“Damn fine piece of luck for me,” he had muttered breathily, leaning toward Ghote in a waft of chewed betel nut odor. “Bloody woman is always putting down her key-bunch just as soon as she is getting home. On a table beside a vase of flowers she has there. That I was often noticing, so it was easy for me to get impressions in this soap.”
Ghote had formed an instant dislike for the fellow. He was a podgy young man of about thirty, his pale face decorated with a thin little moustache under which a cigarette grew bright and dull alternately. Hands folded over a rubber-ball potbelly, he had made no attempt to get up from the dark cane-backed armchair in which he was reclining as Ghote had been shown in.
“Yes,” he had said as soon as Ghote had discreetly identified himself, “I was not at all wanting you to come to my office, and there is generally no one about here in the library at this time of the afternoon. Now, you know what you have to do, yes?”
“I was receiving instructions from Mr. Z. R. Mistry.”
“No names, no names, you fool. And for God’s sake sit down. I don’t want every word I am saying to be heard all over the club.”
It had taken an effort not to reply that the library, with its ranks of ancient-looking, meticulously numbered books behind their glass doors, with its portraits of Parsi worthies of bygone days and its heavy furniture, was, as Burjor Pipewalla himself had pointed out, altogether deserted.
After his few bare words of explanation the tax consultant had handed over the thick envelope containing a piece of soap. Glancing at it, Ghote had recognized from the faint odor of limes that it was a piece of Liril. The two impressions in it showed every sign of having been made in haste.
“Well,” Burjor Pipewalla had demanded, “can I be relying upon you to be in place in that flat tomorrow. Miss Daru— The person we are speaking of is always playing bridge on Wednesdays. She returns home at about eleven in the night, and I have insisted on an appointment for that time. I trust that you will make sure of hearing each and every word she says.”
He had looked up then, the eyes in his pale face hard.
“And you will forget thereafter whatsoever you yourself have learned. Understood?”
“Mr. Mistry was fully explaining to me.”
At that, Burjor Pipewalla’s full lips had tightened in abrupt petulance. But he had said no more.
Wearily Ghote hauled himself up the last, ill-lit flight to Marzban Apartments’ twentieth floor. On the landing he stopped and listened. No, no one was coming up behind him. He moved over to the door of the flat, slipping the two false keys from his pocket.
What if they would not turn in the locks? The Muslim mechanic he had gone to in Bapu Khote Cross Lane in the Pydhonie area, an old record-sheeter whose name he had found in the files, had looked at Burjor Pipewalla’s two impressions with contempt written on every line of his wrinkle-cut face. But that might have been only because he was not happy about making false keys for a police officer, suspecting perhaps some attempt to entrap him.
It had been then that, with sudden gray weariness, Ghote had known he would have to use what he had put together about the man from Records and had learned at the Modus Operandi Bureau.
“Listen, bhai,” he said. “There are many, many things against you that we are knowing. You want to be charge-sheeted with making keys for that big Byculla housebreaking last year? You are thinking we could not find evidence enough if we are wanting? Or there is job at that posh flat in Cumballa Hill last March only?”
The old Muslim had glared at him in fury. But it had been impotent fury. A fury of a kind he knew well himself. He had felt it when Mr. Mistry had applied his form of blackmail in the flat at the foot of this very block.
Had the Muslim, in revenge, even mismade the keys? No, he would not have dared. Or would he?
He took a step nearer Dolly Daruwala’s door and put his ear to one of its gleaming teak panels.
And heard sounds.
Voices were talking, quite loudly and with some argumentativeness, it seemed. But whose could they be? He listened again. All men’s voices. Nothing that sounded like Dolly Daruwala. So was she, as Burjor Pipewalla had said, still playing her regular Wednesday evening game of cards? Could she have invited some people to wait for her? Then the voices ceased, and there came, absurdly, other voices, ones he at once recognized, singing voices, softly chanting, “Vico … Turmeric … Ayurvedic … Cream …” The television. The damn woman must have left her television on. Perhaps, in fact, she did so deliberately. Mr. Mistry had said she kept no servant. Too many secrets to take the risk of prying eyes. So quite likely when she went out for the evening she put on the television to scare away possible housebreakers.
