Inspector Ghote Draws a Line

by H. R. F. Keating

  He looked down at his feet.

  “Madam, you would not deny that Mr. Sikander Ibrahim is a dangerous person. Think of the bars that are necessary to keep him confined there in the fort ”

  “Bars?” Begum Roshan said fiercely. “Are there bars? I never visit Sikander, Inspector. None of us does. It makes him worse. But if you tell me there are bars, there are bars.”

  She turned away, looked round the bare room as if seeking some support, and at last sank heavily onto the edge of the bed.

  A pile of his neatly rolled socks tumbled to the floor. He moved to pick them up, but then thought that to do so would seem to show a lack of concern for his visitor’s troubles.

  “Madam,” he said. “Madam, I very well appreciate your earnest desire to keep Mr. Sikander Ibrahim within the bounds of the family property. He is after all your brother. But nevertheless, madam, it is contrary to the law to harbour an individual considered dangerous. And I am a police officer, madam.”

  Begum Roshan’s head was turned away, looking down at the white bedcover and at a single pair of socks, his brown ones, that had rolled in a different direction from its fellows.

  He heard her give a choked sob.

  “Madam, I must do my duty. A police officer cannot refrain from that just because he is having to cause some hardship.”

  Begum Roshan made an impatient movement with her hand. A long fingernail just flicked the brown socks and moved them about an inch.

  Her next sob was louder.

  “Please, madam, consider what your father himself would do in my circumstances. He would not give in. You know that he would not.”

  Now she looked up at him. A tic was working in her right cheek.

  “Inspector, if Sikander is taken away it is the end for me. I cannot endure seeing my father's humiliation. It will be the end. The end. Do you understand? There is a limit beyond which I cannot go”

  He sighed.

  “But please to think. The secret of Mr. Sikander is out now. I know. Sooner or later he will have to be transferred to some official place of restraint. I cannot alter that.”

  She was still looking at him, her large eyes glistening with tears.

  “Sooner, Inspector?” she said. “Or later? Inspector, you do not have to report Sikander’s presence here tonight.”

  He bit at the inside of his lower lip in hesitation.

  “No,” he agreed at last. “No, it would be carrying duty beyond a sensible point if I were to insist on passing on the information that has come to my knowledge within minutes, or hours even, of having acquired it.”

  Begum Roshan slowly straightened her back and took a deep breath. The brown socks rolled a few inches more, reached the bed’s edge, and dropped down to join their fellows.

  He thought that now it would be all right to gather them up.

  “In any case,” he said, stooping, “I am not at all certain how I am to get away. So no question of reporting at present arises.”

  “No, Inspector.”

  Abruptly Begum Roshan was all taut spring again.

  “No, no, no. That is one thing certain. You are not going to leave this house. You are needed here. Here you must stay. You shall not go."

  “But, madam, what to do?”

  Her large eyes were flashing defiance now.

  “I shall think of something,” she announced. “He will not trample over me this time. He has to be protected. He must not be allowed to sacrifice his life for a whim.”

  “But, madam, is it a whim only?” he asked, felt bound to ask, the thought of Sir Asif's considered determination strong in his mind.

  “Well, what else is it but a whim? He must well realise that a policeman cannot act in a case when he knows nothing. That is just common sense. And he knows so much about the people he has allowed into his house. He knows what a devil that Father Adam is. The man was sent to us through our cousin who is in the Pakistani Embassy in Washington. He would have told my father all about him.”

  “What would he have told?” Ghote asked, pleased to have at last learnt just a little about the Naxalite priest, even though it was now too late.

  Begum Roshan flung out her thin hands in a gesture of exasperation.

  “How should I know what he was told?” she demanded. “I am the last to hear anything. Nothing, nothing is ever said to me. He comes one day and says he has had a letter from Cousin Karim in Washington and that there will be a Christian priest coming who has been sent to India to do social work in some jungle area and who is now ill. Of course he is ill. And he is bad also, but because he is a friend of Cousin Karim, Cousin Karim whom we have not even seen since Partition, when he was just a small boy, then that man must be welcomed here. It is impossible. Impossible.”

