Pandu was carted away to hospital. Rai Chand and his men had disappeared. Diana examined my bruises and pronounced me “tolerable.” Constables were taking statements from bystanders, so I sent the Framjis home when their part was done.
McIntyre questioned Satya’s family, while I stood by to translate. Sandwiched between grandparents Meera and Tansen, sobbing, Sona joined her hands to the great stone Ganesh.
Under that peaceful gaze, she told Mac how a moment’s outrage had led to tragedy. “I did not know. I did not know the knife would go in like that.” Shaking, she dove into Meera’s embrace.
Once McIntyre was satisfied, Tansen said, “Sonali was alone, but we will raise her now.”
Satya had shown little faith in them, so I objected. “Did you know Satya had a child?”
Tansen hesitated. “He said there was a child by a rundi. We are respectable people! How could we accept this? But the girl is orphaned…”
Behind him, their heads close together, Sona nestled against Meera’s bosom.
I asked, “Will she be safe with you? Pandu almost killed her!”
Tansen spread his hands. “Pandu is hotheaded. But this child is our own blood. We will protect her. I swear it.” With a parting pranam, he gathered Sona and his wife and retreated into his clan. The afternoon drew on as McIntyre insisted I repeat my own part for the record.
The search for the culprits found a pulley behind the temple, fitted into the stone above a cliff. Hemp ropes led to a sandy beach below where Chand and his men had likely escaped with the crates of fake bullion.
As lanterns cast long shadows on the courtyard, McIntyre and I climbed into a carriage and headed to Bombay Jail. The court session had ended for the day, so with a gruff word to me, McIntyre signed papers for Adi’s release and went off to astonish the prosecution with our new evidence.
In his cell Adi saw me and got to his feet. My throat clenched. After all that had happened, I could not find words to tell him. I tried to smile. It seemed to alarm him.
I managed to mutter, “Time to go.”
The guard pulled open his door, waiting for Adi, who looked around at his books and clothes.
Did he understand? I wrapped my arms about him, learning again how to breathe. Gradually his thin body relaxed. I felt him return my embrace.
Voice muffled, he asked, “I’m free?”
“You bet,” I choked out.
When I told him little Shirin was safe, his body shook with sobs. I tightened my grip, then pulled back in distress only to find that he was laughing. He didn’t seem to know his face was wet.
The carriage ride was short and without conversation. Adi poked his head out the window, hair flying wild in the open air.
I should have been relieved. I should have been able to close my eyes in the soft darkness of the coach and rest. Yet all the while a distant suspicion whirled in the recesses of my mind, something off-kilter, something not quite right.
We didn’t know who was in charge, who’d snatched baby Shirin. I filled my lungs with the cool air blowing through the open window and watched Adi’s hair flicker around his head, making haloes each time we passed a streetlamp.
His welcome at Framji Mansion was all he could have wanted. Adi sat sandwiched between Burjor and Mrs. Framji on a couch that was not meant for three. Burjor’s arm lay along the back. Now and again, he squeezed Adi’s shoulder with a massive hand.
Mrs. Framji had no such inhibitions. She’d wept openly to see Adi, kissed and garlanded him, blessing him with a red mark on his forehead, while Diana clung to him.
He grinned through it all, answering in bursts, half sentences of wit and rueful sarcasm.
Now, emotion choking his voice, Burjor asked me, “How can we thank you?”
I waved it away, hoping he would not try to pay me. It would sting too much, and I did not want to pretend it was all right. One does not pay family.
Diana cast me a quick glance, and said in a warning tone. “Papa…”
Burjor blinked. “Of course,” he said, “Captain—I mean Jim, is one of us…”
Mrs. Framji came to his rescue. “We are grateful, son. Is there anything we can do?”
“Ah.” I thought of the decrepit old mali, weeping because I had touched his hand. He needed a kind place to live, and then to die. “Could you take on an old servant? Not sure he’s good for much. Would mean a lot to me…”
Adi asked, “Bala Mali? Of course! Papa, it’s Satya’s gardener.”
“Certainly!” Burjor rumbled. At that moment, I think he would have given away his last penny. “Bring him to us. He can do as much, or as little as he wants.”
While the family rested the next day, I recovered Sona’s box from the nursery upstairs. It was Satya’s old traveling case, still carrying his name tag from the SS Carpathia.
So after dinner, I pulled Sona’s valise on my lap. Deep scratches around the clasp showed numerous efforts to break it, but the sleek metal lock had held.
Was this what Satya tried so hard to hide?
Diana said, “I can’t understand why Satya did this. When Sona came to him, why did he send her back to the kotha? For this valise? What could it possibly contain?”
On that fateful noon, Satya’s words must have seemed to reject Sona—a betrayal which cut so deep it almost drove her to suicide. I palmed the silver key, recalling Banner’s prescient words. Satya feared that his child hated him. Perhaps she did. He may have thought he deserved it for abandoning her mother. This was conjecture, but Satya’s last words, “Don’t let them sell her,” revealed remorse for sending Sona back for this case.
I said, “What’s in it? One way to find out!”