Like himself.
Wryly he took the first of the Muslim’s keys and tried it in the door. It scraped home a little stiffly, but eventually he got it to turn. The second key gave him no trouble at all.
He pushed the door gently open.
Inside, he found Dolly Daruwala had left almost all the lights on, and, yes, the television was continuing to pump out advertisements in one of the rooms leading off the hallway where there was, as Burjor Pipewalla had said, a table holding a big creamy-white fluted vase, resplendent with flowers.
He looked at his watch. Only just past ten. He still had plenty of time to find the best place to conceal himself. Carefully he set out to explore. The whole flat seemed to be every bit as luxurious as the rich blooms on the table beside the door had indicated. In the drawing room a huge flowery Amritsar carpet covered most of the floor. Low western-style chairs and a sofa, pink in raw silk with dark green cushions, gave a very different impression from the last Parsi residence he had been in, Mr. Z. R. Mistry’s apartment down below. A coffee table with a white marble top held a heavy silver cigarette lighter he saw as deliberately flouting the Parsi edict against employing sacred fire for smoking, together with a copy of a well-known scandal magazine called Gup Shup. On the walls were some Chinese scrolls, framed in gold, and a picture of the British Princess Di’s wedding. Parsis were mad about the British Royal Family.
He glanced in at the bathroom, every bit as opulent as the rest of the place. The bath and basin had gold taps. Dozens of bottles of scents and lotions, mostly with Western names and smuggled in, no doubt, crowded its shelves. And all, he thought, if what Mr. Mistry had told him was right, bought out of the proceeds of the lady’s blackmailing operations. Only the kitchen was somewhat bare. No doubt Dolly Daruwala neither cooked for herself nor dared have a servant to cook for her.
Finally he went to the bedroom beyond the drawing room, where, according to what Mr. Mistry had said, Burjor Pipewalla had seen Dolly Daruwala’s safe. In it lay, he had gathered, not only the documents that could land the plump tax consultant in prison, but papers that many a wealthy person must feel as a hair-hung sword above them, held back only by regular payments to the most dangerous woman in Bombay.
He spotted at once where the safe must be. There was a single painting in the room, a copy of that one in Europe of the lady smiling mysteriously—what was it called, the Mona Lisa—and as soon as he went over to it he saw that it could be swung back on hinges. And behind it, set into the wall, was a small but first-rate Godrej safe.
Mr. Mistry had said that Dolly Daruwala had gone to this the first time his cousin had come to pay her the “fine” she had told him she felt it was “her duty” to impose instead of the one that a court would levy, or the prison sentence that would be laid down if the papers she had “accidentally” picked up at his office should fall into the wrong hands. Then, letting him see that in her handbag there was a little, gleaming, stubby pistol, she had put the thick bundles of notes he had brought her into the safe and had handed over to him the papers. Only to let him know one month later that she had felt it her duty, again, to retain copies.
Ghote could see that scene in his mind’s eye. He felt a dart of pity, even for the unpleasant Burjor Pipewalla.
But more urgent considerations a
waited. Where amid all this luxury was he to hide so as to be sure of hearing every word when Burjor Pipewalla arrived? And where could he himself be sure of not being found when Dolly Daruwala got back, no doubt a few minutes before that eleven o’clock appointment?
He went over the whole of the flat in his mind. The bathroom? No, Dolly Daruwala was altogether likely to go in there as soon as she reached home. The kitchen? Well, it looked unlikely that she would enter that, but hiding there he would not be able to see what was happening in the drawing room.
So it would have to be the bedroom. He tried stepping into the tall fitted cupboards that lined one whole wall. Sari after sari, in the pastel shades that Parsi ladies favored, would provide ample cover even if Dolly Daruwala put something away. But, again, among all that shimmering silkiness, although the woodwork was unexpectedly flimsy for such a luxurious place and he would hear well enough, he would be able to see nothing of what was happening in the rest of the flat.
