Inspector Ghote Draws a Line

by H. R. F. Keating

  But then at last he felt Sikander’s body coming slowly up. And then there was a convulsive stiffening in the muscles hard up against his own. In a moment the wild creature would fling himself round. Those huge hands would be reaching for Ghote’s throat.

  Only one thing to do. He loosed his right arm, raised it, turned it so that his hand was flat and hard and brought it chopping down.

  Below him Sikander slumped suddenly back, all relaxation.

  12

  Raman was in a pretty poor way. Sikander Ibrahim’s violence had almost squeezed the life out of him and there were, too, deep bite wounds in the fleshy lower part of his neck. That much Ghote had seen as soon as he had staggered to his feet and taken a quick look at the prostrate orderly.

  He went back then to Sikander, happily still unconscious, hastily stripped the tie from round his own neck and used it to fasten the madmans wrists before dragging him foot by foot over to the nearest bush and getting the other end of the tie secured to its base. It was not very safe, but he hoped it would hold at least until he had broken the news up at the house.

  By the time he had completed the task, pushing and heaving at the heavy barrel-like body, Raman was half sitting up on the wiry brown grass where he had been felled. Ghote walked back over to him.

  “How are you?” he asked. “Do you think you can get up to the house if I give you a shoulder to rest on?”

  Raman groaned.

  But he did begin to make an effort to get to his feet, and soon with a little assistance he was standing upright. Together they made a slow journey to the house, standing tall and powdery in the first rays of the sun.

  Ghote took him in at the main door, regardless of any proprieties, and lowered him onto one of the marble benches in the hallway. The sound of their arrival brought a maidservant to peer at them for a moment like a scared deer round the corner, and a minute or two later Begum Roshan arrived, tautly ready for a crisis.

  His attempt to forestall this by rapidly telling her what had happened and asking her to find the mali from the gardens, the cook, and any other menservants to get Sikander back into his prison failed completely.

  “I knew it, I knew it,” she exclaimed, ignoring his urgent practical plea. “I knew that one day this would happen. I warned and I warned. But he would not listen. He would not allow an Ibrahim to be put into a common madhouse. I said that one day he would break out, and now he has. Now he has.”

  “Yes,” he said, soothingly as he could. “But, madam, please, would you find people to get him back. I was not able to tie him very well. He will break loose when he becomes conscious again.” But again Begum Roshan seemed not to have heard. She went over to Raman, lying back limply on the bench, and took him by the shoulders, her bone-thin fingers digging hard into his dirty and crumpled white jacket.

  “What did you do?” she demanded. “How did you let him out? Why did this happen? I knew it would. I said it would. But no one would pay any attention. No attention at all.”

  Raman had given a little gasp of pain when she had seized him, but he managed to offer a reply.

  “Oh, mem sahib, mem sahib, sometimes I have to unlock the gate there. To fetch out food he has left. But, mem sahib, I do not do it if it is one of the bad days. But today I thought he was sleeping.”

  “You fool,” Begum Roshan shouted. “You should never unlock that gate. Never, never, never. Once you do it, then it is too late. Too late altogether, you fool.”

  Raman bowed his head under her onslaught, the grey hair at its centre where the dye had grown out suddenly visible. It was almost as if he was preparing to receive a physical beating.

  But then a quiet voice spoke behind them.

  “Raman, you have been hurt?”

  It was Sir Asif. Once again, hearing a disturbance, he must have walked holding his black cane up in the air so as to come upon the scene unheard.

  Now the old judge made his way quickly across to the orderly and looked down at him. There was real concern on that impervious face.

  “Sir, I could not help,” Raman said. “Sikander sahib was pretending to be asleep still. Sir, I ... I tried . . .”

  “Yes, yes. But what did he do to you? He is not a reasoning man, you know, when he is bad. He is a creature without checks.”

  “He was going to choke me, sahib. And—and he bit my neck. Sahib, like a tiger.”

  “Let me look.”

