The fierily-bearded ash-smeared face glared back at him.
‘I am fasting to death. To death. Or till you go.’
Ghote shook the egg-box he was carrying between his two hands in the intensity of his emotions.
‘If necessary,’ he said in as severe a voice as he could muster, ‘I will have you charged with obstruction. I will not allow investigation to be hindered.’
‘You will arrest a man fasting to death?’ snarled the Swami. ‘You will arrest on deathbed itself? No one has succeeded in doing that before. It would be necessary to shoot a hundred people, a thousand people, two thousand to get me from this temple.’
And abruptly the blazing eyes dropped from Ghote’s face to his midriff.
‘What is it you have got there?’ the old man asked, with not a jot of abated sharpness.
‘It is eggs, eggs only,’ Ghote said. ‘But you must listen now –’
‘Eggs? He is bringing in here eggs,’ the Swami exclaimed in even louder tones.
Ghote, extremely unwilling to have his presence here among so many ill-wishers made known, shushed the old man angrily.
‘Why are you objecting?’ he said. ‘It is only a box I happened to be carrying with me.’
‘It is carried to disgust me,’ the Swami retorted at a new pitch of cantankerousness. ‘Well you are knowing that the egg is equally forbidden to pass the lips as any meat. And into this temple you are bringing them. Go. Go now. Go this instant. Or I will curse you.’
Again the voice was growing louder and louder. Ghote sensed various movements in the darkness of the temple behind him. He decided that there could be no purpose served in staying any longer in face of this ridiculous intransigence.
‘Very well,’ he said rapidly. ‘I am going.’
The Swami fell silent, but he was still glaring horribly.
‘I am going,’ Ghote repeated. ‘But I am giving this warning. If you continue to obstruct course of justice I shall have absolutely no alternative but to seek arrest warrant from nearest magistrate.’
And even as he said the words he knew that that magistrate would almost certainly be a bosom crony of the Municipal Chairman’s.
But at least the cantankerous figure of the Swami was silent again. Ghote turned on his heel, and, holding the despised box of eggs stiffly out in front of him, stamped out of the hall.
8
Back in the reassuring sanity of the police-station, Ghote gave Superintendent Chavan a generalized account only of his experiences at the ruined temple.
‘Ah, yes,’ said the superintendent gravely, commenting on the Swami’s attitude, ‘he is very bad-tempered man, but very holy also.’
Ghote accepted the judgement. After all the holy man was a factor in the life of the town, and, one thing that was absolutely clear was that the superintendent and his men did know the town and what went on in it from A to Z. And, though in general many a doubtful character lay disguised under the matted hair, ashes and orange robes of a holy man, it was also true that many a true holy man did not feel bound to express himself in gentle and sympathetic terms.
‘Well,’ Ghote said dolefully, ‘one thing is certain: he is not going to stop his fast for me.’
‘Yes, that is so,’ Superintendent Chavan agreed with conviction. ‘And of course also he is a man of very great age.’
‘It was difficult to see in the darkness of the temple,’ Ghote hazarded.
‘No,’ said the superintendent firmly, ‘he is definitely eighty years old at the least. And he is not strong.’
‘Not strong,’ Ghote admitted reluctantly.
‘So it is a question how long this fast-to-death will last.’
‘Yes, yes. That is the question, Superintendent. You are quite right. But I suppose men of that age have fasted for as many as seventy days or more even, without any undue incident occurring.’
Ghote, faced with the fury that would beyond doubt break out in the town if the holy man were to die, had not been able to bring himself to plainer words. The superintendent was under no such restraint.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said with a trace of impatience, ‘hale and hearty old men have fasted for perhaps as long as you have stated. But do not mistake. This individual is not at all hale and hearty. Against strict medical advice has he acted.’
‘Yes,’ Ghote said.
He sat in front of the superintendent’s admirably orderly desk and looked down at his feet. Slowly he forced himself to brace back his shoulders.
‘So I am left with only one remaining course of action,’ he said. ‘I must carry out personal questioning of chief suspect.’
‘You are going to see the Municipal Chairman?’ the superintendent said, his voice rising up in awe.
‘I am going to see the Municipal Chairman.’
*
But Ghote’s resolution was to be subjected to a long chill before it could be put into effect. The Municipal Chairman, telephoned from the police-station, regretted that extreme pressure of business made it impossible for him to see Inspector Ghote of the Bombay C.I.D – until seven o’clock that evening at his home.
Ghote succeeded in filling in the afternoon profitably enough as it turned out. But the wait gave his precarious ardour a long time to cool.
He embarked on another frustrating telephone call to the Eminent Figure, patiently conveying in guarded language various requests for investigations to be made back in Bombay, such as a search in the Chemical Examiner’s records for any trace of the missing organs having been received. The whole business of making the call took him more than an hour, and at the end he wondered whether the Eminent Figure really had grasped everything he wanted doing and how urgent it all was.
After this came a refresher course with the Sarojini Savarkar Case Diary in preparation for the expected battle-of-wits of the evening ahead.
But at last the time set by the Chairman drew near and Ghote, in accordance with a plan he had worked out as soon as he had realized what it was he had to do, changed into borrowed police uniform and ordered the town’s most prominent taxi to call for him at the police-station.
