There was a strange smell in the darkness. I remembered Rai Chand. I’d hid, slid down a water pipe. The rattle of carts—returning! I’d tripped, tumbled into a ditch. Had they taken me again? My memory cleared, bringing the touch of Diana, the softness of baby Tehmina. My body unclenched. I sniffed my hands but could find no explanation for the powder that crumbled off my skin.
Dried potato pulp! Mrs. Framji’s remedy—I brushed the same poultice from my face. The grandfather clock dinged five just then, a doleful resonance that rang through the dark hallways of Framji Mansion like a sentinel. They’d let me sleep in the morning room.
I got up, biting back a groan. My body ached as though I’d gone rounds with an angry heavyweight and lost. To spare Diana the disturbance, I dragged myself into Adi’s room. His long oval mirror showed a wild, rumpled bloke, hair standing on end. I had the mottled face of a drunk, but not the rowdy memories to show for it. Though the backs of my hands were a patchwork of peeling skin, the dreadful itching had subsided.
What had I told Diana? I staggered to the washroom to get decent. Paramount in my mind was baby Shirin. But what I had to do was insane. And impossible. Wasn’t it?
By daybreak, I had assembled my thoughts, a kaleidoscope of speculation with monstrous gaps. My mind churning, I cut into a small mountain of poached eggs that Diana plated.
Diana listened without interruption as I described what I intended. To her credit, she flinched twice and clutched her book to her chest, but held back her protests.
“The part I’m most concerned about,” I said, “is afterward. What if they open the boxes? If they find Adi’s scalpels instead of gold…” I trailed off, unable to say it out loud. Shirin’s life could be forfeit for such a betrayal.
Diana said, “It’s likely they’ll open the crates?”
“Any crook worth his salt would check the goods before handing over the prize.”
“Hmm.” She had a faraway look. “Can you prevent them from touching the gold bars?”
“I could manage that,” I said, hardly daring to hope.
“The police will give chase, of course. So you need a distraction.” She put aside her book and got up. “The Imperial Mint is quite close to the pound where they’ve been collecting stray animals. Come, we need Mama and Papa for this.”
I protested, “Diana, wait! You can’t involve them…” but Diana was already swishing down the verandah corridor.
Despite the early hour, both her parents answered Diana’s tap on their door. She whisked into their bedchamber, waving me in.
I hesitated at the doorstep, reluctant to invade their intimate space. Burjor beckoned, seated at the edge of a wide four-poster in his pajamas and muslin undershirt. The prayer cap on his head showed that we’d interrupted his morning devotions.
In a booming voice, he said, “Don’t stand on ceremony, Captain! Come in!”
Her head wrapped in a pink flowered scarf, Mrs. Framji was speaking with Diana. “Get Shirin back? How?”
Diana explained. “Jim will do it. But we need a diversion, Mama. Remember the dogs they’re killing every day, how upset Mrs. Wadia was?” She turned to me. “The Wadias’ poodle was snatched by a dogcatcher. Soli’s mother was so upset she collapsed. Here’s what I propose.”
She laid out her plan, concluding, “Papa, you can call Banaji, Byram, and Mr. Mehta. In the meantime, I’ll start with the Wadias. They have a telephone too—we could speak to all the main families this morning!”
Diana had not been so animated in weeks—her eyes shone, and her voice!
She asked, “What say you, Papa? Should we not oppose cruelty? Parsis are peace-loving, yes, but we’re not cowards. Shall we do it? Shall we riot?”
I had protested Diana’s decision to bring Burjor into our plan—but she was right. He leapt to it with gusto, making a host of arrangements that would have been far beyond me. And all without explaining why he wanted things just so. Mrs. Framji too rose to the occasion, her eyes red-rimmed with fatigue.
After shaving and dressing neatly, I scarpered off to the Bombay Jail. I was a wanted man, but so long as I did not venture through police headquarters, it was the last place anyone would look for me.
Clad in a nice brown suit, I entered my name, CPT AGNIHOTRI, and signed, then turned the ledger back to the guard. Glancing over the guard’s shoulder, the English supervisor said, “Fellow of this name was wanted…”
I said idly, “I’d hardly be visiting, would I?” and emptied my pockets into the metal tub as usual.
He grunted and poked through my things, wallet, watch, notebook, pencil stub, and Satya’s key which I’d retrieved this morning.
“All good,” he said to the thanedar who opened the gate.
No guard accompanied me this time, so I assumed I was to find my own way. I’d been through the maze of corridors often enough, so I headed for Adi’s cell.
