The noise of the launch’s heavy engine shattering the silence of the deserted quay went through Inspector Ghote numbingly. Gregory, he thought. If Gregory Strongbow is in that boat, I have got here just in time to see him disappear.
He took one despairing look round. Away from the wall of the quay the dirty brown water stretched into the far distance with nothing breaking its surface. A craft like the launch could roar out into the wide reaches of the harbour and head away straight down south into the limitless stretches of the Arabian Sea.
The powerful engine settled down from its first crashing roar into a deep throb of contained power. It was ready to send the boat surging through the water at the flick of a lever. All that was needed was for someone to come out of the cabin, unwind the rope at the stern and toss it away. Then nothing could detain them.
Ghote took four steps along the quay and hurled himself outwards.
He landed by pure luck on a part of the launch’s deck near the stern where there was nothing to injure him as he sprawled forward. Under him the boat canted sharply over and swayed heavily back. He began pushing himself up.
With a crack like a pistol shot the door of the cabin immediately in front of him banged back. The barrel-chested man who had hurled Gregory Strongbow over the cliff on Elephanta stood there.
Ghote, swaying slightly from side to side with the rocking of the boat, looked at him blankly.
What shall I do, he thought. I have made things no better charging blindly out here like this. Why did I set myself up all alone against people like India First? This man will be too much for me by himself. And the other two are probably there behind him.
All I can do is to make it hard for them.
In the open doorway the barrel-chested thug let his jaw drop wide. Ghote registered the fang-like yellow teeth.
Then suddenly the man shouted.
“Police. The police. Quick.”
He bounded forward. Ghote could not prevent himself glancing into the darkness behind him. The other two thugs were there. And that instant of missed concentration was all the barrel-chested man needed. He hurled himself at Ghote like a battering-ram.
Ghote felt himself go down with a thud that knocked the breath out of his whole body.
This is the finish, he thought. I have let the whole police force down for ever.
It was a moment of overwhelming despair.
And then he realised that nothing more had happened. The big thug had not flung himself down with hands searching for his throat. The others had not rushed to help.
He jerked up his head.
The three of them were already at the top of the slimy stone steps. They were making off as fast as they could. He guessed then what must have happened. They could not have believed he was on his own. They were trying to get away before the rest of his men were on to them, the forces of justice always at his command.
He scrambled to his feet.
In the black space of the cabin doorway Gregory Strongbow appeared. His face looked very white under the locks of curly brown hair. He stared up at Ghote.
“How did you find us?” he said. “How did you? You were just in time.”
The sound of his voice unlocked a torrent of emotion in Ghote’s mind.
“It is not question of how I found you,” he shouted. “It is question of how you came out to here.”
He took an impulsive pace forward so that the boat swung and swayed again.
“Yes,” he said, “that is what you have to answer: why, when you gave your word to me you would not leave the hotel without telling, did you go all the same? What is the good of giving trust when straight away it is broken? What is the good at all?”
Gregory blinked at him.
“Hell,” he said, “I have to sit down somewhere.”
He looked round him with the hasty selfishness of someone taken unexpectedly ill. By the craft’s low rail there was a coil of rope deep enough to sit in. He took a couple of swaying paces towards it and sank down.
“You are well?” Ghote asked with sudden concern. “They have not done something to you? And Miss Shakuntala Brown? Where is she?”
The American smiled wanly.
“She’s okay,” he said. “Come out, Shakuntala.”
Shakuntala appeared at the cabin doorway. She too looked pale, but seemed otherwise all right.
“No,” Gregory said, “all those guys had done so far was sneak up on us and keep us in there. What they were fixing to do was scheduled for later, I guess. When we were well out to sea.”
“You are all right, Gregory?” Shakuntala said, looking down at him anxiously.
“I’m okay, more or less. It’s just that I should never have got out of bed. Your Doctor Udeshi was quite right.”
“And why did you get out of bed?” Ghote asked. “Why did you come out here? That is what I want to know. That is what I think I have a right to know.”
For some time Gregory did not answer. Then he looked slowly over towards Ghote.
“Yes,” he said, “you have a right. I feel bad about this. A fine time to feel bad too, I suppose, when I’ve got myself into a hell of a jam and you’ve got me out of it.”