  “But if Sir Asif knew of these subversive views before Father Adam came,” he asked, “would he not have ascertained whether there was any real danger?”

  “No, no. That was not necessary. Those opinions were nothing. Until there came that terrible quarrel over blasting the bund.” “That was the question of altering the course of the river? They were going to employ explosives for that?”

  “Yes, yes. Of course my father was perfectly right to go to law to prevent it happening. And he did so at the last moment only, too. He was perfectly right in that.”

  “But,” he ventured, “from what Father Adam told me there appeared to be advantages in the scheme.”

  “Nonsense, nonsense. For hundreds of years the family has cared for the poor here. The villagers are Hindu, we are Muslim. But we have looked after them. Like fathers. It was our duty. And then along come these people with their plans and their forecasts and tell us that the river must flow between the house and the fort so that more fields can be irrigated. What appalling nonsense.”

  He decided that he had gone quite far enough in voicing the other side of the argument. It would be no use crossing such an emotional person as Begum Roshan. Emotional and confused. What was her real attitude towards her father? Did she herself even know? With one breath she had denounced him as a tyrant, with the next she had plainly showed that she worshipped him.

  No, keep well clear. There were some frontiers it was sheer folly to cross.

  “Yes, yes,” he murmured. “It is all most difficult. Most.”

  The soft tone seemed to satisfy her.

  “Every girl in the village has always received the gift of a new sari on her marriage,” she declared, carried away by her determination to vindicate her father. “When any one of them is ill medicine is sent. Where there has been a drought lakhs and lakhs of rupees have been paid out.”

  He thought. Clearly Sir Asif had been determined that the course of the river should not be changed. And probably too his decision had been taken from the best of motives, and not with the thought in mind of the risky prisoner under the old fort. But, for whatever reasons he had opposed the scheme, he would have been adamant in his objections. And Father Adam? Was the man not a complete hothead, revealed as such in everything he uttered?

  So here was a possible motive for sending those threats, and even for committing murder if they did not achieve their purpose, with the hints about the Madurai Trial no more than something designed to confuse.

  But now it was surely too late for him to do anything about it.

  “Madam,” he said to Begum Roshan, “allow me to assure you that immediately on return to Bombay I will have the fullest inquiries made about Father Adam. If he is a dangerous anti-social, then he can be expelled from the country.”

  She looked at him with scom.

  “And how long will that take, Inspector? We have only twelve days, hardly twelve now.”

  “Well, madam, that might be time enough. I will work to my level best to speed up the process.”

  Yet securing the expulsion of a foreigner about whom at this moment nothing detrimental was known would not be easy. And to do so in the time remaining would be yet more difficult.

  Even if Father Adam was th
e person threatening the judge.

  “No, Inspector, that is not good enough.”

  Begum Roshan strode across to the window and gazed passionately into the velvet darkness as if out there waiting was an answer to the impossible.

  And it seemed, a moment later, that from the formless night she had found one. She wheeled round.

  “Yes. Yes, that is what we must do ”

  He felt anger race across his mind in a thunder of hooves. The stupid woman. With her great declarations that this must be done or that must be done or it would be the end of the world. Why was she incapable of realising that sometimes there was nothing to be done but accept the facts?

  And what had she got into her head now?

  “Yes, madam?”

  “This is what we will do. I will call Raman at once and he will take the motor car and drive you into the town, to the railway station. There you will say good-bye to him. But as soon as the car has gone you will walk to the office of The Sputnik where Mr. Dhebar resides. I will draw you a plan of the way there. Now, if you tell him that I sent you, he will let you stay there for the night—he will always do what I ask, I do not know why—and then early in the morning you can borrow his motor scooter and come back here. By that time the watchman will have left the gardens and you can hide there.”