“Jim!” Adi shuffled over from his bed. “Good of you to come,” he said, shaking hands through the bars. Never mind that his cheeks were hollow in his thin face, or that his clothes hung as though two sizes too large, he was invariably courteous, and today was no different. Yet I was in a fever to consult him, so belaying the usual pleasantries, I launched into it.
“I’ve got bad news,” I said, and told him about little Shirin’s abduction.
“She’s five,” he said in a choked voice. After a moment, “What happened to your face?”
As he heard about my assault, he pressed a fist to his mouth.
I asked, “Are you going to be sick?”
He shook his head. “Go on. They let you go?”
“I escaped. They drugged me, and I had no wish to wake up in the middle of the bazaar or in a dung heap.”
His mouth smiled as I made light of the affair, but lines crowded tight around his eyes.
“Why, Jim?” Knuckles white, he clenched the bars. “Why did they take my sister?”
“They think you were in it with Satya. That you’ve got his loot.”
“Give them the gold Ganesh,” he cried. “Exchange it for Shirin!”
“That’s not all they want. The Imperial Mint. I’m to hand them the taxes.”
His breath rasped as he absorbed the fullness of my predicament. “You can’t do it, Jim. I won’t let you.”
I smiled. “I was rather hoping you’d help. Satya was swindling the swindlers, wasn’t he? Let’s take a page from his book.”
His eyes flashed, then his thin shoulders pulsed as he huffed out a chuckle. For three shaking breaths he pressed his forehead to the metal bars between us.
Voice low, he said, “Gold is heavy, but few know how much it weighs. And I’ve got plenty of heavy metal pieces in the factory.”
“Where would I get wooden boxes?”
“You need crates?” He grinned and told me.
All day we worked to assemble the plan. Gradually it took shape. Padamji balked at first, then, reminded of his debt to me, acceded. Diana immediately rushed away with Gurung and Ganju to Adi’s factory.
I could not be a part of that, since I was likely being watched. So Mrs. Framji sent me to make urgent purchases from the market. This done, I returned to the mint and walked the possible routes radiating in each direction. Where would Rai Chand’s message reach me? Where would it send me? How did he plan to exchange boxes of bullion for one small child? Or was this all to lead me a merry chase? Perhaps he had no intention of returning baby Shirin at all!
Was she even still alive? Diana’s worn face told me she shared that gnawing fear. At dinner, no one could eat. Burjor persuaded Mrs. Framji to take a sleeping draft.
Taking extra precautions to dislodge anyone following me, I began the final step of my preparations. While Gurung drove the carriage about town as a decoy, I broke into McIntyre’s home after dark. It posed little difficulty to slip over the backyard wall and duck into the well-tended shrubbery.
However, Mrs. McIntyre had company in the room overlooking the formal garden, which caused a short delay. Slouching between the bushes I mimicked a gardener’s low walk.
Taking my time, I plodded to the side of the house where Mac had his smoking room, jimmied the window, and settled into a chair. It was the only chamber where his missus was unlikely to venture—I had no desire to terrify her.
For my nocturnal visit, I’d worn my usual journalist’s garb, dark vest over long kurta and baggy trousers. Gazing in the mirror over the dumbwaiter, I winced. I’d had no time to clean up into a gentleman before breaking into the chief superintendent’s home.
The clock chimed in high, merry notes while I waited, reminding me that it was past eleven. I had no way to judge how long McIntyre’s dinner companions would stay. If I heard visitors at the door, I’d have to dash over the windowsill, so I kept myself in readiness.
Despite my anxiety, as the minutes inched past in the quiet chamber, my limbs sank into the comfortable chair and my eyelids begged a short rest. Rising, I browsed McIntyre’s library, fingering the books’ leather spines. And there it was. A beautiful bound copy of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
This I took down and opened to “The Adventure of the Crooked Man.” Turning the book to the lamplight, in moments I was absorbed in Mr. Holmes’s case about an English soldier during the Indian Mutiny. A suspicion began to form—he was deformed, but had been unusually handsome in features … I had just got to the crux of it, where Watson and Holmes were to question the poor twisted creature, when the door opened, and Mac turned up the gaslight.
He stopped as though turned to stone, then growled under his breath, and shut the door firmly behind him.
“Evening,” I said, setting down the book with regret as I rose to my feet. One of these days, I hoped I’d get to read the end of a story.
“I’ve got a warrant out for you. Why are you here?”
“Sorry to intrude like this…” I said, thinking that was a nice, polite opening, then noticed his clenched jaw and got to the point. “Thought you should know. I’m, ah, going to steal the bullion.”
He didn’t move.
