When we returned to Framji Mansion, Diana’s parents accosted us in the foyer. “Thank heavens you’re safe. You disappeared for so long!”
I uncovered the statue.
Mrs. Framji gasped, taking it from me with both hands. “So heavy! Where did you find it?”
When the excitement died down, we trailed into the morning room where I dropped into a couch. “Satya’s leading us on a merry chase. The mali was his go-between to hand over stuff to a bloke on a bicycle. This was stashed in his hut. Who’d think to look there?”
Diana touched the intricate draperies carved into the statuette. “It’s Lord Ganesh. D’you know how he got his elephant head?”
I shrugged, so she went on, “Parvati, the wife of Lord Shiva, made herself a child from river soil, a beloved son. One day Parvati asked him to stand guard while she bathed. When Lord Shiva came by, the boy would not let him near, so Shiva beheaded him.”
Burjor rolled his eyes at her.
She went on, “When Lord Shiva discovered the boy’s identity, he regretted his hasty deed. So he killed a passing elephant, set the head on the boy’s shoulders, and revived him.”
I chuckled. “He was a god but couldn’t identify the boy? Sounds like those Greek myths. Zeus turning maidens into willow trees and such.”
It was past eleven, so we deposited the statue in Burjor’s safe and turned in. I slept fitfully, my head spinning with wild dreams where a vengeful Ganesh demanded why I had not done something. Gold dripped from his trunk, as though he had a cold.
The next morning, dressed as an Englishman, I retrieved my find, bundled it in a spare tablecloth and took it to a jeweler in Kolaba. His shingle read GHANSHYAM AND SONS.
Seated on a large pillow I awaited the store’s proprietor and noticed the festive decorations. Was some festival nearing? Deepavali, the festival of lights, was late October or early November. High on a shelf, I spied a decorative Shiva statuette overlooking the room. It depicted him as a dancing Nataraja, the god’s four golden arms outstretched while he balanced on one bent foot.
The owner entered, holding my calling card. After the usual preliminaries I asked him in Hindustani, “Is that statue made of gold?”
“Yes, indeed!” he assured me. “Solid gold, twenty-two carat.”
When I asked for it to be weighed, he summoned a pair of scales and a pile of ornate weights. Like a master chef, he orchestrated the business of adding tiny measures to the balance until presto! The Nataraja rose gently and the scales evened.
Once he’d completed his calculations I wrote down the weight and brought out Satya’s Ganesh statue from my satchel. It stood as tall as the Nataraja and gleamed as bright.
Saying, “D’you mind?” I placed it on the scale.
Shrugging, he repeated his delicate maneuvers, then said, “Four point one kilograms.”
That was just over half the Nataraja’s weight. A heavy silence filled the room as I added this to my notebook. Had I broken some convention, I wondered, glancing over the staff. They were too still, too quiet.
The jeweler asked, “Do you wish to sell it?”
Declining, I asked what the idol was worth. As he calculated it, I felt an unnamed tension, a sense that the store folk were passing private messages with their eyes, messages not intended for me.
“Have you seen another like it?” I asked.
“No, indeed! It is remarkable. The detail on the clothing and jewelry is very fine.”
“If I want to sell it, I’ll return,” I assured the perplexed proprietor.
An hour later I was back in Framji Mansion.
Diana’s face grew serious as she said, “Jim, you’ve been working all alone, and it’s taking too long. Look, we’ve got Bhim, Gurung, and Ganju. Papa could help. What about me? And Mama? Put us to work, Jim! Put us all to work!”
I sat, excitement pushing through me. Since I could not be in two places at once, her suggestion sparked new avenues to explore. “Call the fellows. Your father too, and your mother if she can be spared.”
While Diana assembled the troops, I considered my notes and leads. It was a poor showing: the Ganesh idol, a key that unlocked an unknown vault possibly filled with silver, and a dying message that spoke about sona—gold. And the accountant Vishal. Something still wasn’t quite right about him.
“Captain, at last,” said Burjor, pushing his bulk through the door. “Something I can do?” His sparse, thinning hair stood on end over his bald pate, and his stubble showed grey and silver. Had he not slept since Adi was arrested?
I turned over the statuette. The base was smooth, complete. “This has something to do with Satya’s murder. The mali did not know how many parcels he’d handed off. So how many did Satya sell? Where are those funds? Someone around him had to know what he was doing.”
Burjor grunted. “How do we find out?”
