It was midday by the time our train reached London. Diana and Adi’s Aunt Dinbai and her unassuming husband Shapur welcomed us to their comfortable residence on Covington Way. Content that Adi was safe from public view, I attended to Dupree’s assignment.
This affair took me to the Old Bailey to visit my client in the clink. At the Bermondsey police substation, my stint with the Bombay constabulary gave me entry to police ranks as a sort of visiting curiosity. After being introduced—“Captain O’Trey was with the Indian police,” and shaking hands all around, I’d faced a round of questions about Bombay, life in India, pay scales and such. Higher wages for Englishmen in Bombay and the allure of a warm climate might have driven their interest. When I extolled Chief Superintendent McIntyre of the Bombay constabulary, grins followed. My old boss was apparently famous.
Once I had sorted out Petersmith’s problem, I needed to know if Adi was a wanted man. So I sauntered into the police substation holding aloft a tray of fresh-baked baps and currant jam.
Accustomed to me by now, blokes swung by to relieve me of portions of my burden and have a word. This I owed to my unknown father: my only inheritance was that I looked like a somewhat weather-beaten Englishman, although my dark hair and grey eyes sometimes drew comment. Would the blokes have been so civil if they’d suspected my mixed ancestry? Gazing around at their cheerful, ruddy faces, I wondered.
As curly-mopped Sergeant Beetlebaum helped himself to a second bun, I said, “Here’s a question for you. How d’you advertise ‘wanted men’ to the beat cops, ’round London?”
Swiping a hand across his jellied lips, he handed me a picture of a thick-necked man wearing two vests under his jacket, one bulging around the buttons.
Leaning my elbows on his desk, I studied it. “What of steamers? Mightn’t crooks escape to far off places like Australia?”
He grinned. “Why bother? They’d be sent there, for thieving and such. Cheaper to travel at the Queen’s cost, eh?”
Someone called from the bullpen, “Beetlebaum?”
He fetched a package and busied himself with opening it.
I asked in a mild tone, “What about Europe—if they try to hop across the Channel?”
He grunted. “There’s plenty as want to do that, all right. But we’ve got the ports under watch. That’s not to say they mightn’t get on a little skiff. Or take on as a sailor. Hard ’nuff to keep an eye on those jokers, let alone the little bitty barkies.”
I wasn’t sure he’d said junkers or jokers, but the intent was the same. I asked, “We keep an eye on the bigger ships? How?”
He snorted. “Curious, aren’t you?” His words sounded like “ahn-choo,” but I grasped his meaning well enough. Although there were British officers aplenty in the Indian army, the sheer wealth of accents populating London was dizzying.
Beetlebaum tapped the grainy image. “We get these out to stations and circulate them near ports. Booking agents keep a stack of them, or tack them to the walls. Fellow comes in, they look over the wall. Wanted coves can see the game is up. Takes a strong stomach to meet the agent’s eyes. Most just cut and run, right there. Got some sweet tips that way.”
I scanned the sheet:
POLICE OFFICERS ARE REQUESTED TO CAUSE SPECIAL SEARCH AND ENQUIRY TO BE MADE FOR THESE LADS AT ALL OUTWARD-BOUND VESSELS, SHIPPING AND RECRUITING OFFICES, AND ALL OTHER LIKELY PLACES. SHOULD THEY BE FOUND, ARREST, OR ANY TRACE OBTAINED, WIRE THE CHIEF CONSTABLE.
Dated 18 March 1894, the signatory was W. Bain, Superintendent, Criminal Investigation Department, Edinburgh.
The Liverpool detectives had shown me Adi’s photograph but no such page. However, to ask directly would alert even the jam-loving Beetlebaum, so, thanking the indulgent sergeant, I took my leave.
At Aunt Dinbai’s house in Covington Square, I hurried to dress formally for dinner as was their custom. After a pleasant meal, the company decamped to a large parlor, where Diana’s uncle turned the pages of sheet music for their plump aunt who played the piano with gusto.
Diana and Adi waltzed to “The Blue Danube” like twins with their matched height and trim profiles. Diana swayed to the music, face radiant, svelte in indigo velvet.
Watching them, fragments of a plan took shape. Adi would hate it. Diana would be game, but would it work?
Once their aunt and uncle had retired, I said, “Adi, could you show me your passport?”
“They’re looking for me, then?” A tremor shook his voice.
“No more than in Liverpool,” I said, examining him.
Diana said, “You’ve got an idea, haven’t you?”
I smiled at her excited tone. “Mmm. Might be a way to get him safely home.” Turning to Adi, I asked, “Are you very fond of that mustache?”
He gawked as though I’d spoken Chinese. “What?”
“Could you dispatch it, d’you think?”
“Oh! Certainly, if you think it would help.” He sounded uncertain about the latter part. “They have my name, Jim.”
His agitation was held in tight check but points of color stained his cheekbones. “Let’s see you without the ’stache, hmm?”
