by Satyajit Ray
‘N-now? Wh-where to?’ Lalmohan Babu stammered.
‘To the caves.’
‘But they must be closed now. Surely there are chowkidars?’
‘Yes, but there are only two guards for thirty-four caves. So that shouldn’t be a problem. I saw Mallik leave with a bag. He and that hippie in your bungalow keep going about with bags. In fact, that hippie also strikes me as suspicious. Do you know who he is?’
Lalmohan Babu nearly choked. ‘He . . . he is a photographer. A very good one. He showed us some of his photos. He’s here on an assignment.’
Someone came out of the bungalow. It was Mr Raxit, carrying a stout walking stick in one hand, and a torch in the other. He was wearing a dark, heavy raincoat. He stopped for a minute to shout into Lalmohan Babu’s ear: ‘After dinner, walk a mile!’ Then he smiled and disappeared in the direction of the guest house. Mr Bose said, ‘Good night!’ and followed him. Lalmohan Babu frowned and said, ‘Why did that man tell me to walk a mile?’
‘That should help your digestion. Come on now, let’s go and find Feluda. He must be told what we just heard. Everyone seems to have gone off to the caves. I don’t like it. Let’s see what Feluda thinks.’
It was dark inside the bungalow, except for a lantern in the chowkidar’s room. This surprised us. Mr Raxit had naturally switched off his light before going out, and so had we. But why was Feluda’s door closed? Why couldn’t I see any light under it? Had he already gone to sleep? It was only ten-thirty.
His room had a window that opened out on the veranda. At this moment, however, it was firmly shut and the curtains drawn. I walked up to it and softly called out Feluda’s name. There was no reply. He must have gone out. But if he had used the main exit, we would certainly have seen him. Perhaps he had gone out of the little back door behind the chowkidar’s room?
Rather foolishly, we went back to our own room and switched the light on. At once, our eyes fell on a piece of paper that was lying on the floor. ‘Stay in your room,’ it said in Feluda’s handwriting.
‘Tapesh, my boy,’ Lalmohan Babu said with a sigh, ‘do you know what is worrying me the most? It’s your cousin’s behaviour. That is what is most mystifying. Otherwise, frankly, I cannot see too many mysteries in this case.’
Feluda had told us to stay in, but had said nothing about when he might return. There was no question of going to bed. So I spent the next thirty minutes playing noughts-and-crosses with Lalmohan Babu. Then he said he’d tell me the plot of his next novel. ‘This time,’ he announced, ‘I’ve introduced a new type of fight. My hero’s hands and feet are going to be tied, but he’ll still manage to defeat the villain, simply by using his head.’
I was about to ask whether by this he meant Prakhar Rudra’s brain power, or was his hero simply going to butt his way to victory, when Feluda returned. We looked up expectantly, but he said nothing. By this time, we had both learnt that if Feluda did not wish to part with information, even a thousand questions couldn’t make him open his mouth. On the other hand, he’d tell us everything, if he so wished.
What he finally said took us by surprise. ‘Lalmohan Babu,’ he asked solemnly, ‘did you bring a weapon this time?’
Lalmohan Babu had a passion for collecting weapons. When we had gone to Rajasthan, he had taken a Nepali dagger with him. Then, when he went to Simla, he had a boomerang. At Feluda’s question, his eyes started glinting. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘This time, I’ve got a bomb.’
‘A bomb?’
I could hardly believe him. Lalmohan Babu opened his suitcase and took out a heavy brown object, shaped a little like a torch. He passed it to Feluda, saying, ‘My neighbour Mr Samaddar’s son, Utpal, is in the army. He came to my house last March and gave it to me. “Look, Uncle, see what I brought for you!” he said, “This is a bomb. It is used in serious warfare.” Utpal loves reading my novels.’
Feluda inspected it briefly before saying, ‘Let me keep this. It’s too dangerous to remain anywhere else.’
‘Very well. How many metaguns do you think it weighs?’
What he meant obviously was ‘megaton’, but Feluda ignored this last remark completely. He put the ‘bomb’ in his shoulder bag and said, ‘Let’s go out. Everyone else has gone, so why should we stay in?’
