Then it happened.
Pete finally and irretrievably put one of his feet fair and square on a slipping, slithering bottle. The foot shot out from under him. His whole heavy body went tumbling wildly down. And as he sprawled he just caught Ghote across the back of his legs with an almighty thwack.
Ghote fell flat on his face on to the pavement.
“Grab ’im, Pete,” yelled Billy from half-way along the alley.
Pete, slow though he was, obeyed the shouted command instantly. One great hand shot out and closed round Ghote’s right thigh like the savage jaws of a mastiff.
“Bring ’im ’ere,” Billy called. “I want a word with the bleeder.”
Pete staggered to his feet, not relaxing for a moment his iron-hard grip on Ghote’s thigh. Obviously he had gathered from his brother’s tone that this was someone he could treat as he liked. He strode back towards the house, holding Ghote upside down by his leg as casually as if he was carrying a wriggling dog. Ghote’s head and shoulders banged and bounced on the cobbles.
He kicked out with his free leg and wriggled for all he was worth. He tried to wind his arms between Pete’s feet and bring him down. But he was as powerless to hinder him as a baby.
“Bring ’im indoors,” Billy commanded.
Pete went up the broken steps two at a time. Ghote had to stop struggling completely and put his arms round his head to protect himself as best he could from the sharp edges of the stone treads.
“Now set ’im up. I got one or two things to say to ’im.”
Ghote felt himself whirled round. His face scraped the wall of the narrow passage. There was a shuddering jar through his whole frame as his feet banged on the floor, and he was staring at a furiously angry Billy straight in the face.
But Pete had not done with him yet. Pleased at his success, he began lifting him up from behind and bumping him down again on the floor with all the force of his muscular body.
Ghote thought he would lose consciousness. Every atom of breath seemed to be being jerked and forced out of him. Then at last he heard Billy speak again.
“All right, boy, leave ’im a minute. We don’t want a ruddy corpse on our hands. We’re deep enough in the mire already.”
With a last jarring thud Pete put Ghote down face to face with Billy for the second time, holding him helplessly pinioned.
“Right,” Billy said. “Now just who are you working for, mate? You can’t be the fuzz: we don’t have no coloured cops here, thank God. So who are you with?”
“I am not with anybody,” Ghote managed to reply.
Billy bunched up a fist in front of his face.
“Now don’t be bleeding stupid,” he said. “I asked you who you were working for?”
“Please,” Ghote said, “it is just the Peacock. She is a relation of mine. I am trying to find out what happened to her.”
“You’re asking a lot of bleeding questions about us,” Billy replied contemptuously. “And we don’t like that. See?”
He held his doubled-up fist under Ghote’s nose. His hand was very large.
Ghote drew a breath.
“If you did no harm to the Peacock,” he said, “you have nothing to fear.”
“I’ve got nothing to fear?” Billy answered. “It’s you who’ve got something to fear, matey. Plenty to fear.”
He took a pace backwards in the narrow passage and drew back his fist.
“Now,” he said, “are you going to get out and keep out, or am I going to bash your stupid head in?”
Ghote looked at him dazedly. He had to go on with his investigation. He was a police officer. He had set an inquiry on foot. He could not allow threats to his personal safety to halt it.
And yet he knew at the same time, with dismal certainty, that he had let himself get caught. He had got himself into a situation he could not get out of. And there would be a limit to the amount of punishment he could take. If he refused to back down and the burly figure looking at him so intently at this moment began using that great doubled-up fist, there would come a time sooner or later when he would cry out. Cry out for mercy.
Why not give in now?
And betray himself as a policeman? Betray himself as an Indian even? “We don’t have no coloured cops here, thank God.” Billy’s words were there to taunt him.
He knew that he should force his head up, look his tormentor straight in the eye and throw at him some challenging question. Where is the Peacock?
“You won’t speak, eh?” said Billy with open savagery. “Right.”
He poised himself.
“No,” said Ghote. “No, stop.”
And then, there was another voice.
“Now then, what’s all this?”
It was an unmistakable voice. The calm, authoritative tones of the police constable.
The moronic Pete dropped Ghote like a trained dog caught with its master’s dinner in its mouth. He shambled round to stare out into the alley. Ghote, putting out a hand to the grimily papered wall for support, also turned. Behind him Billy and Jack moved first a quick step back and then more slowly and brazenly half a step forward.
Beyond the door of the house, which Pete had as usual left open, the constable could be seen standing at the foot of the broken-edged steps looking up at them. The light coming through the archway illuminated one side of his helmet, glinted on its black strap as it lay along the stern line of his jaw, glistened and gleamed on his cape. His feet were firmly planted in heavy boots on the cobbles, his look was mildly disapproving.
And abruptly Ghote felt an overwhelming tidal wave of sheer embarrassment. He had just at that moment betrayed himself. He had surrendered, surrendered abjectly to the threat of force. And it was as if the heavens had at once moved majestically apart so that his act of cowardice could be seen in its full baseness.
He could not bring himself to speak.
