The third-class carriage was desperately crowded with men of all kinds who lay or squatted or sat in whatever inches of space they could secure. Colly was jammed next to a fat Sikh, returning all the way to Ludhiana. Some of the passengers had no luggage at all, some apparently all their worldly possessions done up in bundles and tin boxes. To a large extent the travellers ignored each other, like those in a rush-hour subway in a western city. But they were gentler and more tolerant than western commuters. Colly had no need to be alarmed for the safety of his sitar; it would not be trodden on. At the same time the passengers accepted their acute discomfort with fatalistic tranquillity; they went to sleep, with placid faces, in positions in which a European would have found sleep impossible. Colly found that he could not sink himself that far into his role. Nor did he want to; nor would he have dared to.
Beyond the Sikh squatted another traveller far from home, a Hindu from Patiala, and jammed against him a man from Shahabad. The latter was unusually friendly and extrovert; soon the three were chatting. Colly understood a little of their conversation, which was about themselves. The Sikh was a bus-driver, the Patialan a potter who made the little earthenware drinking-cups which are broken after use to prevent the defilement of one caste by the mouth of another, and the man from Shahabad a coppersmith.
A little way off on the floor of the carriage squatted a little, fat ingratiating Bengali. Colly, inspecting him out of the corners of his eyes, was sure that this was the man with Ishur Ghose’s tobacco-pouch, although he was now dressed in checked cotton trousers and a skimpy green shirt.
The train thundered north-westwards across West Bengal, which was spangled with the fires of innumerable villages as the evening drew in. Stations came and went, briefly punctuating the rush of the train, and for its great noise substituting a shriller noise of their own. They were like caverns, dark and full of people. Signs in English, Urdu and Bengali forbade spitting and urinating; they were widely ignored. Tea-sellers wailed along the platform; hot-water sellers, for travellers with their own teapots, wailing contrapuntally among them. Coolies tottered under mountainous bundles of baggage. Beggars crawled or sidled the length of the train; an aged woman, grey-skinned and toothless, piped over and over again that she had no father and no mother. At each stop, passengers spilled out onto the platform to buy food. The carriage filled with the smells of curries and of the cheap cigarettes called bidis. The floor became mottled with spittle, red from the juice of pan-leaves.
When the train stopped at a place called Bhagalpur, the little Bengali bounced to his feet like a rubber ball. Colly watched him through eyes that appeared closed. The Bengali made a sign to another man, stringy, almost black, who wore tattered shorts and a kind of night-shirt. They climbed out of the train together. Colly opened his eyes, yawned, stretched, spat, got stiffly to his feet, and followed them onto the teeming platform. He carried his sitar in his unbandaged hand.
The Bengali and his gaunt companion were walking the length of the train, looking into each window. They did so skilfully, apparently casually, giving no appearance of a methodical search.
Colly had seen enough. He climbed aboard the train and wriggled to his place. His body was sprawled and his eyes half-closed long before the men returned. When they did so, the gaunt man’s face showed no expression but the Bengali was frowning.
Two or three hours later (Colly had left an exact sense of time far behind with his European clothes) the train stopped at Patna. Most of the passengers got out and joined the shifting mob on the dark platform. A man bought chappatis and tea. Colly, observing and listening, copied him exactly. He paid a few annas. The vendor hardly looked at him. He headed back towards the train. It was almost leaving. Whistles were importantly blown and flags waved, and the shouts of officials and of travellers filled the high dark vault of the station.
Colly did not understand what happened next.
A kind of gentle stampede of ragged brown bodies, chattering in various languages, surged to the train. Colly was somehow carried by a section of the crowd not to his previous coach but to the next one. He had no sense of being pushed or bullied; the men round him were bland and affable, some a family party, some unknown to each other. But they carried Colly irresistibly to the next coach. He was hoisted, with a press of others, into the coach. It was not as full as the first. There were many women in it. Like Colly, and apparently subjected to the same accident, the potter from Patiala was in the new coach. He did not mind where he was on the train, and there was more room here. He scratched his head, talked to himself equably, and lay down on the floor.