When we left the dak bungalow, it was half past eleven. The moon was now almost totally obliterated by clouds. It was still windy. One of the rooms in the guest house had a light on. It was the American’s room, Feluda said. It was impossible to tell whether Bose and Mallik had returned.
By the time we reached the main road, the eastern sky was heavily overcast. A loud rumble in the sky made Lalmohan Babu exclaim, ‘Good heavens, what if we get caught in the rain?’
‘If we can get to the caves before it starts raining, we’ll have plenty of places to seek shelter,’ Feluda reassured us.
Fortunately, it remained dry for quite some time after this. We reached Kailash, but Feluda did not go in through the main entrance. He turned left instead. A little later, he left the path and began climbing up the hill. I was familiar enough with his techniques to realize that he was trying to see if there was another way to get into the temple, without using the main passage. There were bushes and loose stones everywhere, but the moonlight—fleeting though it was—helped us find our way.
Feluda turned right. We were now going back the way we came, but were walking several feet above the path that visitors normally used. A few minutes later, Feluda suddenly stopped. He was looking at something on his right. I followed his gaze.
In the distance, it seemed as if a long silk ribbon was spread on the ground. It was the road that led to the main town. A man was quickly walking down this road, either to the guest house or to the bungalow.
‘Not Raxit,’ Lalmohan Babu whispered.
‘How do you know?’
‘Raxit was wearing a raincoat.’ He was right.
The man turned a corner and vanished from sight. We resumed walking. Only a few moments later, however, we had to stop again. There was a strange noise—something like a cross between a scrape and a rustle. Where was it coming from?
Feluda sat down. So did we. A large cactus bush hid us from view. The noise continued for sometime, then stopped abruptly.
We emerged cautiously. Huge, dark clouds had now spread all over the sky. We could hardly see our way. Nevertheless, Feluda kept going. Soon, we could vaguely see the temple again. Its spire was before us. Several feet below the spire, on the roof, stood four lions, facing the east, west, north and the south. Far below them were the two elephants that stood at the entrance.
We kept walking. The noise had come from this direction, but I couldn’t see anything suspicious. Feluda had a torch, but I knew he wouldn’t switch it on, in case it was seen by whoever happened to be in the vicinity.
We passed the temple and came to a cave. It was cave number fifteen. We moved on to the next. Feluda stopped again. I could see that his whole body was tense. ‘Torch,’ he whispered. ‘Someone in number fifteen has switched on a torch. Look at the courtyard in front of it. Doesn’t it seem brighter than the others?’
It was true. Neither Lalmohan Babu nor I had noticed it. Only Feluda’s sharp eyes had picked it up. We stood holding our breath for a couple of minutes. Then Feluda did something entirely unexpected. He picked up a small pebble and threw it in the direction of the courtyard. I heard it fall with a soft thud. A second later, the faint light coming from the cave went out. The torch was switched off. Then a man came out and slipped away, moving stealthily like a thief. ‘Could that be Raxit?’ Lalmohan Babu said softly. I couldn’t recognize the man, but could see that he was not wearing a raincoat.
What followed next took my breath away. Without a word of warning, Feluda began climbing down. He leapt, crawled, scraped himself on the ground, then swinging from a branch like a monkey, disappeared from sight. I stared speechlessly. Lalmohan Babu said, after a moment’s silence, ‘He’ll do very well in a circus!’
&nb
sp; Cave number fifteen was at a lower level. That was where Feluda had gone. Three minutes later (it felt like three hours), he climbed up again, more or less in a similar fashion. How he could do it with a torch in one hand, a bag hanging from his shoulder and a revolver tucked into his waist, I do not know.
‘That one’s the Das Avatar cave,’ he told us, panting. ‘It has two storeys, and some exquisite statues.’
‘Did you . . . did you see who it was?’ I asked breathlessly. Feluda did not reply immediately. Then he said, ‘It’s not as simple as I had thought. It’ll take me a while to unravel this tangled mess.’
We found the main path again and climbed down to the bottom of the temple. But Feluda had not finished. He found one of the chowkidars and asked him if he had seen anyone going up.
‘No, sir,’ the chowkidar replied.
‘Did you hear any noise? Anything suspicious at all?’
