoke that we were all getting choked. Our driver had blown his horn several times, but to no avail. I was tired of being able to see nothing but the painting of a setting sun and flowers on the back of the lorry, and all that a lorry usually said: ‘Ta Ta’, ‘Horn Please’, ‘Goodbye’ and ‘Thank You’. Equally bored and tired, Lalmohan Babu had started to read a book called The Circus in Bengal. His next book was going to be set in a circus, so he had taken Feluda’s advice and decided to do a bit of reading on the subject. As a matter of fact, we had stopped in Ranchi earlier in the day and seen posters advertising The Great Majestic Circus. It was supposed to have reached Hazaribagh which was where we were going. If we happened to be free one evening, we had decided to go and see the circus.
Winter had only just started. All of us wanted a short break. Lalmohan Babu’s latest book—The Vampire of Vancouver—had been released last month and sold two thousand copies in three weeks, which naturally pleased him no end. Feluda had objected to the title of the book, pointing out that Vancouver was a huge modern city, a most unlikely place for vampires. For once, Lalmohan Babu had overruled Feluda’s objection, saying that he had been through the atlas of the world, and Vancouver had struck him as the most appropriate name.
Feluda, too, was free for the moment. He had solved a case in Bihar last September. His client, Sarveshwar Sahai, had been so pleased with Feluda’s work that he had invited us to his house in Hazaribagh. He did not live there permanently. It remained empty for most of the time. There was a chowkidar, whose wife did the cooking. We could stay there for ten days. All we would have to pay for would be the food.
The offer seemed too good to miss. We decided to go by road in Lalmohan Babu’s new Ambassador. ‘Let’s see how it performs on a long run,’ he said. We might have gone via Asansol and Dhanbad, but chose to go through Kharagpur and Ranchi instead. Feluda drove the car until we got to Kharagpur, then the driver took over. We reached Ranchi in the evening and stayed overnight at the Amber Hotel. This morning, we had left Ranchi at nine o’clock, hoping to reach Hazaribagh
by a quarter past ten. But, thanks to the lorry, we were definitely going to be delayed.
After another five minutes of honking, the lorry finally moved and allowed us to pass. Much relieved, we took deep breaths as our car emerged in the open. The road was lined with tail trees, many of which had weaver birds’ nests. If I looked out of the window, I could see a range of hills in the distance. Small hillocks stood by the side of the road. We passed these every now and then. Lalmohan Babu saw all this and muttered ‘Beautiful! Beautiful!’ a couple of times. Then he began humming a Tagore song, looking more comical than ever. He was totally tone-deaf as well, and inevitably chose songs that were quite inappropriate. For instance, on this cool November morning, he had started a song that spoke of the new joys of spring. He had once explained his problem to me. Apparently, he felt like bursting into song the minute he left Calcutta and came into closer contact with nature; however, his stock of songs being rather limited, he couldn’t always think of a suitable one.
But there was one thing for which I had to thank him. In the last twenty-four hours, he had told me a lot of things about the circus in Bengal that I did not know. A hundred years ago, it was circuses owned by Bengalis that were famous all over the country. The best known among these was Professor Priyanath Bose’s The Great Bengal Circus. There were American, Russian, German and French artists, in addition to Indian. Even women used to take part. An American called Gus Burns used to work with a tiger. Unfortunately, when Professor Bose died, there was no one to take charge. His circus went out of business, as did many others in Bengal.
‘This Great Majestic in Hazaribagh . . . where does that come from, I wonder?’ Lalmohan Babu asked.
‘It has to be south India,’ Feluda answered. ‘They seem to have a monopoly in that line now.’
‘How good is their trapeze? That’s what I’d like to know!’
In this new book he was planning to write, trapeze was going to play an important role. One of the artistes was going to grab the arm of another while swinging in mid-air and give him a lethal injection. His hero, Prakhar Rudra, was going to have to learn a few tricks from trapeze artistes to be able to catch the culprit. When Lalmohan Babu revealed these details to us, Feluda remarked dryly, ‘Thank goodness there is at least one thing left for your hero to learn!’
We saw the second Ambassador soon after passing a post that said ‘72 kms’. It was standing by the side of the road with its bonnet up. Its driver was bending over it, only partially visible from the road. Another gentleman was waving frantically at us. Lalmohan Babu’s driver put his foot on the brake.
‘Er . . . are you going to Hazaribagh?’ the man asked. He was probably around forty, had a clear complexion and wore glasses.
‘Yes, we are,’ Feluda replied.
‘My car . . . the problem seems to be serious, you see. So I wonder if . . . ?’
‘You may come with us, if you like.’
‘So kind of you. I’ll try and get a mechanic and bring him back in a taxi. Can’t see what else I can do.’
‘Do you have any luggage?’
‘Only a small suitcase, but I can take it with me later. It shouldn’t take me more than forty-five minutes to return.’
‘Come on then.’
The man explained to his driver what he had decided to do, then climbed into our car and said ‘So kind of you’ again. Then he told us a great deal about himself, even without being asked. His name was Pritindra Chowdhury. His father, Mahesh Chowdhury, was once an advocate in Ranchi. He had retired ten years ago and moved to Hazaribagh. Everyone there knew him well.
‘Do you live in Calcutta?’ Feluda asked him.
‘Yes. I am in electronics. Have you heard of Indovision?’
I remembered having seen advertisements for a new television by the name. Mr Chowdhury worked for its manufacturers.