  The old man put his fleshless, high-veined hands gently onto the orderly’s jacket and peeled it back a little from the shoulder. The half-dozen deep little wounds had almost ceased to bleed, but they still looked very much like the bite, not of a tiger, but certainly of some vicious animal.

  The judge sighed.

  “Go with Begum Roshan,” he said to Raman. “She will find something to put on there.”

  He straightened up.

  “And Sikander?” he asked. “Has anyone gone to look for him?” “Sir,” Raman said, “Dr. Ghote tied him to a tree.”

  Then Sir Asif saw him. His face hardened in an instant.

  “What—what are you doing here?” he said.

  “Sir,” Raman interrupted. “He jumped on Sikander sahib and he pulled him away from me.”

  Sir Asif gave Ghote a long steady look.

  “Well then, Dr. Ghote,” he said at last, “I shall have the pleasure of seeing you at luncheon, I hope. But just now, if you will excuse me, I must make sure my son is taken to a place of safety.”

  “Yes, Sir Asif,” he answered.

  He felt abruptly swept through by a dragging weight of tiredness. It came with the recognition, fought off till this moment, that had he been just a little unlucky in getting in his knockout blow to Sikander, almost certainly the creature would have savaged him as well as Raman to death.

  He headed for the stairs and, above, his own room—or what had been his room. It would hardly have been occupied by any new guest, he thought.

  He felt an overwhelming need to retreat, to curl up, to hide for a while.

  The room was just as he had left it. Sunlight was already streaming in through the open shutters. He flicked at the switch for the fan. It gave the soft hollow click he remembered from before, and the apparatus lurched into slow movement. He dragged himself across to the window and heaved the shutters closed, returned almost staggering now and allowed himself to fall full-length across the high hard bed.

  Errr-bock. Errr-bock. The fan above him ground out its message. The house is still here, it said. Nothing has changed. Nothing, if the house has its way, will ever change. Errr-bock. Errr-bock.

  But something had changed. He himself was a new factor in the situation. He had been allowed to insert himself into the time-hardened pattern, the deputy commissioners wedge, and he had begun simply by his presence to alter that pattern, to edge it into a new shape. And then he had been rejected, spat out. As, looking back, it was almost certain that sooner or later he would have been. But now he was here once more. Again the wedge was in. And this time, thanks to the chance of having been able to save poor Raman, he would not be so easy to dislodge. Sir Asif's sense of justice, binding the old man like a constricting band, would make sure of that.

  And, once again inside the old house, he would act. He would jar forwards little by little. Sir Asif would not want it any more than he had before, but now Ghote would not be able to be stopped. However small the steps he was able to take, they would alter the time-frozen state of affairs. Little by little.

  In the bare room the heat, despite the thickness of the shutters, despite the churning of the ancient fan, began to build up. He lay unmoving, just where he had collapsed face down onto the mattress. For now he felt such a languor in every limb that any action seemed impossible.

  But that would not last.

  There were things that he could do soon. Things he would do. He would go and find the Saint and talk to him. He would tackle him about the old days, the British days. He would see whether those long-ago inflicted wounds were still
festering. And if he got no response? If it was another day of silence? Wait and see. Perhaps it would be best not to try to cross that barrier till it was taken down, as sooner or later it must be. The Saint would not be silent forever. Nor was that the only route open: there was Begum Roshan, too. He would go soon and talk to her, and suddenly spring on her what he now knew about that marriage that had never been, and watch her like a kite hovering above the city ready to plummet down the moment some movement below signalled prey. And he would talk to the American again, sound him out about what exactly he felt concerning the project to blast the bund and change the course of the old river, see if even by a hairsbreadth he crossed the far borders of rationality and betrayed himself as a killer. Finally, he would talk once more with the judge. He had the right now. He would ask him in turn about each of the people in the house and about Mr. Dhebar, that regular visitor, and this time he would prise from him the facts he needed to know.

  Errr-bock. Errr-bock. Errr-bock.