If he was going to venture into enemy territory, especially after the warning he had received from the Chairman himself, then he wanted to invest his visit with all the panoply of officialdom he could muster. And as a last precaution he said to the superintendent just before going out to the taxi, a rust-edged old De Soto, ‘If I am not back in two hours, kindly come and fetch me yourself.’
Then, ready as he ever would be, he set out.
The run to the Chairman’s house on the outskirts of the town should not have taken long, and it would have been accomplished easily inside the time Ghote had allowed for it, if the pride of the town’s taxi fleet had not expired ignominiously some way from its destination.
Its engine just died away completely, and the big old car drifted to an absolute halt in the middle of the road.
The driver, a keen-looking young man with the pockets of his bush-shirt positively jammed with assorted screwdrivers and small spanners, was out of his seat in an instant.
‘Aha,’ he said joyfully, ‘I know exactly what is wrong with her, the old bitch. Two seconds and she will be right as rain only.’
When the two seconds had lengthened into a quarter of an hour without the least sign of life from the old car’s engine, Ghote, who was becoming a little anxious about his seven o’clock deadline, got out of the vehicle in his turn and suggested that it might be worth stopping a passing tonga, of which he had seen a good many taking the wealthier citizens of the town home from the day’s labours.
‘Not at all, not at all,’ the young man said. ‘This is quite small inconvenience only. By the time you have hailed tonga I will already be at Chairman’s house.’
Ghote turned away and left him to his internal adjustments. But he had seen a disquieting number of engine parts lying on the running-board of the old car.
He gave the boy another five minutes, exactly. Then he marched b
ack to him.
‘It is too late now,’ he announced firmly. ‘I will stop the first tonga I see.’
And of course not a tonga came in sight.
Ghote fretted and fumed. He would not have put it past the Chairman to cancel the whole interview on the grounds that he was late. At the car, the driver seemed to be doing nothing but removing more pieces.
Ghote came back to him.
‘Exactly how far is the house from here?’ he asked.
The boy wiped his hands thoroughly on a scrap of dirty rag.
‘Oh, you could not walk in the time,’ he said.
Ghote looked round for some landmark. There was the bulky mounded shape of the town tank where water was stored for the time when the river was liable to run too low. But he did not know where this lay in relation to his destination.
‘How far is it exactly, I am asking,’ he demanded.
‘It is a mile, more than a mile,’ the boy answered.
Ghote looked at his watch. If he ran at a steady pace …
‘I am going,’ he announced.
‘It is two miles and a half,’ the boy said.
Ghote fought down a desire to lash out at him. He turned on his heel and set off at a jog-trot along the softly damp road.
He had gone less than two hundred yards when the old De Soto came coughing and spluttering up behind him. The boy was leaning out of the driver’s window.
‘I am telling,’ he shouted. ‘I know this old bitch backwards.’
‘All right,’ Ghote shouted back, looking up at the rain-threatening sky. ‘I will take the ride.’
‘Then jump in quick,’ the boy answered, reaching back and letting the rear door flap open. ‘It is not good idea to be stopping.’
Ghote sprinted forwards as the old car began drawing away from him. His right foot splashed gigantically in a puddle, dirtying his smart borrowed uniform trousers up to the knees. He clutched at the swaying door handle and heaved. He got a foot on the running-board. It lurched ominously under his weight. He hauled himself by main force into the car’s interior.
And scarcely had he flopped back on to the seat, which he found well strewn with parts from the engine, when the car came to a brake-squealing halt, its motor mounting to a joyful roar.
‘We are here,’ said his driver.
Ghote got out again and appraised the building in front of him.
It was certainly impressive. A high wall of packed earth, whitewashed and barbed-wire topped, surrounded it with only an enormous pair of carved gates breaking the defences. Through them could be seen the house itself, marked out from its neighbours down the road by possessing three storeys, and a remarkably large garden dotted with flowerbeds and fruit trees and all in excellent order.
Ghote looked down at his mud-spattered trousers. He had meant to confront any magnificence he might meet with all the majesty of the law. Now he was as bedraggled as any ordinary home-coming bicycling clerk this wet monsoon day.
But there was nothing for it except to call through the high carved gates to the tall turbaned chaprassi he saw strutting about beyond them. And when this lordly being had dragged open both halves of the double-gates all Ghote could do was march in with as much dignity as he could muster and go on up the well-tended gravel drive to the wide studded front door of the house itself.
At least, he found glancing at his watch, the time was exactly seven o’clock.
He rang at the doorbell. Soon the sound of bare feet slapping on marble came to him and a neatly uniformed bearer opened the door.
‘Inspector Ghote, Bombay, to see Mr Savarkar.’
He said it as loudly as he could.
‘Please enter, Inspector. You are expected.’
Ghote felt a dart of pleasure. At least the Chairman had reacted to his intended visit.
He followed the bearer into a chequered marble hall, and on through it down a wide corridor smelling of new paint and into a small room where he was left to wait.