He grinned, and then immediately looked totally serious again.
“I want you to believe this,” he said. “I felt badly about all this before ever those guys sneaked up on us. I really did. Before we even saw the launch I wanted to call you and tell you what was happening. But, damn it, you never see a call-box in this city.”
“You have to go into a shop and make request,” Ghote said.
“You do? I’ll know next time. But that doesn’t make it any better, me taking off like that in the first place.”
Again he looked at Ghote with honest, serious eyes. Ghote looked coldly back.
“Well, damn it,” the American said, “I was lying there in that fantastic fluffed-up bed with nothing to do but think. And I reckoned you didn’t seem to be interested in anything except what I had happened to say to Hector. So I thought I should try and do something for myself. I owed it to Hector, didn’t I? Didn’t I?”
But Ghote was prickling.
“I am not interested in anything?” he said. “But a great deal was being done.”
“It was?” Gregory answered with abruptly rising sarcasm. “I didn’t see too much of it.”
Suddenly he rubbed his hand across his face.
“No,” he said, “I didn’t mean that. I’ll tell you the truth. I did think it. Cooped up there, I thought Indians couldn’t run a police force in Paradise. But that was only a kind of patriotic nightmare. Honestly it was.”
“A full-scale hunt was taking place for this very launch,” Ghote replied stiffly. “Men were proceeding northwards, both along the beaches on the east side and along the docks this side. Here they had already reached the P. and O. dockyard at Mazagon.”
“Where’s that?” Gregory asked.
Shakuntala answered.
“It’s about a mile south of us. They would have reached this place quite soon. Our Mr. Batliwala sounds a bit unnecessary now.”
She smiled at Gregory with a hint of conspiracy.
“Mr. Batliwala?” Ghote said sharply.
“A terrible private eye I hired,” Gregory explained. “I used the telephone and went on asking till I got hold of a detective agency that specialised in docks security. That was Mr. Batliwala.”
“And you told him everything?”
Ghote did nothing to keep the outrage from his tones. Although Gregory knew nothing of Colonel Mehta and the Special Investigations Agency, the thought that he had chosen to tell some nasty little private detective all about India First and the real reason for Hector Strongbow’s death made him feel black with betrayed despair.
“I told Mr. Batliwala one whole heap of fantastic nonsense,” Gregory said. “I owe Hector at least that. I can still be trusted for something, you know.”
“And so can the Bombay Police be trusted,” Ghote answered quickly. “Do you think we had done nothing? Not only had we nearly found this boat, but we knew the names of those thugs. They had records. They were willing to do any dirty work round the harbour for a hundred rupees among them. And if we had been left in peace we would have had them behind bars.”
Gregory shut his eyes.
“You can’t make it any hotter for me than I’m making it for myself,” he said. “And you got me out of it all too. You still haven’t told me how you got here just in time.”
“I can explain that,” Shakuntala said.
“I left a message for the inspector,” she said. “I scrawled it in lipstick on a mirror in the bathroom just as we left. I am sorry. You believed I’d stick by you.”
Gregory shook his head.
“You weren’t under any obligation to me,” he said. “And I’m the one who ought to be doing the apologising. Apologising all round.”
He pushed himself to his feet and came across to Ghote holding out his hand. Ghote took it.
“No more helping me without telling?” he said.
Gregory grinned.
“No more,” he said. “Not ever.”
He pumped Ghote’s hand again.
“And how about you?” he went on. “No more bothering over what Hector did or did not say, eh?”
Ghote dropped his hand.
“I regret,” he said, “I must keep freedom of action in all cases.”
The American looked as if he had been suddenly jabbed viciously in the ribs. After a moment he shrugged.
“As you like,” he said.
That night Ghote looked in on Gregory just before he made his final security arrangements at the Queen’s Imperial Grand. He found him alone in pyjamas and a thin, red silk dressing-gown drinking a final whisky-and-soda in his sitting-room.
“I wanted only to tell you that I am making full arrangements for your protection to-night,” Ghote said.
He began backing out into the suite’s little vestibule still occupied solely by the heavy, antiquated ironing-board.
