Surrender-not and I went with them, weaving in and out of the crowd, frantically searching for anyone who bore even the slightest resemblance to Gurung. There was, of course, the possibility that the Gurkha had disguised himself, changed his features in some way, but Surrender-not thought that unlikely. He thought there was something about the way Gurung had carried himself, the way he’d talked when we’d encountered him the night before, that suggested he might find donning a physical disguise beneath his dignity. I pointed out that he’d disguised himself as a hospital porter to gain access to Nurse Rouvel’s dormitory and, more importantly, that in this instance, dignity would surely take second place to the desire to complete the mission he’d set himself.
The arrest of Basanti Das had achieved the impact that her husband had no doubt been hoping for. Riled by her arrest, the crowd marched along Red Road shouting their slogans with a vigour I hadn’t seen since the early months of the non-cooperation campaign.
The forward ranks of the Congress Volunteers reached Esplanade Row as the clocks struck four. The winter sun was already low in the sky as they and the thousands behind them reached the perimeter established by steel-helmeted troops blocking off access to the town hall.
For the next five minutes there was a tense stand-off, with the Volunteers showing the same resolve and regimentation as the soldiers set against them. Behind them the crowds continued to shout their slogans of ‘British out’ and ‘Long live Gandhi-ji’ at a level that must have been clearly audible to the Prince of Wales and his audience through the open windows of the town hall.
Those few hundred British and Anglo-Indians that hadn’t managed to make it into the hall, and had settled for listening to the prince from the lawns, were now torn between the speech being given inside and the uproar in the street. The young hotheads among them chose to confront the Indians.
‘The crowd is getting restless,’ Surrender-not shouted to me above the cacophony of voices. ‘At this rate there’ll be blood on the streets even before Gurung’s involvement.’
He was right. Without Das to instil order, things were starting to spiral out of control.
‘Bose,’ I said. ‘Where is he?’
‘In the back of a police van on Red Road,’ said Surrender-not, gesturing over his shoulder. ‘They detained him as he came off the stage.’
‘Well, go and bloody un-detain him and bring him here,’ I shouted. ‘And hurry.’
Surrender-not nodded and turned to fight his way back through the crowd. The weight of protesters now pressing against the front ranks was growing ever more intense and I realised the futility of the hope that I might spot Gurung in the melee. As it was, the density of the crowd meant that I couldn’t see anyone other than the five or six faces immediately around me. Gurung could have been standing two feet away and I wouldn’t have seen him. I needed a vantage point from where I’d be able to survey the throng.
Fighting my way through to the military cordon, I showed my warrant card to one of the soldiers and negotiated ingress to the ring of steel. I ran to the town hall and up its steps. It wasn’t much altitude but it was the best I could find.
I turned and looked out over the sea of faces. If Gurung set off his mustard gas now, it would trigger a chain of events that couldn’t be stopped. Panic would set in and the crowd would stampede in all directions, including into the cordon of soldiers. They, in turn, would see the surge of bodies as an attack and open fire and only the Devil knew where things would go from there.
From inside came the strains of the band striking up and soon the sound of hundreds of voices singing ‘God Save the King’ floated out. It meant the prince’s speech was over. He’d probably spend some minutes glad-handing selected dignitaries before exiting by the back door and being whisked off to Government House.
The door behind me opened and Dawson walked out. He looked as though someone had hit him about the face with a damp rag.
‘What have you to report, Wyndham?’
‘Nothing good,’ I said. ‘Das tried to speak to the protesters on the Maidan. We arrested him.’
‘Das? How did he get out of his house?’
‘That’s irrelevant now,’ I said. ‘What matters is he brought his wife with him. When we arrested him, she tried to speak in his place. Your men arrested her too. The crowd didn’t like it. I doubt the rest of India will either when it’s in the papers tomorrow.’
Dawson cursed. ‘The viceroy’ll be furious.’
‘Believe me,’ I said, ‘if that’s the worst news you have to give him today, then we’ll all be lucky.’
‘Gurung?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘No sign of him.’
The moment of maximum danger was fast approaching. When the prince left and his audience exited the building, no more than five feet from the crowds of protesters. It would be the moment of maximum vulnerability. The moment of maximum confusion. All at once I felt impotent, paralysed by the fear that I was about to fail: not just in my duty to protect the hundreds, maybe thousands of people of this city, both British and Indian, who were about to die; but more importantly, to Surrender-not, and to his father and brother; and especially to Annie. That would be a failure for which there could be no atonement or redemption.
As more protesters arrived, the pressure on the front ranks was growing intolerable and the discipline of the Congress Volunteers looked to be wavering. The line broke, and I had a vision of soldiers firing at the onrushing crowd, of white homespun turning crimson. But instead of a surge of protesters, it was Surrender-not and Bose who appeared through the gap. The Volunteers fought to close the breach behind them and, for the moment, their line held.
I left Dawson on the steps and ran down to negotiate safe passage for Surrender-not and Bose through the few feet of no-man’s-land between the Volunteers and the army and over to our side.
‘You need to tell your people to disperse,’ I shouted to Bose. ‘You’ve made your point. You’ve protested under the prince’s nose. Now tell them to go home. The soldiers aren’t going to budge and they’ll respond with force if you push them much further.’
‘You heard Basanti Devi,’ he replied. ‘The demonstration will not end until we have carried out the burning of foreign cloth.’
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘You can’t be serious. We’re minutes away from a riot and you want to burn cloth?’
‘There will be no rioting,’ he said calmly. ‘At least not from our side.’
‘Get on with it, then,’ I said. ‘Burn your damn cloth and end this.’
Surrender-not accompanied him back through the cordon and to his own men while I returned to my position atop the town hall steps, still hoping against hope that I’d been wrong, and that with the kidnapping and slaying of McGuire, Gurung’s thirst for revenge had been slaked.
Below me, Bose issued a command and, moments later, from out of the throng appeared two Volunteers carrying a crate and a bullhorn. They placed the crate at Bose’s feet. He climbed atop it and, taking the megaphone, began to address the crowd. Within seconds the shouts had died as the mass of men struggled to hear what he was saying.
He spoke in Bengali, but there was something in the tone and tempo of his voice, the clipped syllables, that made me think he was rushing his speech, and given that Bengalis weren’t exactly known for brevity, I got the impression that, despite his bravado, he too might have been afraid that things were close to spiralling out of control.
But slowly the crowd began to respond to his words. Some turned and shouted his instructions to others further back, and gradually the pressure at the front began to lessen. Within minutes, the Volunteers managed to clear a gap ten feet wide between the protesters and Dawson’s troops.
Bose issued more orders, and from the crowd, a line of men appeared. They walked solemnly to the centre of the clearing and, one by one, began to throw garments onto the ground: one a shirt, another a coat, a third a scarf and so on until the pile of discarded foreign cloth had reached head height. As Das had done a few days earlier, Bose took a lit torch and set it at the base of the pile.
Behind me, the doors to the town hall opened and the invitees to the prince’s reception began to file out. I turned and urged them back into the building, and after certain initial remonstration from some of the congregation, they decided to heed my instructions, no doubt aided in their decision by the sight of several thousand Indians setting fire to a pile of clothes a yard away and me reaching for my revolver.
Golden flames began to rise from the mound of discarded material, illuminating the darkening sky, and soon the pile was completely engulfed in fire, sending a column of thick black smoke into the air.
It was then that the explosion occurred.