  Objections had been springing up in his mind like targets at a shooting booth. At last he got an opportunity to voice one.

  “But—but I very much regret, it would be quite impossible to hide in the gardens. Where would I go?”

  “Oh, nonsense, nonsense. There are all sort of places. There is the generator shed. That would do very well. None of the servants except Raman goes near there. We have told them the fort is haunted. It keeps them away from Sikander.”

  “But Raman will find me there and tell Sir Asif.”

  Begum Roshan drew herself up. She was a ranee of old, commanding troops.

  “You must not let Raman find you. It should not be difficult. He only goes to the shed once every evening, to start the engine. He puts in just enough fuel to last till midnight, and that is that. You can keep out of his way that long.”

  It was plain that he could. But he was reluctant to admit it.

  Begum Roshan’s high commanding tone was infuriating. He offered another objection.

  “But even if I can hide in the gardens, how would I be able, so far from the house, to find out who is sending Sir Asif those notes?”

  Begum Roshan waved a thin, long-fingered hand.

  “Oh, you will be able to do something. You can come into the house in the afternoons when everyone is sleeping, and you can protect my father if it comes to the last day. That man has said he will not strike till the anniversary of the Madurai sentences.”

  “Yes, that is all very well, but—”

  “No, Inspector. You must do this. You must. I will not hear of any objections.”

  And, before he could put any more, she had swept out, chiffon sari swirling behind her in the thick, hot air.

  10

  Ghote followed the white-jacketed form of Raman through the gardens and their succession of night scents, sweet and heavy or lemony fragrant, down towards the river and the road. The moon had sunk beneath the black outline of the useless bund and following the path required concentration despite the large oil lantern the orderly was carrying.

  What was he going to do? He found it hard to make up his mind. Was he going to fall in with Begum Roshan’s absurd idea and return to lurk in the generator shed attempting to continue his task by remote control? Or was he going to accept his dismissal at Sir Asif’s hands, go back to Bombay, and report failure?

  He hardly liked the prospect of that. But the judge had rescinded his agreement to have a police officer in his house, and it would be unreasonable to insist on guarding him when he was adamant in refusing protection. Yet to be chased away. ... It hurt.

  So was Begum Roshan’s plan so ridiculous after all? It had been the slender prospect it offered of being able to stand by his given duty that had made him in the end stifle all the objections he had had and allow her to give Raman instructions to drive him to the town. But presenting himself at the offices of The Sputnik and suggesting borrowing its editors scooter, just like that? He was by no means sure he saw himself doing it.

  Ahead, Raman, that bulky tan suitcase balanced easily on his head, came to a halt.

  “Sahib will want to take off his shoes,” he said.

  They were at the river's edge.

  He lowered himself to the dry powdery ground and tugged off one shoe and then the other, one sock and then the next.

  “Ready.”

  There had been no conversation between them as they had made their way through the gardens. He felt that Raman was looking on himself as Sir Asif's actual representative, seeing this unwelcome guest off the premises.

  Sir Asif, of course, had been conspicuously absent when he had left. He would be shut up in the library, no doubt, and there would be no sudden glint from a lifted curtain as Ghote had begun his march back to where he had come from, no face under a stiffly wound white pagri peering even for the briefest of moments. No, the old man would be sitting in his customary chair beside the inlaid-ivory table, the lamp shining on the pages of some volume of Urdu poetry. He would disdain to give the guest who had broken the rules one single thought more.

  Raman held the lantern higher and they stepped down onto the river bed. It was hard to keep a safe footing. The water, when at last they had to wade for a few yards, felt warm round his calves.

  On the far side the orderly halted once more while Ghote put socks and shoes on again.

  He would have liked to have left them off. The heat-powdered earth was soft under his feet. But he knew that he was still expected to behave like a burra sahib: he had been under Sir Asif's roof, had sat with him at table.