“No, no,” Gregory said hurriedly. “Listen, Ganesh, come in a minute, will you. There’s something I want to say.”
Ghote closed the heavy teak door behind him with reluctance and stepped into the sitting-room. He felt that relations between himself and Gregory had fallen back into a state of chill neutrality. And, since he was pledged to discover something Gregory plainly did not wish to make known, he preferred on the whole that this state of affairs should continue. And now with this invitation to “Ganesh” it looked as if Gregory had other ideas.
“Sit down, sit down,” the American said. “Look, what about a drink?”
“No thank you,” Ghote said.
But he placed himself compliantly on the chair next to Gregory’s.
The American sat in silence. He picked up his glass, looked at it, leant forward and replaced it on the little central wicker table.
Ghote felt obliged to say something.
“You wish to hear more about the activities of the police in clearing up the matter of your brother’s death?”
Gregory shook his head wearily.
“No, I trust you for—”
He broke off and swung round in his heavy chair to look directly at Ghote.
“It’s Shakuntala,” he said.
“Shakuntala?”
“Yes, don’t you see? When we went out to Sewri she was the only one who knew where I was going. And no sooner had we got there than those thugs of yours blew in.”
“But you are forgetting she left message for me,” Ghote said.
Gregory’s revelation of what was worrying him had taken him by surprise. He was not concerned to pretend that Shakuntala could not be an India First agent. It was something he had even wanted to talk over at length with Gregory. But finding the American suddenly so keen to make out a case against her, he felt constrained to come to her defence. He felt he was obliged to say what he guessed Gregory really wanted to hear.
But a look of obstinacy settled on the American’s openly handsome face.
“No,” he said, “I’m not forgetting that message. But that could have been to draw suspicion away from her. I’ve been weighing this thing up.”
His hands were twisting nervously together on his lap as if they were fighting one another.
“Look,” he burst out, “I like that girl. It so happens I liked her the moment I saw her. She’s darned sympathetic.”
He looked over at Ghote as if he was relying on him to understand more than he had been willing to say.
Ghote felt the responsibility, and resented it a little Gregory was too distant from him to have a right to expect such a degree of understanding. He was a foreigner. If he wanted to tell him something, then he ought to say it straight out and in plain terms.
Yet he felt that he ought to take up the challenge since it had been made. If there could ever be real sympathy between people of such different backgrounds, then this was the test.
He coughed a little primly.
“There is something I have to ask,” he said.
“Yes?” Gregory said hopefully.
“At home, are you a married man, Gregory?”
The American smiled slowly.
“I guess you took my point,” he said. “Well, the thing is I was married. Until about a year back. My wife— Oh, hell, she went off with this man. In the end we had a divorce. But the point is now that I care for Shakuntala. I really care for her. And yet she could be working for the outfit that had my brother killed.”
He flung his twisting hands apart in a gesture of hopelessness.
“But she is not the only possibility,” Ghote said earnestly. “I agree that a group as well-organised as India First almost certainly has an agent watching your every move. But it does not have to be Shakuntala.”
“Well, who else could it be? Look at the way it all ties up. She came along at just the right moment to have been planted on me. She took that call for me to go to meet the guy at Brabourne Stadium. She was the one who wanted to go out to Elephanta. Of course I think she’s sympathetic: it’s her duty to be.”
“But on the other hand,” Ghote said persuasively, “it was perfectly reasonable for her to answer the telephone for you. And after all she was in the boat with us when it looked as if we were certain to be drowned. And there are others who are equally suspicious.”
“What others, for heaven’s sake?”
“To begin with there is Miss Mira Jehangir, the receptionist at the hotel here.”
The American frowned in thought. Then his face cleared with almost comic suddenness.
“It could be,” he said. “It certainly could be. That woman’s the most darned curious female I ever met. There could be good reason for that. Do you think she was planted here to spy on me?”
“No, she was not planted,” Ghote said. “But it is still possible that India First may have bought her. We know they do not hesitate to purchase just what they require, whether it is dacoits on the Poona road or the use of a fast launch in the harbour.”
Gregory shifted a little in his chair.
“All the same,” he said, “you’re not just producing the possibility of this Miss Jehangir—is it Jehangir?—just to confirm for me that it really is Shakuntala all along?”