Wondering whether he’d understood, I went on, “From the mint. You saw me there, remember? The Imperial Mint?”
“I know what the bloody mint is,” he snarled, then pointed with the stem of his pipe. “Sit. Spit it out. It’s what you’re here for.”
He came around his desk, sat, and put his pipe down. He laid his forearms to either side of it like the sphinx at Giza, peering at me without expression. My admiration swelled when he didn’t even look at the fine whiskey bottles on the sideboard.
He listened without interruption as I told him about Shirin’s abduction, and the price I was asked to pay, in exchange for her life.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low. “The Framjis lost two children before.”
“And you’ve locked up their son for murder,” I reminded him. “They cannot lose this baby. Not like this.”
He stared at his pipe as the grandfather clock ticked away the seconds.
Then he said, “We had a daughter. Died of cholera in ’83.” When he looked up, his gaze was a rapier. “The gunships arrived an hour ago. How did you know?”
“I didn’t,” I replied. Blast. The escort was here. Little Shirin’s abduction was well timed.
He cleared his throat, then said, “I will not have you obstructing the transfer of taxes.”
I tried a half grin. “How ’bout a decoy? A load of fake bullion. The staff at the mint will cooperate.” As his eyes snapped up, I added, “Close-knit Parsis, I’m kin to them now.”
He squinted, weighing my tone as much as my words.
Every hour’s delay could cost little Shirin her life. Losing patience, I said, “If you think I’m up to something, call the baronet, Sir Jamsetji. Ask him about me. Ask him if he’ll stand guarantor!”
McIntyre reared back at this outrageous statement. I bore the mammoth weight of his icy gaze as long as I could stand it, then spread my hands in silent beseeching.
“It’s madness,” he said. “What d’you want from me?”
It took over an hour to work through, but with the preparations Adi offered, McIntyre grudgingly agreed I had just the slightest, slimmest chance of success.
“My sentries, they’ll fire,” he said, his Scots accent rough. “No blank cartridges, you say, else word gets out. They’ll shoot lead, you understand?”
I nodded. If it got that far I would already have failed.
I left McIntyre sitting with bloodshot eyes, making a low gurgling noise that telegraphed the curses he’d love to hurl at my head. I’d insisted that no one else was to know, because Rai Chand would surely be watching from the moment I left Framji Mansion.
That left only one part, in truth, the piece of this daft business that worried me the most. Would Chand fall for our ruse? Nursing my anxiety like a dog with an injured paw, I returned from McIntyre’s with my cloak over my head and part of my face, walking in a peculiar doubled-over fashion that would be starkly memorable. The safest disguise is to be very visible. Was that from Holmes? I could not recall him saying so.
Entering the midnight bazaar at Charni Road I slipped into a narrow alley to shed my guise, exiting the other end with long strides to hail a passing Victoria.
That night sleep deserted me. In the wee hours, our preparations made, we finally sought our beds. Yet I kept hearing Rai Chand’s instructions.
“You will drive the carriage with the gold bars.
You will see a man with a red flag.
You will take him up and hand over the reins.
He will take you to the rendezvous.”
How did he know when the bullion would be moved? I feared that the mind who’d written that knew all I’d done, where I’d been, and how I’d retrieved Satya’s child, Sona, now safely ensconced in the Framji nursery.
But little Shirin’s bed lay empty. How was she treated by her abductors? Those chubby little arms around my neck, that bold little face! God, her trusting eyes peering at me, her little fingers patting my cheeks. Someone had watched the Framji household and struck at the very heart of it.
I lay awake for a time, listening to Diana’s soft breathing, then eased away from her warm softness, picked up my book from the nightstand and stole away to read.
Turning up a lamp in the morning room, I settled into the easy chair beside and turned the crisp pages. Should I try to finish “The Adventure of the Crooked Man” or “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty”? My eye fell on the title of the last story: “The Final Problem.”
If things went wrong tomorrow, I’d never get to read it. Did I want to?
I’d heard the talk in Boston. In this tale, my hero, Sherlock Holmes, that scything intellect, would die. Could I bear to lose him, even if only in fiction?
Why had Conan Doyle destroyed his magnificent creation? What devilish business had Holmes faced that ended so badly? Again I heard Rai Chand’s voice, saw the tremor in his hand as he read out my instructions. That measured meter, those repeated phrases were indicative of a strange intellect. A cold hand closed around my insides.
Holmes had lost his battle, then. Would I lose mine?
How did he lose? Was he ambushed? Or was it a sacrifice to achieve some greater purpose? It mattered to me how he died.
I began to read.