‘No, sir. There’s been a lot of thunder. I didn’t hear anything else.’
‘Can we go into the temple?’
I knew the man would refuse, and he did.
‘No, sir. I have orders not to let anyone in at this time of night.’ We made our way back to the bungalow. As we got closer, we saw something extremely strange. Two windows on the eastern side of the building overlooked the street. We could see these from outside. One of them was Feluda’s, the other was Mr Raxit’s. Feluda’s room was in darkness, but a light flashed in Mr Raxit’s room. It was the light from a torch, but it did not stay still. In fact, whoever was holding it seemed to have gone mad. The light danced all over the room, then came to the window, shone once in the direction of the guest house, fell and moved on the bushes by the road before going back to the room. We could not see who it was. ‘Highly interesting!’ Feluda muttered.
We returned to the bungalow. By now, it had started to drizzle, and was pitch dark outside.
Eight
I had noticed in the past that our adventures often took totally-unexpected turns. When this happened, Feluda seldom lost his equanimity. In fact, I had always marvelled at his ability to keep calm while dealing with unforeseen complications. This time, however, what happened made him very cross.
Before going to bed at night, we had decided to leave early in the morning to go back to the spot where we had heard that funny noise. It required investigation, Feluda said. So we rose at five o’clock and left the bungalow half an hour later after having a cup of tea. Feluda was up before us to replace his make-up. I remembered to maintain a right parting in my hair. Lalmohan Babu expressed the desire to make some change in his appearance as well, but Feluda said ‘No!’ so firmly that he had to desist.
The caves were going to open for visitors as soon as the sun rose. We wanted to be the first, so we got there at 6 a.m. To our complete astonishment, we found the place crawling with people. A large number of cars and vans were parked outside. It was the sight of a reflector that told me what was going on. This was a film unit. They had arrived from Bombay to shoot a Hindi film, we learnt. The actors hadn’t yet arrived, but the rest of the crew were getting things ready. ‘Oh no!’ Feluda cried in dismay. ‘Why couldn’t they find some other place?’
A young man was bustling about, clutching a film magazine. Lalmohan Babu called him aside.
‘What is the name of this film, do you know?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes. Krorepati.’
‘Who’s acting in it?’
‘Three of the top stars. Today’s shots will include Rupa, Arjun Mehrotra and Balwant Chopra. The heroine, hero and the villain.’
The mention of Arjun Mehrotra made Lalmohan Babu grow round-eyed. ‘Will there be songs?’ he asked.
‘No, no. We’ve come to shoot fights. Stuntmen, doubles and the fight director are all here. The hero will chase the villain from a cave into the main temple.’
‘And the heroine?’
‘She’ll stay in the cave. The villain has imprisoned her in there, you see. But now the hero’s here, so the villain has to run for his life. The climax takes place on the spire.’
‘The spire?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who’s the director?’
‘Mohan Sharma. But these shots today will be taken by the fight director, Appa Rao.’
‘How long do you think the whole thing will take?’
‘Well . . . that’s difficult to say. We hope to start by ten o’clock. Then we should finish by one.’
That meant they would occupy the whole complex virtually the whole day.
‘I don’t believe this!’ Feluda said through clenched teeth. ‘How did they get permission to take the whole place over?’
Since we couldn’t get into the temple, we decided to climb over it, just as we had done the previous night. But even the hills around the temple had men from the film unit setting up equipment. We learnt here that although the film crew were not letting ordinary visitors into the temple, they could not go in themselves, as the official letter giving them the necessary permission to shoot had not yet arrived. It was being brought in a different car. The chowkidar on duty had flatly refused to unlock the main door unless the letter was produced.
Feluda clicked his tongue in annoyance and said, ‘Let’s not waste any more time. Let’s see if we can get into cave number fifteen. At least we can look at those beautiful statues, away from all this noise.’
We climbed down from the other side and were walking towards the cave when we saw a huge yellow American car making its way to the temple. The three major stars and the fight director had arrived.