  Damn fan. Damn useless noisy object.

  He slept a little, then woke with a start. Slept again, woke again. Scrabbled up on the hard bed and, screwing up his eyes, inspected his wristwatch.

  Almost midday.

  The room now was like an oven. Through the gaps in the old shutters, the light was vibrating in its intensity. There was no sound other than that ever-hesitating errr-bock, errr-bock, maddening within minutes.

  He slid off the bed and went into the little bathroom. A wash and a mouth rinse in the tepid water from the large brass lota did a little, though not much, to refresh him. He straightened his clothes. At some stage he would have to have his suitcase up from its hiding place at the back of the generator shed. But not now.

  Soon downstairs it would be time for lunch. So somewhere there the other members of the household, the typewriter users and Sir Asif, were to be found. Time now, then, to push inwards. Perhaps only a little, but as much and as far and as hard as he could.

  His mouth felt dry again despite the water he had rinsed it with.

  Who first?

  Well, let chance give the answer.

  He left the airless room, walked slowly along the equally airless, musty-smelling passage, came to the stairs, and went down them, creating only the slightest cooling movement in the air by trotting downwards, letting the weight of his languidly heavy body take him.

  As he reached the stairs’ foot he heard swift footsteps coming along the passage to his left. He turned. It was Raman.

  “Well,” he asked him, “are you feeling all right again?”

  “Oh yes, Doctor sahib. I am very, very well now. But, sahib, you have saved my life. I kiss your feet.”

  Ghote had to catch him by the upper arms to prevent his actually doing so.

  “Look,” Ghote said quickly, “there is something you can do for me.

  “Oh yes, Doctor sahib. Anything at all. Anything that is in my power to do, that I will do.”

  “Well, perhaps it is not a great deal. Let me tell you. I have a favour to ask your master. Something that perhaps he would not too much like. So I want to know the best time to ask him. When he is not . . . not too tired.”

  Raman looked at him. There was no grin for once on his thin and eager face.

  “Oh, Doctor sahib, I am well understanding. And it is difficult. Judge sahib is stern always. But . . .” He hesitated. “But now, I think might be the best time of all, sahib. Now, this moment. He is in the library. He is smoking. The pipe is going well, well. Now would be the time, sahib. Now.”

  He felt a lurch in the pit of his stomach. He had decided to let chance dictate whom in the household he would see first, but of all of them it was the judge he least wanted to tackle. And now chance had thrown him the judge in this way.

  “Yes,” he said to Raman. “Yes, it would seem that now is the best time. Thank you.”

  He turned and walked along towards the library.

  What resources did he have? he asked himself. What resources? All very well to think of himself as the deputy commissioner’s wedge. All very well to talk of pushing and to say that he could not be rejected now. But he was up against a stone wall, an iron wall.

  He felt sweat appear on the sides of his face and underneath his chin.

  He scrabbled almost frantically at his mind to find something to use in the encounter ahead.

  And found it.

  Sikander. He would use Sikander. But not as he had tried to use him before when the judge had contemptuously rejected his blackmailing. No, that had been quite the wrong way to go about it. It was never the way to tackle a man like Sir Asif. But there was a way in which he could make use of that poor demented creature, now back in his underground prison.

  Quite clearly, since Sikander had once escaped, it was more than ever right that he should be taken to some state institution where he could be properly guarded. But instead, as soon as he saw the judge, he would offer to keep his secret always, despite what should be his duty. He would make him that offer freely and at once, and then surely in exchange the old man would take him fully into his confidence.

  He knocked at the library door.

  He heard through the solid teak the judge’s voice calling out and put his hand on the doorknob. His sweat-covered palm slithered round on it uselessly.

  But at last he succeeded in turning it and thrust open the door.

  The judge was sitting where he had seen him before, in the chair beside the table with the hookah on it. He was holding the mouthpiece in his hand.

  The sound of the pipe’s throaty bubbling, cool and mellow, came clearly to him.