But then he looked at the bed, smooth under a cover of glossy green. It was placed so that, if the door of the room was ajar, anyone lying on it, or under it, could see the greater part of the drawing room beyond. And there seemed to be space enough beneath.
He looked at his watch once again. There was more than enough time before eleven o’clock. But on the other hand, Dolly Daruwala might return early. Best to take no risks. He got down onto the floor and carefully slid his body past the flounces of the silky bed cover.
When his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom underneath, he found himself confronting, right under his nose, two gray coils of dust and fluff. At once he feared for the cleanliness of his uniform. Leaving home to come to Marzban Apartments, he had contrived, filled with a vague sense of shame at what it was that he was to wear the uniform for, to slip out with it bundled over his arm while Protima was in the kitchen. He had then changed down at headquarters, intending to reverse the process when his unpleasant task was over. Now if the dust beneath the bed left marks on his uniform that defied brushing he would have some embarrassing explaining to do.
But at least by raising an inch or so the flounce of the bed cover just in front of him he had a good view of the drawing room, where Dolly Daruwala was likely to conduct her interview. And if she came in to go to her safe he had only to turn his head and lift the flounce at the side to be able to see what she was doing.
He lay listening to some more inane advertisements issuing from underneath the prettily embroidered dust-cover that hid the television. “Rich creamy Milkmaid …” Then, “Liril—with the fresh tang of limes.” Well, in the end there had not been much fresh tang of limes left in the piece of soap he had had to blackmail—yes, that was what he had done, no getting past it—the old Muslim locksmith into using to make those keys.
In the drawing room the television advanced to the news in English, droning on with the more or less statutory item about the Prime Minister, a speech extolling a certain Dr. Edul Commissariat, who had recently returned from America bringing some invention that was going to end all India’s ills. No doubt, he thought, allowing himself a jet of venom in compensation for the unpleasantness he was embroiled in, they were even now showing yet once again the shot of Dr. Commissariat stepping out of his plane in Bombay that they had shown half a dozen times already since his arrival.
He found his thoughts had turned again to the business of blackmail. What damn cheek it had been in Ved to threaten to tell Protima the secret of his TV set purchase. Perhaps he should have beaten him. But, no, the boy was good at heart, and doing so well at school. Besides—the thought suddenly came back to him—had he not as a boy himself once tried some blackmailing? A hot flush of shame welled up in him at the recollection. He must have been nine, in Standard IV. And one day he had happened to spot Adik Desmukh, big Adik, stealing one of the girls’ pencils. How he had delighted in threatening to tell Masterji. It had given him much more pleasure than the one anna Adik had handed over as the price of silence. And that had been the only payment. Because somehow he had soon been overwhelmed with shame, not at having extracted the coin, which he had actually thrown away in disgust, but at the secret pleasure he had got out of having a big boy like Adik Desmukh in his power.
Well, Ved’s sin had not been as icy as his own. By no means. So let it rest. And at least the boy had not tried to repeat his tactic.
From the television he became aware the newsreader had moved on from the Prime Minister. She was recounting now the details of a big strike in Bombay. A prominent labor leader was being quoted.
Oh, yes, he thought, that fellow I am very well knowing. Every sort of a mischief monger, and he does it for money. Employers hand him over fat bribes to get their mills back to work. How else has he acquired his big house out at Juhu? The foreign car he is not ashamed to drive to protest meetings in? What else is he doing but practicing blackmail? Or at the least extortion. Not one hundred percent as nasty, but bad—
His thoughts screeched to a halt. Above the ongoing tones of the newsreader there had come, distinct as the sharp tap of a gecko lizard, the sound of a key in the flat’s door.
Already.
THREE
Lying beneath Dolly Daruwala’s bed, a gray roll of fluff gently oscillating to his breathing just in front of his face, Ghote did not doubt that the keys he had heard inserted in the flat’s door meant that its owner had returned much earlier than expected from her bridge evening. He foresaw trouble. If Dolly Daruwala was to go here and there about the flat until Burjor Pipewalla came to plead with her for the return of his incriminating documents, then it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that something would eventually give away his own presence. And, Mr. Mistry had said, Dolly Daruwala carried a pistol in her handbag.