The train started again. It thundered westwards through the night into Uttar Pradesh, over the immense fat plain of the Ganges. It was very hot. Most of the passengers slept.
Women had been kept out of the other coach, tactfully, deliberately. An injured musician and a potter had now been expelled from it, so adroitly that the potter had no idea that he had been expelled. Why? Something was going to happen in the next coach at which women must not be present, nor potters, nor musicians: or perhaps injured men: or perhaps Europeans in disguise.
A memory stirred in Colly’s brain. What thief would not rob, what murderer would not kill, a woman, a potter, a musician?
Colly felt intense curiosity about the next coach, about the crazy exclusivity which had somehow been dictated to its occupants. He wanted very badly to watch what went on in there.
After a short time the train stopped at Khagaul. Colly propped his sitar in a corner and with an air of sleepy vagueness got out of the train. The station was comparatively quiet. Most even of the beggars and tea-sellers seemed to be asleep. A few people were getting on and off the train. They talked to each other loudly and incessantly. A man and woman, quarrelling, tried to get into the carriage in which Colly had started the journey. A wall of men made it impossible for them to get through the door. They were told, passionately, that there was no room for a mouse in the carriage, it was jammed, other carriages were available, they could on no account enter this one, it was a physical impossibility. The woman was inclined to argue but the man shrugged and led her to the next coach.
Whatever was happening was still happening, then, or had not yet happened.
Colly slipped into the gap between the two coaches. There was no corridor joining them, only a gigantic coupling. He stood on the coupling, flattening himself against the end of one of the coaches. A little light filtered into his hiding-place from the dim naked bulbs hanging far above from the station roof. He regretted the pale colours of his clothes. A station official, important with uniform and flag and whistle, glanced in his direction. His glance lingered for a moment. Colly was sure the official must have seen him, but he gave no sign of having done so. Perhaps he was too lazy and sleepy to bother with a man travelling with no ticket; perhaps it was not his responsibility but another’s, in which it would be beneath his dignity to mix.
The train jerked into motion. The sleepers began to accelerate under Colly’s sandalled feet. Gathering speed, the train emerged from the dim-lit vault of the station into the huge hot black night. The air struck hot even when the train began to go fast. Colly clung to the end of the coach, his brain confused by noise and vibration and by the ground rushing by under his feet.
The only way to see into the coach was from the roof. The roof was safe enough. There were no tunnels in this infinity of wet flat rice-paddy. Colly’s sandals were no good for climbing. He shook them off, letting them fall on the ground between the wide-gauge rails. He pushed his dirty bandage up his arm, clear of his hand. Barefooted and with both hands free he climbed easily onto the roof of the carriage, frightened only that his wig would blow off in the battering hot air that tried to pluck him from the roof and his clothes from his body.
Gripping small, mysterious projections of metal, he lowered his head and shoulders towards a window. He hung downwards, bent right-angled at the waist, his thighs and loins clamped to the metal roof. The thunder of the train and the battering of the wind confused his senses. Handholds and toeholds were small.
Upside down, clinging, Colly peeped into the carriage.
In John Tucker’s house the telephone rang.
Sandro, on his way to bed, grabbed it as he always did, hoping as he continued, hopelessly, to hope.
“I trust I have not disturbed your slumbers, Count,” said Ishur Ghose’s gentle singsong. “I have had a terrible time getting through, you know. Nothing works as well as it used to. That is why I am making this call later than I would have wished. I am simply telephoning to ask if there is any news? Needless to say I have been thinking about nothing else. I personally have drawn blank, I’m afraid. I have done a certain amount of quiet prying, as I promised, but it has got me nowhere.”
Sandro said, “Where is your English tobacco pouch with yellow and red stripes?”
“At home,” said Ishur Ghose immediately, in a tone of the utmost surprise. “I never use it anywhere else. It is so obtrusively Europe, you know, like my old pipe. Why do you ask about it?”
Sandro told him.