The Smith brothers seemed equally disinclined to say anything.
But the silence in no way disturbed the constable. He waited patiently for some time, and then supplied an answer to his own question.
“Having a bit of what you’d call fun, I dare say,” he pronounced, looking sternly from brother to brother.
Pete, more suggestible than the others, grinned uneasily.
“Right then,” the constable said impassively, “now don’t let’s be hearing any more of this. You’re in trouble enough already, the three of you, without adding to it.”
He pursed his lips firmly.
Then he turned to Ghote.
“You’d better come along now,” he said.
He moved a little as if to usher Ghote down. Silently Ghote came forward past the cowed-looking Pete, descended the flight of broken steps and turned towards the rectangle of light in the alley archway.
The constable paced solemnly behind him. At the arch he swung round.
“You lads better get these bottles cleared up,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for all that noise just now I might never have come along. And then where would you have been.”
Without waiting to see if his instructions were going to be obeyed, he moved calmly away. Ghote found it necessary to trot a little to keep beside him.
For some time they walked along together without a word being spoken. But at last the constable turned to Ghote.
“Well now,” he said, “and what was all that about?”
“I am afraid I was very stupid,” Ghote began.
“Ah, well, we can’t all expect to be right all of the time. Specially when we’re not in our proper part of the world as it were.”
The contrast between the constable’s authoritative handling of the Smiths and his own appalling display was too vivid in Ghote’s mind for him to accept this as a universal truth. He could not but feel that wherever in the world the constable might find himself he would behave with exactly the same totally convinced calm.
But he was not doing anything about explaining the situation. He started off anew.
“
I am a policeman also, however,” he said to the stately figure at his side. “I am an inspector in the Bombay C.I.D.”
“Very nice, I’m sure.”
The constable contented himself with this single observation and, after pacing along for some time in silence, Ghote was forced to pick up his explanation where he had left it off.
“All the same,” he said a little lamely, “you will be wondering what I was doing conducting an investigation here in London.”
“Conducting an investigation, were you, sir?” the constable said placidly.
Ghote felt a new flush of hot shame.
“But I was on unfamiliar ground,” he said. “I should have known better. That is what I have been telling you. I let myself get into that most awkward situation. It was the height of stupidity.”
“It wasn’t very sensible, certainly,” the constable agreed gravely.
“You know those men, it seemed,” Ghote said.
“Oh yes, sir. Know ’em well. They’re the stars of my particular patch as you might say. As nasty a bunch as you’ll get.”
There was an unmistakable note of pride in the declaration.
“Yes, I suspected they were a pretty bad lot,” Ghote said. “Tell me, do you think they would go as far as murder?”
The constable gave a warm chuckle.
“Well, all I can say is: they haven’t yet.”
“But you think they would be capable of it?” Ghote asked with sharpness.
They had come to the corner of a broad well-lit thoroughfare. The constable halted his ponderous march. He stood looking down at Ghote.
“Now, sir,” he said, “I think we’ll put all that sort of thing out of our minds, shall we? You got yourself a nasty fright there, but it’s all done with now.”
The constable looked round about him.
“Now, whereabout is it you live, sir?” he asked.
“I am staying with relatives in Hyde Park Terrace,” Ghote answered impatiently. “But I am anxious to know more about these men. It’s a piece of luck meeting someone who probably knows as much about them as anybody.”
“I dare say I do that,” the constable replied.
“Well then, how much trust can I put in any of their statements? I ask because there is a young girl, the niece of the people I am staying with, who has disappeared. And I have reason to believe she was last seen alive in the company of Mr. Billy Smith.”
The constable raised his eyebrows gravely.
“A missing girl now, is it, sir?”
“Yes, yes. So, you see, it is import—”
“Excuse me, sir, but has this matter been reported to your local police-station?”
“Yes, yes. Of course. But—”
“It has, has it? And they made a full note of all particulars?”
“Yes, certainly. I went there myself to check.”
“Very sensible of you, I’m sure, sir. And now—”
Ghote interrupted.
“But that is not the point,” he said energetically. “You see, I have since made inquiries of my own, and I have discovered certain matters that put the case in a totally new light.”
“Yes, sir? Well, let me give you a little piece of advice.”
The constable looked at him severely.
“I think you’ll find, sir, that if the local police-station has been informed that a person is missing it’ll be best, by and large, to leave the whole matter to them. They’ll do everything that should be done.”
“Yes, yes. But it so happens that in this case I have discovered extra particulars.”
Ghote looked up at the constable who was now blandly regarding the night-time scene.
“I was following up the particulars in question when you came upon me just now,” he added.
“Ah,” said the constable, “so that’s what it was.”
And, before Ghote could say another word, he gestured gravely along the road.
“There’s a Number 15 bus just coming along, sir,” he said. “It’ll take you right to Marble Arch. Can you find your own way home from there?”
“Yes, of course I can. But you do not seem to realise—”
“You have got money for the fare, sir?”
“Constable, I am telling you the Smith brothers may be implicated in a most serious matter.”