“No, no,” said Ghote. “There is even another possibility. You are knowing V. V. Dharmadhikar, the journalist?”
Again Gregory’s eyes lit up.
“The guy who interviewed me,” he said. “That certainly fits in. What do you know about him?”
“He is a journalist,” Ghote replied. “It is his duty to interview people like you. Certainly, he seems to hang round the hotel a great deal, but that too might be through excessive loyalty to his paper. No, we must keep all three in mind.”
“All three?”
“All three.”
Gregory put his chin in his cupped hands.
“So where do we go from here?” he asked.
“There is one thing that could be done,” Ghote answered. “I was going to tell you that the Poona police have arrested on suspicion a certain Kartar Singh. He is cousin of the leader of the dacoits, an impudent fellow who thought it would be safe to come back to his home already. I was wondering whether to go to Poona to question him myself. I think now I should go, and you should come with me.”
“Fine, if we’re going to get on to the India First top brass that way.”
“Good. Now who shall we tell that we are going?”
For a moment there was a look of perplexity in the American’s eyes, then he understood.
“If we make sure only one of the three knows,” he said. “That makes sense all right, even if it does mean I have to act as a decoy duck.”
He thought for a moment.
“Can the one we tell be Shakuntala, please?” he said.
Ghote looked at him intently.
“You are sure you want?”
“Certain.”
On the way out Ghote was careful to give clear instructions to the best man in the guard party to stand by to follow Gregory Strongbow if he as much as set foot out of his suite.
Ghote, making his way through the jostling mass of people in Dadabhai Naoroji Road with Shakuntala Brown next to him and the tall form of Gregory Strongbow on her other side, looked back for the twentieth time. The high red brick arches of Victoria Terminus lay just ahead. But this might be the moment India First would choose to strike.
In the turbulent crowd, a dazzling confusion of white-shirted, dark-headed figures with here and there a turban or a Gandhi cap or the vivid splash of a sari, how could he hope to pick out one individual manoeuvring closer for the kill?
Of course there ought not to be anyone. It was not that he had not taken precautions. His men outside the Queen’s Imperial Grand had been alerted in good time. If anybody lingering there had suddenly left just after they had set out themselves, he would not have been allowed to get far. Yet it was India First that he was up against. And somehow India First always seemed one jump ahead.
He turned back and glanced over at Gregory. It was almost time he fulfilled his part of their agreement. Would he bring it off? He forced the query down. It was not a particularly difficult thing to do: he must trust him.
And at that moment Gregory looked up at the ornate mass of the huge station just ahead and turned to Shakuntala with all the innocence in the world.
“You know,” he said eagerly, “you could catch a train from there in just a few minutes’ times and be in Poona in under four hours. Up in the cool, pretty good.”
He is doing it perfectly, Ghote thought. I ought to have known he would. After all, we worked it out carefully enough together.
Suddenly Gregory stopped dead just where he was.
For a moment Ghote believed the attack had begun, something he could not make out. Then he realised that it was part of the American’s performance. A tiny doubt sprang up in his mind. Was it quite right that he should be able to act out something invented as well as this? But there was no time for speculation. He listened carefully. At any second he might have a part to play himself.
“It’s a great idea,” Gregory was saying. “We take off right now. We give ourselves a really good break.”
Shakuntala was looking very doubtful. Now was the moment.
“An excellent suggestion,” he said forcefully. “It would not be a break only, it would be a very good protection for you, Gregory. To set off without a single moment of notice.”
“But— But we can’t just go off to Poona like that,” Shakuntala said.
She seemed very much put out.
“I mean we wouldn’t get there till it would be much too late to get back to-day.”
“We’ll go to a hotel,” Gregory said cheerfully. “That Wellesley place was okay. We could stay maybe a couple of nights. Why not?”
“But we have no clothes. Nothing. By all means let’s go to Poona if you want to. It’s certainly much too hot and sticky to be in Bombay unless we must. But let’s go to-morrow, after we’ve packed a case each.”
“No, no,” said Gregory. “It’ll spoil it to make out a great schedule and everything. That train goes in a few minutes, the Madras Express. We’ll just climb into it and buy some pyjamas and a toothbrush in Poona.”