After he had been there for some ten minutes he started taking stock of his surroundings. The room was furnished with what seemed to be cast-offs from other places, a stuffed sofa with a rent in the yellow material covering it, a brass tray on a wooden stand that trembled shiveringly at the least touch, a wooden almirah whose door would no longer properly close. There was only one narrow window. It looked out on to the low-growing margosa tree right up against the side of the house somewhere.
Everything seemed very quiet.
Ghote sat down cautiously on the old sofa. He crossed his legs in such a way that the worst affected part of his trousers could dry a little.
When he next allowed himself to look at his watch he saw that it was now twenty-five past seven.
His trousers had definitely dried in patches. He went across to the door, opened it a little and peered out. Nobody was to be seen. He retreated and began rubbing at the mud splashes where they looked as if they would brush off.
When he had done his best he sat down again. This time with his legs well spread. He followed the progress of the rest of the drying mud with close attention.
It was in a fit state for brushing down to the last quarter square inch when he next consulted his watch. The time was seven fifty.
He completed his cleaning-up operation, which left his trousers looking crinkled and dirtyish but just presentable, and then went and put his head out of the door again. This time he caught a glimpse of a servant, not the smart bearer who had shown him in, but another man, lower in the scale though somewhere above the sweeper line. He was idling across the end of the corridor.
‘Hoy,’ Ghote called out.
The man stopped. Ghote beckoned. The man came forward, reluctantly but curiously.
‘Do you know where your master is?’ Ghote asked him.
The man, a skinny fellow of about sixty with an apologetic-looking grey moustache, half there and half shaved away, gave him a quick conspiratorial smile.
‘He is waiting,’ he said.
‘Waiting? What for?’
‘For the inspector from Bombay.’
‘But I am the inspector from Bombay. Your master is waiting for me? Then take me to him.’
‘Oh, no, sahib.’
‘No? But why not?’
‘He is not waiting to see you, sahib. I have heard him tell Moti, the head bearer, that you must be kept to wait a long time.’
He let the man, who seemed strongly nervous now though still friendly, go on his way and shutting the door behind him he settled down to wait. If the Chairman thought he was going to make him angry by humiliating him, then he was going to be proved wrong.
Half an hour passed.
Ghote was unable to remain sitting on the old sofa with the torn yellow covering. He began pacing about the room. He looked out of the door. Nothing. He looked out of the window. A striped cat, unusually fat and well-fed in appearance as if everything here was of a superior quality, was crouching under the branches of the margosa tree staring at a raggedy sparrow that had daringly alighted on the lawn not far away and was pecking at some of the little yellow flowers knocked down by the rain from the tree above.
The cat stared. The sparrow hopped. Ghote watched.
And then at last the sparrow, sensing perhaps that the cat was about to break the heavy calm of the dusk outside with a lion-like spring, suddenly flew off. The cat continued to crouch in the same tense position, but Ghote could see that the fire had gone out of her.
‘Billi,’ he called softly. ‘Billi, billi.’
After a little the cat rose to its feet, turned and gave him a long look.
‘Billi, billi, billi,’ he called, thinking that a cat at least would while away the time.
The animal turned its head and stalked off, calm and disdainful, thick tail held perfectly upright. The last of the daylight vanished from the garden.
Ghote went over to the door of the room and switched on the light. The single naked bulb hanging, fly-blown, from the ceiling was of such low po
wer that it gave only a pool of orangeish light right in the centre of the room.
For a quarter of an hour Ghote sat staring at it. Then he got up and opened the door again.
The servant who had let out the secret of why he had been kept waiting so long was standing outside.
‘The master would not see you yet,’ he said, and giggled.
Never mind, Ghote thought, at least the fellow will be company.
He beckoned him in and began to talk, asking the man such questions about himself and his affairs as came into his mind. The fellow replied happily enough, but evidently he possessed little capacity for initiating conversations of his own and each line of talk Ghote started soon petered into nothingness.
So it was not with the intention of furthering his case against Vinayak Savarkar that he asked the man whether he had been a servant here at the time the Chairman had married into the family. But the answer he got sent springing up in him a sharp flicker of hope.
‘Oh yes, sahib, I was born in the servants’ quarter of this house. When he came here with the other servants he had there was not much room for us.’
‘Your master brought servants from his former home?’ Ghote asked.
‘Oh yes, sahib. Though they were not needed. Already Old Master had plenty.’
‘But New Master brought more? How many?’
‘Five, sahib. All very old.’
‘Five.’
‘They are dead now, sahib.’
‘Dead?’
‘One only is still living, the old woman who was nurse of the master’s first wife.’
‘And she is still living in this house?’
Ghote’s excitement was rising.
‘In the servants’ quarters, sahib. She is blind and she does not leave there, but she is always wanting more than what is hers.’
‘She is there now?’ Ghote began. ‘Tell me, can I come –’
He had been speaking, in his excitement, in quite a loud voice. And suddenly the door of the little room had been sharply opened.
It was the head bearer, Moti.
He said nothing. But the jerk of the head with which he sent his underling scurrying out spoke volumes. And, without a word to Ghote, the moment the man had left he turned and closed the door behind them both, firmly and decisively.
Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg Page 8