An hour later we had an agreement. Gurung and Ganju would take turns shadowing Faisal, while the new boy and I would surveil the accountant Vishal. Burjor would make inquiries about Jussawalla’s finances, his connections, and any rumors about him. Mrs. Framji and Diana would visit local goldsmiths, pretending an interest in buying jewelry. In fact, they were seeking a gold Ganesh statue like Satya’s.
I leafed through my notebook. There it was: the dancing Shiva, about the same size, weighed 7.8 kilograms, while Satya’s Ganesh weighed 4.1 kilograms. Though differently shaped, neither was hollow. Why did this feel wrong?
To find an answer, I decided to see Adi in the nick. Upon hearing this, Diana had me lug over a sack of his books.
Adi had been lying on his metal cot. When he sat up, eyes brightening, I felt a shot of chagrin that I’d not visited each day.
I broached the matter directly. “We know that Satya was gathering funds willy-nilly. Why? To gyp you and Jussawalla and leave with his nest egg, walk out on his family, and start over? Here he had you, a partner, a business—even if it was yet to become solvent, it was a start. He seemed an intelligent, promising youth, someone who’d make his mark.”
As I spoke, enumerating the details, Adi became more animated. This was what he needed—to be engaged in the intellectual challenge. I’d been wading in solo and had floundered. Together then, we might make sense of this puzzle.
I went on. “He was estranged from his family—a temporary distance? Or worse? Would he really ruin his reputation—and by extension, theirs? What was driving him?”
“Money.” Adi shook his head in wonder. “His needs were so sparse, I’d never have guessed it had such a hold on him.”
In an undertone I told him about my discoveries at the mint and of the gold statuette. He listened intently as I went on. “Adi—there’s something strange about all this.” From my notebook, I read out the weights measured at the jewelry store.
Adi frowned. “You’re certain?”
I nodded. “The proprietor weighed it in front of me, I wasn’t adding up all the bits he put on the scale, but the fellow knew what he was doing.” I described the strained atmosphere after we’d weighed the Ganesh statue.
Adi leaned back against the concrete wall, his brow ridged. Unlike my favorite fictional sleuth, no pipe, no violin, no opium aided his faculties.
I counted four breaths. Then he said, “And you’re certain the Ganesh wasn’t hollow?”
“The bottom is solid. No seams that I could see. It makes no hollow sound.”
“Jussawalla’s silver,” he said, sitting up.
His face was clear and bright. “Jim, the statue must be silver, plated in gold. Silver is about half the weight of gold. That’s why the jeweler was silent. He suspected—no, he knew from the color that it was pure—twenty-two carat, from your description, perhaps twenty-four! But the weight didn’t match. I’ve been wondering why Satya paid Jussawalla so much. Forty kilos of silver, why, that should cost about twenty-four hundred rupees. He paid twice that!”
I pondered that. “Jussawalla got a nice profit. But Satya was no fool. He saw a bigger opportunity, with gold. Sona. So he buys silver, gets someone to make statues, then plates them and sells them as gold.”
Adi’s voice rang with urgency. “Jim, Satya wasn’t this complicated. He must have had help with this clandestine business. You need to find his accomplices.” Then he sobered. “Look at the sequence, the connections! It’s a web. And Satya got caught in it. Beware, Jim. They use whatever’s at hand. To kill.”
At last, on the third day I hit pay dirt, as the Americans say. It was the Deepavali festival, which Hindus consider a particularly lucky day. Servants watered the streets to tamp the dust. Windows were flung open, clotheslines taken in to set fresh linen upon the cushions. Great quantities of food were prepared, their aromas vying for ascendancy. Families celebrated with visits to temples and then gatherings at home, festooned with music and sweetmeats, their doorways loaded with copious strings of marigolds.
The last of Vishal’s guests were departing, men dressed in colorful kurtas and turbans. They thanked him at the door and left, trailing each other. To my surprise, one of them looked familiar. Where had I seen him? I recognized his tall, skinny frame, the uneven slope of his shoulders. Then it struck me. I’d seen him leaving the mint while I pretended to smoke outside. He was the mint worker who’d run off!
My pulse kicked into a canter as I followed, keeping thirty feet behind. Shadows lengthened along dimly lit streets. He did not turn north toward his home in Parel, but headed southward toward the bazaar. Where was he going? I kept pace, then stepped closer as the streets narrowed and became more crowded. He bought a few things in the market, then turned into an isolated stretch near the docks.
When I caught sight of him, he was farther away. Had he sped up? I lengthened my stride. He glanced back, but I marched along without meeting his gaze and he continued on. If he were to disappear into a mohalla or tenement, how would I find his bolt-hole?
I drew abreast and said in Hindustani, “We should talk.”
He stopped with a cry. “What do you want?”
