I dreamed of a hoard of coins, ingots piled high like Aladdin’s cave. Forty kilograms? That was a lot of silver. Surely one of the staff had known about Satya’s schemes? I played out a sequence in my mind: Satya’s office was full of strange chemicals. If he was doing something illicit there, he might have been interrupted and seen. He’d then have to bribe the busybody to keep it from Adi. But why should that cause his death?
Had he been blackmailed, fought back, and lost? If Vishal the young accountant or Faisal the distressed tooler was the killer, then the other man had given him an alibi—out of fear?
To explore this, I borrowed Gurung’s bicycle and headed to my dingy warehouse in Dockyard Road.
How different it was from being up on a horse! A mare could sense the terrain, her gait telling me she liked turf, sand, or brush. Gripping with knees and thighs, I could let her go on, or hold. Seated on her broad back, I could see far. A nudge, a flick of the reins and we gained ground. Now perched on the tiny seat of a wobbling bicycle, I worked the pedals to gain speed.
At the storeroom, doors and windows wide to admit light and air, I opened my crates and set out mirror, clothing, and bottles to assemble my disguises from two years ago.
To re-create the persona of an old army pal, I donned loose trousers secured with drawstring at the waist, then a dark grey kaftan that went to my knees. Rumpled and stale-smelling, it was perfect. Over that went a vest that was too small and hung open. I wound a strip of cloth around my head for a turban—it took several attempts to get this right—and draped another around my neck.
I glanced in the mirror and frowned. Ah! There was my error: I was clean-shaved.
Crafting a beard that looks natural is no easy task. On a plank of wood, I poured out a strip of collodion. Though contained in a sealed bottle, the liquid had thickened to a spongy stickiness. Measuring my jaw with outstretched little finger and thumb, I created not a full beard, but a scraggly one. Threads stripped from the tattered end of a dark cloth I pressed to the collodion, arranging them in untidy lengths. Two patches I left bare, to resemble the shape my own beard had once taken, and left it to dry.
An hour later, lifting the mess in one piece posed a challenge, because it stretched and tore. Yet this too was fortunate, for I added more threads and teased the smaller part into an unkempt mustache. Donning this made all the difference. Rashid Khan’s rascally grin blazed back from the looking glass.
Later that day I hunkered at the crossroads by Faisal’s house and posed as a loafer who occasionally sought work but was never satisfied with the wage.
At noon, Faisal returned carrying vegetables and stayed home the rest of the day. I inquired at his residence if there was work, but his wife said they had no need of a laborer. Then a dhobi dismounted from his bicycle and took his load inside.
When he returned, I begged a match of him. “Do they pay well?” I asked, jabbing a thumb toward Faisal’s door. “They have some work for me.”
The dhobi shrugged. “They pay all right.”
“Now, yes? But not before?”
He frowned. “I have not had trouble with them yet.”
Just past ten, the lamps indoors were extinguished. Dark deeds often wait for darkness, I thought, I should stay. Having eaten only peanuts and an apple got off a passing fruit cart, my stomach protested. And Diana would fret, for I had not told her of my plan.
At eleven, a lamplighter passed on his way home. He cast me a look.
“Still here?”
“They owe me money,” I invented.
Eventually I trudged back to Dockyard Road and cleaned up. No, this would not do. I needed to get closer to study the two employees, Faisal and Vishal. Chased by crickets whispering in the moonlight, the road seemed long as I pedaled back to Framji Mansion.
A gaslight glowed in Burjor’s study, drawing me near. The great man bent over his desk, his ledger before him, pen in hand as he strove to make up the sum he’d promised Jussawalla. His lined countenance told a painful tale.
“How much short?” I asked, from the door.
“Too much,” he said, unsurprised, then blinked to see me there. His glance traveled to the tall clock in the corner. “You are very late. Any news?”
Any success, any hope? Anything positive at all, his pointed eyebrows asked.
I shook my head. “But there’s more to learn about this fellow named truth.”
“Satya, humph.” Burjor tried a weak smile at my pun, then gave up the effort. “What can we do, Captain? The superintendent won’t wait much longer. I cannot see the boy go to…”
Go to the gallows; to say it aloud was unbearable.
“I brought fifteen hundred from the States. Will it help?”
His face lifted as he locked gazes with me. “Your savings, my boy.”
“You gave us five thousand, two years ago.”
His hand rose, palm showing. “That was Diana’s inheritance!”
“But if you need it…” Opening my pocketbook, I laid a cheque form on his blotter.
He tried some sums, pen flying over his page, then shook his head. “Still need fifteen hundred more, in two weeks. And three hundred for the staff’s wages.”
“Anything we can sell quickly?”
His breast swelled with a ponderous breath. “Mama’s jewels. But—”
“Hold off, then. I’ll try something else. If you give Jussawalla all that”—I gestured at his math—“would he not wait another month for his pound of flesh?”
Burjor’s pen dropped from his fingers; his head swiveled in a hopeless rhythm. “He would talk, and it would be the end of us. Talk is worse, because rumor has wings beyond the fact of things.”
He was losing hope, losing faith in me. God give him courage, give me speed! I was working too slowly to help Adi.
The following day, I returned to my storehouse and disguised myself as a banana seller to continue shadowing Adi’s staff. I spent the morning near the Lohar Chawl area, speaking to shopkeepers and such to learn the habits of the accountant, Vishal. I saw pickpockets, a woman begging while an infant suckled at her breast, old men with open sores slumped against broken-down walls, children too weary to shoo flies from their lips, but made little headway on my case.
My summons came that evening. Breaking my rule about delivering messages only at my warehouse hideout, Gurung found me in front of Vishal’s tenement. Although Diana had warned him that I would be dressed in disguise, my appearance as a vendor of bananas seemed to distress him. His captain sahib, fallen so low!
His voice husky with awkwardness, he dropped his gaze and said, “Diana Memsahib says a phone call came for you. She sends this message. Tonight at ten o’clock.”
Delivering the priest’s missive, he left. I watched Vishal’s street until the bell tower chimed nine o’clock. Then I offered bananas to a pair of passing urchins who took them with eyes full of questions. They peered doubtfully at me, unaccustomed perhaps to receiving something so easily.
Then it was time I made for the fire temple. Mazagaon was near my haunt on Dockyard Road, where I hurried to discard my guise. My task: to see a holy priest who’d asked whether I cared to break British law.