“They’re as implicated as they can get already, sir,” the constable said. “But if you miss this bus we may have to wait a fair time for the next one. The service is none too good at this time of night. And I’ve got plenty to be seeing to.”
Gently gripping Ghote by the elbow, he propelled him, smoothly as a rubber-wheeled trolley, in the direction of the bus-stop a few yards away. The Number 15 was at that moment drawing up.
“There we are, sir,” the constable said.
He helped Ghote up on to the platform of the bus. Ghote angrily shook his hand off. The constable seemed utterly undisconcerted.
“One last little tip, sir, if you won’t take it badly,” he said. “A foreign gentleman like yourself shouldn’t really go wandering about after dark, not unless he keeps to the well-lighted streets, sir.”
“Hold very tightly please.”
It was the West Indian conductor.
He grinned cheerfully at Ghote and at the constable and pinged merrily on his starting-bell. With one slight lurch, the bus moved relentlessly away.
Ghote’s rage did not really come to a head till next morning. By the time he had got back to the Tagore House after being put on the bus he had been so dispirited that he had had only one concern: to reach the safety of his bed without encountering Cousin Vidur or, worse, Mrs. Datta.
By creeping up the very edge of the stairs and swinging past the door of the sitting-room, with one foot close to the base of the banisters and a hand on the newel-post, he had contrived this. He had just enough energy left to examine himself to see what harm Pete had inflicted and to discover that, thanks mostly to the thickness of his coat, he had in fact got off with no more than minor scrapes on his hands. And then he had tumbled into bed and fallen into a deep sleep.
But with the new day the events of the past evening presented themselves with well-ordered, unpleasant clarity. And first and foremost in his mind was a feeling of passionate fury over the way his rescuer had treated him. It outweighed even his sense of shame at his own behaviour at the hands of the Smith brothers.
How very different the constable had turned out to be from what he had at first seemed. Appearing in that god-like way at the moment of his worst humiliation, he had seemed to be the ideal British policeman, a figure like the one he had seen with such delight at London Airport. But in fact he had turned out to be far worse than the unhelpful sergeant at the local police-station. That someone as pompous, self-satisfied and prejudiced could be walking the beat as a London policeman sent all his notions of what Britain stood for cascading to pieces.
A little later, sitting in the Tube train cutting along under the ground from Marble Arch to the Bank, he found he was giving the stolid Englishmen sitting opposite a prolonged glare of shocked indignation. It was lucky, indeed, that they were Englishmen and were far away in their morning papers or staring stonily in front of them as oblivious as possible to any other human being.
The sight of them at least served to channel his rage of disillusion.
He would not just sit and glower. He would do something.
And luckily he was in a position to do that something, if ever anyone was. After all, he was on his way to a day’s sessions of the Conference on the Smuggling of Dangerous Drugs. And dangerous drugs plainly lay at the heart of the business of the Peacock’s disappearance. That was the very point he had been trying to make to that stupid constable.
All right, he had failed with him: he would succeed with someone a good deal higher up the scale than a constable. And one happy side-effect of that would be a pretty sharp reprimand for a certain exceptionally stupid and obstinate policeman.
He thought more cool
ly. Yes, he knew the man to see. A detective-inspector who had delivered early on in the conference the particularly impressive paper on the present state of the drugs racket in London, the paper from which he had culled the inside knowledge that had enabled him to get some answers out of the evasive Robin.
It would be much better to consult someone like this than to go to Superintendent Smart. The man with the fewer responsibilities, that was the one to go for.
First, he would tell him about Robin and his Nest as a newly-discovered centre of drug distribution, and then he would go on to say how this had come to light through Johnny Bull. To think that drugs from his own Bombay were being hawked about so blatantly that even someone like Johnny Bull knew at once where they could be picked up.
He began to make a careful arrangement in his mind of the main heads of the verbal report he would present as soon as the day’s proceedings were over and he could get his chosen inspector aside for a reasonable length of time.
In comparison with the day before when time for Ghote, eager to make his way to the Robin’s Nest, had seemed to creep by to-day it flew. His note-book almost filled itself with useful and concise observations, and then to a dutiful patter of applause the last speaker of the day brought his paper to a conclusion.
Ghote jumped up and walked rapidly over to the heavy ornamental doors of the hall before any of the other delegates had had time to leave. And all was set: he had only to wait till his man came in sight.
Soon enough he did so. Ghote stepped forward.
“Inspector,” he said, “might I have a word with you?”
The inspector looked at him. He was a tall, gaunt-faced man with a stiff crown of short black hair and a bar of black moustache all across his upper lip. Though from the Metropolitan Force, he had delivered the paper that had so impressed Ghote in what had sounded like a Scottish accent, dry and purposeful.
“Inspector Ghote, isn’t it, of Bombay?”
Ghote felt it was typical of the man’s efficiency that he should know his name when they had barely been introduced.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “Ghote. Ghote is my name. I am here in place of Superintendent Ketkar, after his most unfortunate accident.”
“Yes, yes. There was something particular you wanted to see me about?”
Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock Page 13