Ishur Ghose said, “Mohendra Lai Dutt is quite an ordinary Bengali name. I expect I have met people of that name, but I do not remember one such as you have described. If he said he was a close friend of mine he lied.”
“Could your apartment be burgled?”
“Not easily. I was not born yesterday, and I was trained. But by an expert any place can be burgled. Oh dear. I wonder what else they took. Not that the loss of a few of my household goods is to be weighed against our other loss, your loss. It was clever of you to see through the man’s deception. I am so thankful you did. But now I am bound to feel a certain amount of concern for Mr Tucker.”
“Anch’io. But my small fat friend did not see him, as far as I know. And you yourself would not recognise him.”
“That was a very, very prudent precaution. Let us pray that it has worked. If a freethinker’s prayers have any value they are certainly at Mr Tucker’s service. I simply do not know what we are up against. I don’t know why anybody would want you to travel on that train, or what they could have planned. I cannot begin to guess whether it relates to Lady Jennifer’s disappearance.”
“Will you meet that train at Mughal Serai?”
“Yes indeed. I devoutly hope that Mr Tucker will see me, even if as you say I shall not see him. Perhaps I will see a small fat man calling himself – what was it? – Mohendra Lai Dutt. Perhaps I shall see something of significance.”
“We have maybe learned something of significance,” said Sandro.
“Yes. I think we have. I will discuss it with Mr Tucker when I see him.”
What Colly saw, hanging upside down on the side of the hurtling coach, sent prickles of fascinated horror running down his spine to the back of his neck.
There were about thirty men in the coach, which was not in fact at all crowded. About eight of the men were lying asleep or squatting drowsily, paying no attention to their surroundings, in the state of suspended animation with which Indians make the intolerable tolerable. The Sikh bus-driver was one of the sleeping men. The other men, twenty or more, were awake and alert. Some squatted near the sleepers. A few were on their feet. Among these were the little fat Bengali, Sandro’s acquantance, and the friendly coppersmith from Shahabad.
All eyes were on the Bengali.
He raised his hand to his mouth, fingers extended. He made a circle of his lips. He lowered his hand, exhaling. He was miming the action of smoking a cigarette.
It was the signal.
Onto each of the eight men who were sleeping or dozing two of the others launched themselves. One of the two grabbed the victim’s legs, one his arms. All the seized men were thrown violently over onto their faces. A third man knelt on the shoulders of each victim, holding, each one, a narrow strip of fabric about thirty inches long, striped in pale colours. The fabric was in some way knotted and looped. The strips of fabric were slipped over the heads of the victims by the men kneeling on their shoulders, while the arms and legs were still held by the other men. The victims were strangled. All of them were killed quickly but none instantaneously. If there was any noise it was drowned by the noise of the train. Colly, his senses reeling, saw eyeballs and tongues protrude and dark faces become darker as they were suffused with blood.
As soon as they were dead the bodies were stripped. The clothes were searched quickly but thoroughly. Money, betel-boxes, a few trinkets and charms, a watch or two, were placed in a pile on the floor of the coach at the feet of the little Bengali.
All the bundles and baggage of the dead men were searched. Very little was found which interested the searchers: a pair of shoes, a couple of shirts, a small radio, some packets of cigarettes, a water-bottle in a canvas cover, some religious statuettes, a few other items of small value were added to the pile.
It was all barely worth stealing. All the booty from eight murders made a sad little pile worth a few rupees. It was unthinkably out of proportion, if theft was the main motive of the murders.
Immediately the search was finished, the killers unfolded sheets and rugs and laid them out on the floor. The eight bodies were folded up and wrapped in the sheets. The new, awkward bundles were tied round with cords or with other sheets.
The little Bengali wrapped the whole of the booty in a shirt, knotting the sleeves of the shirt to secure it.
Within a short time the carriage was entirely peaceful and innocent. There were eight fewer travellers. Those that remained squatted or sprawled, peaceful, in a good but not a boisterous humour. Two of them, yawning, pillowed their heads on the bundles which were dead men.