He hurried off, leaving Diana to quiz me about my doings at the police substation. I had spilled the day’s successes and disappointments by the time he returned. Sans mustache, chin held high above pointed collars, a younger version of Adi peered from the door. He looked all of fourteen. His eyes flickered from Diana to me as he handed me an ornate document folded into three, his passport.
“Right,” I said, dipping a pen into Uncle Shapur’s inkpot to make practice marks on a newspaper. When I reached for Adi’s passport, both brother and sister cried out.
“No! Heavens, Jim!”
“You can’t alter a passport!”
It gave me pause, but only for a moment. Rummaging in their uncle’s desk I pulled out a newly sharpened pencil. “A temporary adjustment, then?”
No more shrieks ensued, but they peered suspiciously over my shoulder to drop shadows over my careful work. With a few small strokes, the name Adi Framji, written in a running hand, was modified to Adel Aramji.
“Hello, Adel,” I said, handing him the passport.
He gazed at it, then held it in the lamplight to turn it this way and that.
“There’s a slight shine on the pencil marks,” he said, then glowered like his father, Burjor. “You want me to travel under this forgery?”
In that moment, I loved him. Never mind that he was wanted for murder and could not show his face for fear of being wrongfully arrested, nor that he’d been cooped up with his aunt and uncle for days on end. His stern face reproved me like a judge.
What on earth was his father thinking, I wondered? How damning was the evidence that he’d have his son run from the law? Yet here was Adi, staunch as an anointed pope, gently rebuking me for a small modification to his papers, a fiction that would provide the barest armor on his homeward journey. The lofty principles that would not let him mark his products MADE IN UK groaned under the featherweight of my additions.
I had no such qualms. If I’d ever owned such scruples they’d been worn away by the grindstone of my chosen profession.
Diana took the doctored passport. “Aramji? That’s funny! In Gujarati it means Mister Relaxed, Mister At Ease!” Eyes gleaming, she spun around. “But Jim, Adel is a girl’s name!”
I said, “Remember Abigail, in Chicago? For days I hadn’t a clue that Martin and she were the same person. You’ve plenty of clothes, yes? Enough to travel with your sister, Adel?”
Adi’s face flushed. “As a woman? You want me to dress as a girl?”
I chuckled at his scowl. “Beats returning in custody, don’t you think?”
“I … you think … how can I…” He took in Diana’s boyish figure and blinked.
Diana grinned. “I’ll see Mama and Papa again! We’re going back to Bombay!”
My beater gave a hop and banged away under the beam of her glee. “People do, my dear. If the ship is watertight and takes on sufficient coal, we’ll taste your mother’s curry before the month is out.”
She whirled around the room, passport held on high like a holy chalice, while Adi shook his head in dismay.
Next morning, I contributed little to the conversation. I wasn’t sure Diana’s aunt and uncle were aware that Adi was a wanted man. But when we told them of our intended departure, I caught their quick glance at each other. Of course! Adi would not shelter under their roof without making a clean breast of it. It was like him to be honest and upstanding about every little thing. But Burjor had been worried enough to send him from the country. A tight kernel of dread took root inside me.
Tradition required that Diana wed only a Parsi. By marrying me, she had broken the rules of her clannish Parsi society. These descendants of medieval Persian refugees were an insular, influential group. Diana and I had left Bombay in 1892 to avoid the ruckus caused by our union. Now, we were going back. It had been two years, but that would not matter. Out of sight and far away, our transgression was a distant slight. Our return would place it squarely under society’s gaze. Just what might we walk into?
The sour-faced clerk at the shipping office said the next departure for Bombay was on a P&O ship, far smaller than our liner from New York, the RMS Etruria. That troubled me. It would have been easier for Adi to escape notice among the Etruria’s eight hundred passengers.
The shipping clerk tucked a pencil behind his protruding ear and squinted at me. “Arcadia calls at Gibraltar, Marseilles, Port Said, and Aden. Reaches Bombay on a Friday.”
“I’m traveling with my wife and her sister,” I said and forked over £55 for each first-class berth, a princely sum, but thanks to Dupree, within our means.
The agent took his time gazing at the wall beside the ticket window. Shouldn’t he know the timetable by now? With a start I realized that he was probably checking the wall of offenders for my likeness!
His mustache twitching, he handed over my change, saying, “Two persons per cabin, sir. Ladies together, single gentlemen will have a male companion.”
“Companion?”
“A suitable gentleman,” he assured me and jotted our names in his ledger.
I left, a fresh worry brushing my skin like the tickle of ants. Adi could not remain in his cabin the entire voyage. Could he maintain the pretense for almost two weeks?
Next, I cabled Diana’s father from the telegraph office: THREE ARRIVING ARCADIA OCT 10. My spirits lifted, seeing Burjor in my mind’s eye, his jowly smile as he understood my missive. He’d sent Adi to get help; he’d known I would offer it.
Here was my chance, then, to justify the trust he’d shown when he gave me Diana’s hand in marriage. Yet if I failed, it would not only bludgeon the delicate bloom of that confidence. God, if I failed—the thought burned through me—Adi’s reputation, his future, his very life would be forfeit.