“That would be perfectly possible,” Ghote slipped in. “Certainly for one night. I would ring my headquarters when we get there.”
Shakuntala looked all round her.
“All right,” she said, “if you both insist. But we could still get back to the hotel and pack. The train’s almost bound to be a bit late leaving. If we take a taxi both ways we’ll do it.”
She began searching the noisy, jerking stream of traffic for the black and yellow of a taxi.
A spasm of anxiety went through Ghote. She was almost certainly right. They had not judged the moment quite perfectly. There probably would be long enough to get to the Queen’s Imperial Grand and back. And once back there, so many opportunities would arise for someone to see that they were off somewhere, that the whole plan would be riddled with holes in five minutes. If their eliminating device was to work, no one must know except Shakuntala. If she was really working for India First, she could tell them where Gregory was easily enough in Poona.
But Gregory seemed equal to the occasion.
“We’ll miss the train for sure if we start trying to do that,” he said, with what appeared to be genuine feverishness. “You can’t be certain it’ll leave late. When it says on the schedule that a certain train leaves at a certain time, you just have to be there if you want to get on it.”
Ghote wondered whether these were his real sentiments. They were what Americans were supposed to feel. It was possible that Gregory had succeeded in persuading himself that the situation they had contrived between them was real.
He decided that in any case he must help.
“Look at the traffic,” he said. “A taxi might get caught up in the most deplorable jam.”
“Quite right, quite right,” Gregory said. “Just come on.”
And by sheer force he swept them into the great station concourse, past, round, and even over the hundreds of people standing, sitting and lying there, and on to the ticket office. There at last he suffered a check as they found the end of the right queue and stood waiting while it gradually approached a tremulous and white-bearded clerk at the ticket-window.
All the while Gregory kept shooting looks at the station clock as its long minute-hand twitched judderingly towards their departure time. And when at last they reached the old clerk and he fumbled and dithered interminably over issuing three air-conditioned class tickets to Poona the American’s impatient fury was a sight to see.
Shakuntala turned away from the ticket-window.
“Really,” she said, “you haven’t any need to worry. The train is certain to leave late.”
“Then it darn well shouldn’t,” Gregory snapped.
He glared like a gorgon over Shakuntala’s shoulder at the white-bearded old clerk. And the old clerk simply stopped his palsied hunt for the correct tickets and blinked interestedly back.
Ghote reflected that Gregory’s unshakable attachment to the highest ideals of punctuality was certainly making this stratagem look life-like. A feeling of impatience was beginning to disturb even his own equilibrium. What if someone spotted them before they were safely out of sight aboard the train?
At last Shakuntala stepped back from the window holding the correct tickets, all in their correct form and order. Gregory heaved a gigantic sigh of relief and began striding out towards the platform where the Madras Express was waiting.
Ghote found himself almost equally relieved. In less than a couple of minutes they would be safe in the train. And then they would be out of Bombay. They would be dodging for a little the constant, ominous watchfulness of India First. Up to now, he felt, India First might have attacked Gregory in any one of a hundred ways at any moment they chose. In Poona events would be much more under his own control. Either India First would lose the scent altogether, or they would pick it up only after a warning from Shakuntala, if she was their agent. So their attack would be limited by the need to act quickly and by having to be carried out in a new area. The pressure would be off. It seemed almost too good to be true.
And this sudden move would take him out of the orbit of Colonel Mehta for a little, he reflected. No doubt the colonel would be furious at losing contact even for twenty-four hours. He was that sort of man, always wanting to be in control. But it would be worth a dose of his anger to feel free for a while now.
He would be free, too, to do some real police work. That was in a way the biggest gain of all. After these days of floating in the void without contacts of any sort, to have to deal with a simple, ordinary criminal like the man the Poona police had caught would be to eat real food again after a diet of air. He would be working on his regular routine of questioning instead of trying to decide what people completely detached from all the realities might take it into their heads to do next. It would be like coming back to life.
He marched along with brisk, short steps behind the enormously striding American.
“Professor Strongbow. Professor.”
The voice calling from behind them was unmistakably loud and clear.