  “Sir Asif,” he said, “there was something I wished to say to you.”

  “Come in, my dear fellow. Take a seat, take a seat. There is something I, too, wish to say to you.”

  He pulled another of the high-backed heavy chairs slightly towards the judge and sat on its edge.

  “Sir—”

  “No, my dear fellow, let me say my say first. It is this. You, today, have done me an immeasurable service. You know about poor Sikander. He has been that way for years. It was something that began to come upon him in the British days. His rabid patriotism then was no more than a symptom of what was happening to him, little though we realised it at the time. I used to say that he had become an agitator because he was fit for no other profession. A judgement that could certainly be made of more than a few of the other so-called patriots of that day, to my mind. Not of Sikander, as it turned out. No, he was no agitator but a poor boy in a state of agitation, a state that grew quickly to complete madness. Naturally I sought medical opinions, and I learnt that there was nothing to be done. So I decided to confine him out here. I had hoped that he could be confined in safety. I saw no reason why he should not be.” A gnarled hand clutched at the arm of the chair.

  “Until today I saw no reason why he should not be confined here in complete safety.”

  The old man came to a halt.

  Sitting opposite, Ghote felt himself poised hovering, like a diver above a turbulent sea.

  Then, “Sir,” he said, “I myself still see no reason why that confinement here should not continue to go on.”

  He fixed his gaze on the judge’s face. Now it was much easier to see in the tall book-lined room than when he had last confronted the intractable old man. The white blaze of the sun was forcing its way in, even despite the chick blinds.

  And bit by bit he saw, plainly written on the dry skin, clear in the sunken eyes between that flattened beak of a nose, a slow look of covetousness grow and spread. He had offered a gift that the aged judge and father wanted to his innermost depths to have.

  A sharp regret went across Ghote’s mind like the tip of a knife blade jaggedly tearing. His intransigeant opponent was after all going to succumb. That unbending will was softening, melting like ugly wax.

  The eyes were lowered now. The chin sunk on the breast In the big muffled room it was silent, as silent as if the place had remained unentered
all the long hot airless years since it had been built. Even the hookah on the table had ceased to give out the least intermittent bubbling.

  He almost burst out, “No. No, sir, do not say it. Be angry instead. Order me out. Refuse. Reject me.”

  Then, with a small lift of the head, the judge began to speak. “Inspector, let me tell you a story. The story of an incident that occurred to me many, many years ago when I was an assistant collector, a callow youth, just returned to India from Cambridge, thinking that I knew everything and proud as Lucifer of my new appointment, an appointment which took in, of course, a good deal of judicial work on tour.”

  The eyes were now fully on him.

  “I had come one day to a certain village, a place of some size, where I knew that the headman had a considerable interest in a land tenure case due to come before me. So I was not at all surprised to find on my first morning there that I was the recipient of a ‘dolly' as my British colleagues used to call them.”

  “That is a dali? A basket of fruit?”

  ‘'Yes, yes.”

  The old man sounded decidedly petulant at the interruption. It was plain that, having chosen this curious way of succumbing to the offer perhaps because somehow he saw in it a way of justifying to himself what he was about to do, he was weighing each word of his story as he told it.

  “Now, you know, of course, that it was perfectly permissible to accept such gifts, provided that they were only of either phool or phal, flowers or fruit. But, as soon as I lifted from that generous basket two or three little brown chikoos, a fruit of which I was always particularly fond, I saw that on the bottom there had been laid a five-hundred-rupee note.”

  Again those deep-sunk eyes bore into him.

  ‘"Well, Inspector, I was a young man then, as I told you. Can you guess what I did?”

  He thought hard. Clearly an answer was expected. One he should get right. Would Sir Asif, young Mr. Asif Ibrahim then, have quietly accepted that five-hundred-rupee bribe? Five hundred rupees would have been a considerable amount of money in those distant days. Was this the old man’s way of saying that sometimes something wrong is after all irresistible?