But, to his sharp surprise, immediately after he heard her drop her bunch of keys onto the table in the hallway—Burjor Pipewalla had been right about that invariable habit, it seemed—her voice came floating into him.
“Come in, come in. Let us discuss this all, just in a friendly manner.”
Immediately he knew that she was bringing to her spider’s web a new victim. But whoever it was made no response. Then a moment later, raising the green flounce of the bed cover, he saw the lady herself walking into her drawing room from the hall in a way that indicated her victim-guest was following.
Dolly Daruwala was not a pretty woman. He could well understand how, coming as she did according to Mr. Mistry from one of the poorer families in the Parsi community and thus being as a young girl presumably without any substantial dowry, she had failed to acquire a husband. She was fat, if not hugely so. But there was about her a heavy, settled solidity that must have been with her from her earliest days. Her face, in particular, had an unhealthy puffiness out of which jutted incongruously the sharp beak of her nose. But for all her lack of feminine grace, she was dressed with as much elaboration as if she were a film star at the height of success. Her sari, worn in the Parsi manner across the right rather than the left shoulder and drawn up over her head, though in plain pastel color, a rose-pink, was of rich silk. Around her fat-encircled neck diamonds glittered. Her podgy little fingers were clustered with rings. And even from a distance he could hear her breath coming in short gasps.
With a quick movement she slid from her arm the cobra-skin handbag she carried and plunged her hand into it.
The pistol, he thought. Can she have spotted me? Will she dare to use it?
But what she withdrew from the bag was a little blue plastic vapor spray. She held it to her lips and twice squirted a relieving cloud into her mouth.
Ah, Ghote thought, an asthmatic. No doubt from childhood also.
Now she turned to the person she had led in.
“Come,” she said. “Come. Please sit.”
And, to Ghote’s astonishment, who should walk slowly into his view, leaning heavily on an ornate cane, a small briefcase tucked under his arm, but the man he had only a few minutes before heard the Prime Minister speaking about o
n television. Dr. Edul Commissariat was the Parsi scientist who had returned to India to set up a superconductor laboratory.
Was he, too, then a victim of the most dangerous woman in Bombay? Surely not. It was impossible. He must himself have misunderstood the situation. Dr. Commissariat must be just someone Dolly Daruwala had known in the past. After all both of them were Parsis, and had not last week’s Sunday Observer said that Dr. Commissariat came from comparatively humble surroundings? Perhaps the two of them had been childhood friends, and now that Dr. Commissariat had returned to India Dolly Daruwala was taking advantage of the old association to lay claim on a distinguished person.
But the first words the scientist uttered put an end to that notion.
“No, madam, I will not sit.”
The words had been spoken with complete coldness. With evident enmity.
Then, after all, Dr. Commissariat must be one of Dolly Daruwala’s victims. But how? How? How could it possibly come about that such a distinguished man, such a good man—had he not returned to help his country when, they said, his invention could have made him five times over a millionaire in the United States?—had become entrapped in this spider’s clinging threads? What could he have done to let it happen? He had been away from Bombay, away from India, for years. So what could Dolly Daruwala have found out about him that had forced him to come at her beckoning to this lair of hers?
“Just as you like,” Dolly Daruwala said in answer to his cold words. “It makes no difference to me whether we discuss this in a friendly way or with abuses.”
“There is nothing to discuss,” Dr. Commissariat shot back. “I have come here with one purpose only. To demand the return of those papers you stole, whenever it was that you did, from my poor dead cousin’s parents.”
“And what right have you to demand? Let me remind you. What you call ‘those papers’ is a thesis that you had half completed when your brilliant cousin, Feroze, died. And you, you were quick to pay a condolence visit, like a kite swooping down, just as soon as tradition permitted, after the dusmoo day, all those years ago. And there, under pretense of going through his papers for his parents, who knew no more about your physics science than they knew about the other side of the moon, you exchanged his thesis for the one you yourself had been working at. And with that thesis of Feroze’s you got to America, to Harvard or whatever they call it, and all your name and fame.”
The Iciest Sin Page 3