Feluda had already told us the fifteenth cave was the Das Avatar cave. We ran into two modern avatars on our way. They were Lewison and Raxit. We had spotted them from a distance, standing near the entrance and speaking rather animatedly. As we got closer, we heard the American say angrily, ‘I see no point in my staying here any longer.’ Then he strode off in a huff. Mr Raxit walked up to us, shrugged and smiled somewhat bitterly. ‘He was complaining about the arrangements here. I mean, in the guest house. He said to me, “How can you expect me to spend my dollars here, when you don’t even know how to fry an egg?” Just because he’s rich, he thinks he owns the whole world.’
‘That’s strange!’ Feluda remarked. ‘Isn’t he supposed to be a connoisseur of art? How can he talk of fried eggs, standing in a place like this, surrounded by the best specimens of Indian art?’
‘How,’ Lalmohan Babu wanted to know, ‘do they fry eggs in America, anyway?’
Mr Raxit opened his mouth to speak, but had to shut it immediately. A loud scream from the temple made us all start violently. Lalmohan Babu was the first to recover. ‘That must be the villain!’ he exclaimed. ‘They’ve started shooting. The villain’s shouting and making his escape.’
But no. A babble had broken out. There were many other voices, also screaming and yelling. There was something wrong, obviously. Feluda had already begun walking in that direction. We followed him quickly. As we returned to the temple’s entrance, we saw a man in a purple bush shirt being carried out. He appeared to be unconscious. He was taken to the yellow car. Then came the three stars. Rupa was walking slowly, leaning heavily on Arjun Mehrotra. Balwant was holding her hand, and murmuring into her ear, as if she were a frightened child, in need of comforting.
A second later, we saw the same young man we had spoken to earlier.
‘What happened? What’s wrong?’ Lalmohan Babu asked him. ‘There’s a . . . there’s a dead body lying behind the temple. It’s horrible!’
‘Oh my God! Who was that man they carried out to the car?’
‘Appa Rao. He was the first to discover the body. One look, and he fainted.’
Feluda and Mr Raxit had gone into the temple. The film crew were all coming out. There was now no question of shooting a film here today.
Lalmohan Babu and I walked along the passage to our left. To our right, below us, were several statues of elephants and lions. They looked as though they were carrying the whole temple on th
eir shoulders. We stopped as the passage turned right. There was a group of men, peering down into a gorge. Perhaps that was where the body was lying. Mr Raxit emerged from the crowd and stopped us. ‘Don’t go any further,’ he said. ‘It’s not a pretty sight.’ Quite frankly, I had no wish to see the body, but I did feel curious about the dead man. Who was he? Feluda came out and answered this question even before I could ask it.
‘Shubhankar Bose,’ he said. ‘I think he fell off the edge of the cliff straight onto the rocks below.’
‘Strange, how strange!’ Lalmohan Babu muttered under his breath. ‘This is exactly how my own villain, Ghanashyam Karkat, is supposed to die!’
Feluda started walking away, so Lalmohan Babu and I had to move on. Mr Raxit was ahead of us, but he turned and stopped. ‘I saw him last night,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I told him not to try climbing in the dark. But he paid no attention to me. How was I to know that he was planning to commit suicide?’
Mr Raxit left, having given us something to ponder on. The idea of a suicide had not occurred to me. I looked at Feluda, but he had started to climb the hill on the left of the temple. Mr Bose must have climbed the same hill.
The people gathered near the cliff had gone. Mr Base’s death had, in a way, made things easier for our investigation. Feluda went close to the edge of the cliff and examined the area carefully.
There was a small hole in the ground, only a few feet away from the edge. People had walked over it and around it, making it almost disappear. But when Feluda took out a steel tape from his bag and pushed it in, we realized it was a fairly deep hole. Now Feluda peered closely at the ground again. Lalmohan Babu and I both saw what had claimed his attention.
There was a deep crease on the ground, running from the edge of the cliff to the hole.
‘Do you know what this is?’ Feluda asked me. I couldn’t answer. Feluda went on, ‘This mark was left by a rope. Someone had tied a rope to a crowbar, dug the crowbar deep into the ground, and gone down—or tried to go down—the cliff, using that rope. Remember the noise we heard yesterday? It was the noise of the rope being pulled back. Since there was no way to get into the cave below from the front, someone found this way to reach it from the rear.’