‘My father turns seventy tomorrow,’ he went on. ‘I have an elder brother. He has already reached Hazaribagh, and so have my wife and daughter. I was away in Delhi, you see, so I very nearly did not make it. But my father sent me a telegram saying “Must come”, so here I am. Could you please stop the car for a minute?’
The car stopped. Mr Chowdhury took out a small cassette recorder from his shoulder bag and disappeared among the trees. He returned in a couple of minutes and said, ‘I heard a flycatcher. It was still there, luckily. It is something of an obsession for me—I mean, this business of recording bird calls. So kind of you.’
The last words were meant to convey his thanks for stopping the car. Strangely, although he told us so much about himself, he didn’t seem interested in us at all.
We dropped him outside Eureka Automobiles in the main part of Hazaribagh. He said ‘So kind of you’ yet again and got out. Then he suddenly turned around and asked, ‘Oh, by the way, where will you be staying?’
Feluda had to raise his voice to make himself heard, for a lot of people were gathered nearby, talking excitedly about something. We learnt the reason for such excitement a little later.
‘I can’t give you directions, for this is our first visit to Hazaribagh. All I can tell you is that the house belongs to a Mr Sahai, and it isn’t far from the District Board rest house.’
‘Oh, then it can’t be more than seven minutes from our house. Do you have a telephone?’
‘Yes—742.’
‘Good.’
‘My name is Mitter. P.C. Mitter.’
‘I see. I didn’t even ask your name. Sorry.’
We said goodbye and went on our way. ‘He’s probably tense about introducing a new product,’ Feluda observed.
‘Eccentric,’ Lalmohan Babu proclaimed briefly.
The District Board rest house was not difficult to find. Mr Sahai’s house stood only a few houses away. Our car stopped and tooted outside the gate over which hung colourful branches of bougainvillaea. A short, middle-aged man emerged immediately and opened the gate. Then he stood aside and gave us a salute. We drove up a long driveway and finally stopped before a bungalow. The man who had opened the gate came running to take our luggage. It turned out that he was the chowkidar, Bulakiprasad.
I realized how quiet everything was when we got out of the car. The bungalow was surrounded by a huge compound (Lalmohan Babu took one look at it and said, ‘At least three acres!’). On one side was a garden with pretty flowerbeds. On the other side stood quite a few large trees. I could recognize mango and tamarind amongst them. Beyond the compound wall, in the far distance, were the Kanari Hills, about two miles away.
The house seemed ideal for three people. Three steps led to a veranda, behind which were three rooms. The one in the middle was the living room, the other two were bedrooms. Lalmohan Babu chose the one that faced west since he thought it would give him a good view of the sunset every evening.
We had only just begun unpacking, when Bulakiprasad came in with three cups of tea on a tray, and said something that made us drop everything and stare at him.
‘When you go out, sir,’ he said, ‘please take great care.’
‘Why? Are there pickpockets about?’ Lalmohan Babu asked. ‘No, sir. A tiger from the Great Majestic Circus has run away.’ What! What on earth was the man talking about? Bulakiprasad did not hesitate to give us all the details. A huge tiger had escaped from its cage only that morning. He didn’t know how that had happened, but the entire town was in a state of panic. The star attraction of the circus was this tiger. I remembered the painting of a tiger on all the posters I had seen in Ranchi. Feluda had even noticed the name of its trainer. ‘A Marathi man,’ he said, ‘his name is Karandikar.’
Lalmohan Babu remained silent for a few moments after hearing this news. Then he said, ‘This has to be telepathy. Would you believe it, I had been wondering if I could include something like this in my book? I mean, a tiger escaping from a circus is such a thrilling event, isn’t it? But you, Felu Babu, must remain totally incongito. If they realize you are a detective, they’ll get you to track the animal down, mark my word
s!’
Feluda and I were both so taken aback by what we had just heard that neither of us bothered to point out that the word was actually ‘incognito’. He need not have feared, however. Feluda never disclosed his profession to anyone without a good reason.
Bulakiprasad also told us that, in the past, the circus used to be held in a park called Curzon Park which was in the middle of the town. But this year, for some reason, they had gone to an open area at one end of the town, beyond which stretched a forest. The tiger only had to cross the main road to go into it. There were small Adivasi villages in the forest, so it could quite easily feed on their domestic animals.
None of us had imagined we’d hear something so sensational within minutes of our arrival in Hazaribagh. But it seemed a great pity that we couldn’t walk in the streets without having to watch out for a wild animal. Lalmohan Babu suggested after we had finished our tea that it might be a good idea to visit the circus in the afternoon to find out what exactly had happened.
‘When you say visit the circus, do you mean going to the show?’ Feluda asked.
‘No, not really. I was actually thinking of meeting the owner. He’d be able to tell us everything, surely?’
‘Yes. But, in order to do that, Mr Jatayu, you most definitely need the assistance of Felu Mitter.’
Two
Bulakiprasad’s wife made arahar daal and chicken curry for lunch. We did full justice to it, and then left in the car. Feluda was clearly as curious as Lalmohan Babu about the escaped tiger. He rang the local police station before we left. He had had to work with the police in Bihar on his last case, and Sarveshwar Sahai’s name was well known in Hazaribagh. The inspector who answered the phone—Inspector Raut—recognized Feluda’s name as soon as he had introduced himself and explained why he was calling. We did need help from the police to see the owner of the circus, under the present circumstances. ‘One of our men is posted outside the main entrance,’ Inspector Raut said. ‘He will let you in.’ Feluda told him he wanted to go there purely out of curiosity, not to start an investigation.