The train made a new noise. Colly, looking down, saw water below, an immense river. He remembered that the train crossed the Son, which joined the Ganges from the south just below the junction of Ganges and Ghaghara. It was a very long bridge. The smooth ink-black water seemed to throw back echoes of the train between the trestles of the bridge, seemed to make an appalled commentary on the murder of eight men for a handful of rupees.
There was no more to see in the coach. It was finished.
Colly hauled himself back onto the roof. Blood pounded through his head from the position he had been in, and his mind reeled with what he had seen.
Everything was now explained. The 900 disappearances were explained.
Colly knew what he had witnessed. He remembered vivid, impressionistic Victorian drawings in a book, a sensational novel founded on historical fact. The murders he had watched were the murders in that book – the limb-holders clinging to arms and legs, the strangler with the narrow handkerchief. The book was The Confessions of a Thug.
The train was over the enormous bridge. After a minute it began to slow for the next station. From the map Colly remembered the name Arrah.
What he did depended on what they did. As long as they stayed on the train, heads peacefully pillowed on the bodies of their victims, he must stay on it. When they left it he must leave it, follow, see how and where they disposed of the bodies.
Soon they and their like would have killed 1000 people.
Was Jenny among them? Had her legs and arms been held while the pale scarf, knotted and looped, went round her dear neck, and tightened and twisted until she was dead? Had that happened?
No women had disappeared. But Jenny had disappeared. It was necessary to know more, much more, as much as possible. But it was necessary not to be killed, or Sandro would never know what he knew and Jenny would not be found.
The train slowed to ten m.p.h. and to seven and to a walking pace. It heaved itself thunderously into the station.
Colly prepared to climb down off the roof of the coach onto the coupling. He must be ready to follow if the men left the train.
Brakes screeched. The train juddered to a halt. Immediately one of the men from the coach below was out onto the platform. Two others joined him. They were alert and on their guard, though they would not have looked alert to any casual eye. They glanced all round them all the time. One stood by the end of the coach. Colly, leaning down from the roof, could have touched the top of his head.
Colly could not climb down at this end of the coach without the man hearing and seeing him. He could not jump on him without being seen by the other watchers. If the man saw him he would see that the bandage was a fraud. He would know that Colly had been on the roof. He would know he was a spy. There were more than twenty of them. The Bengali was small and fat but many of the others were lithe, active, tough-looking. Colly might slide down fast and run, but the odds would be heavily against him. If he got away he would not be able to follow and watch the men. If he was caught he would be killed: must be: and Sandro would never know how and Jenny would still be lost.
Colly crawled to the other end of the coach. He was not completely out of sight of people on the platform but it was fairly dark and he did not think he was seen. As he crawled he was aware of movement below him. The twenty men and their baggage were going out onto the platform.
Colly prepared to climb down at the other end of the coach. A man stood there. It was the man from Shahabad who said he was a coppersmith. Colly had seen him strangle the Sikh bus-driver, with whom he had struck up a friendship. He was alert and watchful, a look-out.
There was no way Colly could get down from the roof of the coach.
Should he yell for the police? Shout in English or his inadequate Urdu that eight dead bodies were in the bundles on the platform below him? He would be outshouted by the twenty men. Three or four would climb up at each end of the coach. There would be a great shouting, drowning his voice, that he was a madman, a criminal, about to hurl himself off the roof, to commit suicide. They would struggle with him, pretending to an indifferent crowd that they were trying to save his life. He would get a knife between the ribs, or take a dive head-first onto the platform.
Worst of all they would be warned. They would go after Sandro and get him. If they or their friends had Jenny, she would be buried deeper than a jewel under a mountain.
He was helpless.
“Mukherjee has made a mistake.”
“The feringhi are not on the train?” asked the big man with the mane of silvering hair.
“The Italian is not. He is safe in Calcutta, in Alipur. The American is on the train. Mukherjee may not see him. I suppose he is dressed up in some way. I did not expect that. Perhaps they are good at disguises, perhaps even as good as we are. I did not expect that at all.”