“You work at the mint,” I said calmly, “and you came from the home of Vishal Das. How do you know him?”
He gasped. His breath shuddered as I lowered the shawl to uncover my face.
It did not calm him. “How do you know Vishal?” I repeated.
He choked, “He is my wife’s brother.”
“You gave him the gold for Satya.”
“No!” he cried. “He did not know! Please! He cannot know.”
His sudden movement took me by surprise. His hand shot out, not with a plea, but something that glinted in the lamplight. I responded with a reflex, a blow that knocked it from his fist before it was buried in my belly. Clutching his elbow, he backed away, staring from me to the blade reflecting on the cobbles.
I cried, “Stop! You’re under arrest!”
A mistake. I had no authority to detain him. Worse, it was the wrong thing to say.
He fled. I leapt after him, but the devil was in his step and he bolted like a startled deer. Damn.
My knee pulsed as I pounded after him. That first spurt gave him a lead of ten feet. Barely keeping up, I struggled to close it, and could not spare the effort even to curse.
I’d lost track of where we were, somewhere near the Pydhonie police station? If we came in sight, I had some vague plan of hollering, “Stop, thief!” A vain hope, but all I had.
Ahead was an intersection. I heard the chug of a tram, the squeak of metal, and gained a yard. My knee no longer whined a protest, but bellowed. If I did not slow, it would buckle.
While I argued this point with my shrieking joint, I felt a gust and yanked away as the tram passed. I staggered, and my knee gave way. I went down hard, caught myself on my palms, and felt the burn of scraped flesh.
Ahead, the tram descended on a dark shape, my quarry. With a cry, he threw up his hands and turned. Did he think I was upon him?
The tram slammed into him, screeching to a halt; people cried out. The electric car jerked and shuddered to a stop. Like an ocean liner, its momentum carried it a full ten yards away. The tram driver climbed down, visibly quaking. Voices in the crowd grew loud and accusing.
Stunned, I searched the street, unable to spot him. Then realization struck a blow that winded me. My quarry lay in a pile across the street. Doubled over, I gasped, my pulse a wild drumbeat in the long moments. Breathing hard, I started toward him, but two other men got there first.
“What happened?” I asked, gaping at the bloodied clump of clothing and hair.
“He ran in front of the tram,” said one, shaking his head. “Was he drunk?”
The other rasped, “Maybe a suicide?”
A distant whistle sounded. Collecting my wits, I backed away. Constables would be here soon, asking questions, and I had no answers to give.
I wasn’t quick enough. As I trudged away nursing my aching knee, a whistle blew behind me. A voice hollered, “Stop!”
Standing among the milling bystanders, I turned to see what the ruckus was about.
“You!” hollered a white officer, pointing at me. “Is that blood?”
I glanced down at my light grey kameez where I’d wiped my scratched palms. Two constables approached, brows drawn, prepared to give chase if I should make a break.
I said in a thick northern accent, “I fell in the street, huzoor.”
They were not impressed, but bore me to the officer, who glowered, smacking his baton into his palm as I lumbered over.
“Whose blood is that?” the officer snapped, his face stark white in the lamplight. He’d been one of the blokes in McIntyre’s office when I salaamed him. With any luck he would not connect me with that little joke.
“Mine, huzoor. See.” I offered my scraped palms, where drops were still welling up. “The shouting startled me, so I fell.”
He scoured my face with narrowed eyes—good instincts for an Englishman, but hopelessly awash in the myriad dialects and peoples of India. “Did you know this man?” He pointed with his baton at the crumpled mass that someone was covering with a sheet.
“No, huzoor.” I folded my hands in supplication, then clutched my knee with a gasp I did not need to fake.
“Your name?”
“Rashid Khan.”
“Residence?”
“I am a visitor. From Pathankot.”
Lips set in a tight line, the officer waved me off. I limped away, disgusted at myself.
Back at Framji Mansion, Diana fussed over my scraped hands, sending the houseboy scurrying. “Clean water—bandages, Bhim! Haldi root, grind it to a paste. That’s right, turmeric! Yes, now.”
I closed my eyes, breathing in the smell of soap, tuberoses, and coconut oil that wafted off her. The snippets of information I’d collected whirled around my mind, snatches of conversation, odd looks that I’d tucked away to examine later.
God, it was a mess. Holmes had said, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” I had accumulated a kaleidoscope of evidence but had no clear suspect for the murder.
While Diana dabbed and swabbed at me, the bits swirled until they settled, one by one, like puzzle pieces on the floor. Slowly a picture emerged. I hoped it wasn’t too late.