Satya’s key slid easily into the valise’s keyhole. The clasp opened without a sound. I heard Diana gasp as I pulled clumps of crumpled paper onto the low coffee table.
They were wrinkled banknotes, rolls of rupee notes tied with yellow rubber bands. Satya’s hoard tumbled onto the dark wooden table—the funds he’d gathered to rescue Sona and start a new life. I felt a pulse of pity for Satya, who’d got so close to his goal, and lost.
Adi started counting the cash. I told Burjor, “That’s yours. The five grand he stole.”
The valise contained a tattered chemistry book and a dog-eared primer, Satya’s treasures, I thought, as I flicked through pages with a single letter imprinted at the top. A wobbly scrawl replicated it in rows. At the letter P, Sona had given up.
Satya’s visits must have ceased about then.
He’d been teaching Sona to write. I felt as though I’d entered a parade ground at dawn and found it empty when it should have been teeming.
“Wait,” I blurted. “The mali carried messages for Satya. But Sona can’t read.”
Diana looked up. “They were for someone else. Someone keeping Sona there.”
The case was still heavy, so I upturned it over the table. A small gold brick thunked onto the rosewood. When I picked it up with my fingertips, it was heavy, smooth, and cold. A row of numbers and the imperial crest gleamed, identical to those at the Bombay mint.
The Framjis stared at it.
I said, “Satya held on to one—a fail-safe, should he need to run.” I turned the bar on its side. “I can’t see where he sliced off the bottom and replaced it with silver.”
Taking it carefully, Adi examined it. “Plated in gold, it would be almost invisible.”
Diana reached for the bar, then pulled back. “Jim! If this is fake … it’s an unexploded bomb! This could cause more damage than the bank panic!”
What the devil? I gaped at her. “Why?”
“The gold standard! Currency is backed by gold. It’s the ultimate safety for savings. If it becomes known that there are fakes at the Imperial Mint, why, it could cause chaos! How could one trust theirs was genuine?”
The grandfather clock ticked off the seconds while I tried to imagine such a world. Something moved in my mind, a ripple in a dark curtain.
Adi said, “Gold is the ultimate currency. This could devalue everything. If it was known that the Bank of England dealt in fake bars, the value of gold would drop. It could ruin Great Britain!”
My mouth dry as paper, I asked him, “Could Satya have intended this? Striking a blow from within, to knock out Britain’s financial system, sow mistrust of its very currency?”
In a wondering tone, he said, “Blow everything up, like an anarchist?” His face was pale against his dark jacket. “I wouldn’t believe it of him…”
Diana said, “Silver prices tumbled last year. The proponents of ‘Free Silver’ wanted to reinstate the dollar coin. But the price of silver is so volatile, well, it ruins their argument.”
Silver had been dethroned as a currency because it was unstable. But the rupee was still pegged to silver, wasn’t it? Diana was saying, “Jim, how did Satya get this?”
This I could answer. “Vishal’s brother worked at the mint. It was a neat plan. He smuggles out a gold bar stuck to the bottom of a trolley. Satya slices off a part of the bar, replaces it with silver, and plates it again in gold. The empty carts are stacked on the road. Disguised as a sweeper, one of the gang attaches the fake when no one’s around. A guard rolls it back inside, and Vishal’s brother simply adds it to the stack.”
Adi whispered, “An endless supply, as long as Vishal’s brother cooperated.”
“And didn’t get caught.”
Diana motioned to the bar on the rosewood table. “So is this real, or fake?”
“He’d have kept an untampered one for himself, don’t you think?”
She frowned. “Can Padamji return it?”
Burjor shook his head. “He would have to explain how he got it.”
Diana slumped. “Then what do we do with it?”
Adi put up his hands. “Nothing! Can’t sell it, can’t even be seen with it. If we gave it to a jeweler to melt down, he’d ask all sorts of questions!” He mopped his forehead. “Questions I can do without!”
I grinned at Burjor. “Lock it up as safeguard against a rainy day.”
Brows ridged, Burjor shook his head. “I’ll have the funds I’m owed, no more. Why not give it to Satya’s family? He stole from them, no?”
Adi spoke slowly. “They’d rejoice, but … how do we explain it? And if we ask them to keep it quiet, well, they’d have a hold over us. I don’t like it, Papa.”
Diana frowned. “So, then what? You don’t expect Jim and me to keep it!”
Burjor spread his hands. “Why not? The captain’s worked hard to free Adi. Why not take that?” He pointed with his chin.
Diana shook her head. “It … feels strange to say this. Satya cheated so many people.” She grimaced. “Out of desperation, it’s true. But … it feels wrong, somehow.”
“As though there’s blood on it,” I said softly.
She came alongside and dropped a kiss on my forehead.
“Right,” I said, turning to Burjor. “Your family priest, the Ervad? Could you invite him to the house?”
“Dastoor Kukadaru? I can … but why?”
I smiled. “He’s building a cathedral. A big temple of sorts?”
Burjor sucked in an audible breath. “The Atash Behram. But if we donate this, it will bring the taxman to our door!”
I chuckled. “Your priest is a holy man, isn’t he? Ask him to pray on it.”