“They will look for my bride. They will not find her but they may be a nuisance while they search.”
“Yes. They are cleverer than we thought. That is why they saw through Mukherjee’s story, which I expected them to believe. They have powerful friends, also.”
“So have you, Ishur Ghose.”
“Yes. The same friends. The best thing will be to kill the American here. That will bring the Italian. We kill him here also. It will be much easier to kill them separately than together, I think.”
The train started again.
Colly, helpless on the roof of the coach, saw twenty men crossing the platform with many bundles, heavy and of awkward shape. They were not moving as a single group, but as a number of small groups with no contact between them. Other bundles, carried by other passengers or on the heads of coolies, were as heavy and as awkward. The twenty men were not distinctive in any way. They were on their way out of the station in the early morning, before first light. The bodies would never be found.
Colly left the train at the next station. He waited until full day, until important men in Delhi would be in their offices, and then found a telephone.
Jenny had seen pale scarves in the hands of men who came softly up behind Sandro and himself: pale scarves quickly hidden: in the hands of men who were friends of Ishur Ghose.
Ishur Ghose knew that Jenny was going to Kalighat on the day she disappeared.
Mohendra Lai Dutt, as he called himself, had Ishur Ghose’s tobacco-pouch. The easiest way for him to have come by it was from the hand of Ishur Ghose.
Was the old man what he seemed? Could the Ishur Ghose they knew be a ringer, an imposter?
Colly was troubled. He trusted his instinct about people. His instinct vehemently told him to trust Ishur Ghose. Colly had come to like the old man enormously, as he knew the others did. Their judgement of people – Jenny’s especially – was acute and highly trained and most rarely proved wrong. But logic obliged Colly to question his instinct.
Sandro had told him what name to ask for, what code-word to use to identify himself. This was in case of trouble. Maybe there was trouble.
After a long time Colly got the right government office in Delhi; in a very short time, by virtue of name and code-word, he was put through to the right person.
Ishur Ghose was very well known by reputation, pretty well known in person, to Sandro’s contact. The latter had seen the old man recently, called on him in his apartment in Calcutta only a few weeks before. He described man and apartment. He recounted the outlines of Ishur Ghose’s career, the men he had worked for, the men who had worked for him, the assignments he had been given, his subsequent history, his learned hobby, his English pipe and M.C.C. tobacco-pouch bought in the Strand before the war.
There was no doubt, none, that the old man was what he said he was. He was totally trustworthy. He was not just a good citizen: he was, had been, an outstanding confidential public official. Nor could, possibly, the Ishur Ghose they knew be a masquerader. Comparing notes, Colly and Sandro’s contact agreed that they were discussing the same man. Not a double, not a twin, not an actor, however brilliant.
Colly told the official in Delhi that he had just watched a Thug murder and that he thought the 900 disappearances were all Thug murders.
The official thought we was mad and said so.
Colly telephoned Sandro and described what he had seen, speaking Italian, which he did not think any eavesdropper would understand.
Sandro knew about the history of Thuggee because he was a student of criminology. He said the Thugs had been entirely wiped out by the British authorities in the second quarter of the 19th century. But he believed what Colly told him.
Sandro said, “Perhaps different people took Jenny.”
“Then why did your small fat friend want us on the train to be killed?”
“I think,” said Sandro sadly, “you must not discuss this with Ishur Ghose.”
“I had the same idea. I telephoned your friend in Delhi. We talked for a long time. I can safely discuss this and anything else with Ishur Ghose.”
“Va bene. Then do so. I will stay here until you call for me.”
Ishur Ghose’s eyes twinkled behind the gold-rimmed spectacles. He said, “A mutual friend in Delhi has just been in touch with me on the telephone.”
Colly grinned, embarrassed. He began an explanation.
Ishur Ghose said, “Believe me, Mr Tucker, this does not reduce but increases my respect for you. Of course, given the circumstances, you were right to do exactly as you did. Now tell me exactly what you saw on the train and then we will make a plan. The Count is still in Calcutta? Good. We will make a plan for you first of all.”