  From a clump of scrubby trees nearby came the sudden harsh cry of a kokila bird, disturbed perhaps by the light of the lantern.

  “Sahib is ready?”

  “Yes, ready.”

  It was not a long walk to the padlocked hut where Sir Asif's car was kept, a tin building not unlike the generator hut. Raman set down the suitcase—did he despise it?—and hauled back the corrugated iron doors. They screeched abominably.

  Inside, the lantern’s grimy rays showed a truly magnificent car. It was not possible to see it down to the last detail. It was too much covered with dust and with the webs of long-undisturbed spiders. But there was a radiator grille of solid silvery metal, a long bonnet behind it, and a low canvas hood behind that. And beside the driver's seat a rubber horn bulb.

  Was it a Rolls-Royce? He thought not. There ought to be a little goddess on the top of the radiator for that, surely. No, it might be a Bentley. Or had there been something once called a Daimler? Whatever it was, it looked as if it too dated back to the days of the Madurai Conspiracy Case. A relic of a forgotten past.

  “This way, sahib.”

  Raman held the lantern high and preceded him to the rear of the ancient vehicle where he ceremoniously opened a door for him.

  There was the little curled-up body of a dead gecko on the broad leather seat. He attempted to flick it off without Raman’s seeing what he was doing. Appearances must be preserved.

  He wondered whether, when it came to it, the old vehicle would start.

  But he need not have done. The moment Raman climbed into the driver’s seat in front and touched a switch on the polished wood dashboard two brilliant white beams of light shot out from the head lamps, seeming to illuminate the flat countryside for miles in front. And then, with one pull at the starter, the engine came to life, a deep tigery purr.

  They moved smoothly into the night.

  But it was soon clear that they were not going to exceed a speed of more than about fifteen miles an hour. That must be what Sir Asif, on his rare trips away from the house, invariably ordered. No wonder the relic vehicle was in such good condition under its la
yer of dust and cobwebs.

  But even at a stately fifteen miles an hour it would not take them long to reach the town, and between their journey’s start and its end there was something he intended to do. To pump Raman.

  His one previous attempt at this, on the evening of his arrival, had been a dismal failure. “Oh, sahib, Sir Asif has said I must say nothing.” And that had been that.

  But perhaps now, when it looked as if he was leaving the scene of the battle, defeated, perhaps he might be able to get from the fellow some information that would be useful, either from the far remoteness of Bombay—noisy, tough, vulgar, friendly Bombay, how he longed to be back in it—or, if he did fall in with Begum Roshan’s unlikely plan, almost as remotely from the concealment of the generator shed in Sir Asif’s gardens.

  He ought to try it. Even though a voice to one side of his head cried out, “Forget it all, you have done your best, let it go now.” He ought to try. If Sir Asif Ibrahim could hold inflexibly to what he considered his duty, so could Inspector Ganesh Ghote.

  He leant forward on the well-sprung broad leather seat and slid open the glass partition that separated him from the orderly.

  “Raman, do you know that your master is being threatened with death?” he asked bluntly, in the basic Urdu which the judge customarily used with the orderly.

  “Oh, sahib, many, many times they have threatened. And judge sahib is always despising.”

  “Yes, Raman, but that was in past days, was it not? Did you know that he is threatened still? Threatened today?”

  “Judge sahib would not pay heed.”

  He leant back to consider a little. In front of him the orderly, shoulders flat, back straight, pushed the magnificent old car along at the same steady speed. Its strong headlights beamed out unflickeringly into the velvet night.

  Was Raman admitting, from the very obstinacy of his denials, that he did in fact know the contents of the mysterious notes which his master had been receiving? Because certainly the fellow must know that the judge had had the notes. That much would never escape a servant’s eye, accustomed to look as the very essence of his life work at every physical detail surrounding his master. But would he know not simply that the notes had been there but what had been said in them, what had been typed in them?