The Case of the Indian Curse (Andrew Tillet, Sara Wiggins & Inspector Wyatt Book 8)

by Robert Newman

  Clemson brought the launch alongside the barge at its middle, and two of the seamen jumped on board and advanced on Willie in the bow while Chunder Das, Ananda Lal, and the third seaman climbed up and went toward Beasley in the stern. The two Indian seamen, one with his knife and the other with the axe, began circling Willie, wary of his shovel and his determined expression. Chunder Das and his white-robed companion each had a length of silken cord in his hand, either to use as a noose to strangle Beasley with or to tie him up once he had been subdued.

  Bannerji had moved forward and was standing on the launch’s gunwale, watching what was happening with great intensity.

  “Now?” whispered Sara.

  “Don’t,” said Clemson just as quietly. “Stay on board here and don’t interfere.”

  As Andrew glanced at him, surprised by the friendliness in his voice, several things happened. The Indian with the axe struck at Willie, and he fended off the blow with the shovel, brought it around, and knocked down the Indian with the knife. Chunder Das, Ananda Lal, and the third seaman moved in on Beasley, and the warehouse doors opened with a crash and out ran eight or ten police constables, led by Sergeant Tucker and followed by Inspector Wyatt.

  What followed could not be called a struggle. Taken completely by surprise and overwhelmed by superior numbers, the five Indians were subdued and handcuffed before they even realized what was happening.

  Beasley now turned to look at Bannerji.

  “Well, look who’s here,” he said cheerfully. “My Indian friend as ever was. Would you like to come aboard, old bean?”

  Bannerji, almost as dazed as his compatriots, looked at them and then at Beasley.

  “What?” he said. “I suppose so.”

  Beasley held out his boathook and pulled Bannerji up on to the barge. Whispering Willie, meanwhile, had dropped his shovel and strolled toward them. Reaching Bannerji, he said something—not in his usual whisper, but in a clear, normal voice—and not in English, but in Hindustani.

  The effect was electric—as sudden and astonishing as what had happened when the warehouse doors had burst open.

  “You?” said Bannerji, stiffening. “You mean it is you?”

  With a motion that was almost too swift to follow, he pulled a silk scarf from inside his belt, and with that same motion whipped it around Willie’s neck. (Andrew remembered later what he had said about the rumal—how silver coins were knotted into one corner of the sacred scarf to weight it so that it could be used in just this way.) Pulling the scarf tight, Bannerji turned his knuckles in to draw it even tighter.

  “Jai Kali!” he shouted. “Jai Bhowani!”

  With that, Andrew realized that though Bannerji might have seemed soft and overweight, he was a tremendously powerful man.

  Tucker and several of the constables ran forward to rescue Willie, but Willie held up his hand to stop them. For a moment, several moments, they stood there face to face: Bannerji using all his great strength to pull the scarf tighter around Willie’s bandaged neck and either break it or strangle him, and Willie standing there quietly, calmly, as if urging him to do his worst. Then, as Bannerji’s efforts began to slacken, as his mouth opened and his eyes widened in disbelief, Willie turned slightly, raised one arm and brought it down to break Bannerji’s grip, then with a sudden movement, tripped him so that he fell backward on the barge’s ashes.

  “All right, sergeant,” he said to Tucker. “I’ll take your darbies now.”

  Tucker, his own eyes wide in surprise, passed over the handcuffs, and, bending down, Willie snapped them on Bannerji’s wrists.

  “And that,” he said, getting up and dusting the ashes from his hands, “seems to be that.” He turned, looking curiously at Wyatt, who had not said a word since the police had come running out of the warehouse. “Is anything wrong, inspector?”

  “A great deal,” said Wyatt, glaring at Sara and Andrew. “What the blazes are the two of you doing here?”

  15

  The Deceivers

  “But it wasn’t our fault,” said Sara.

  “Of course not,” said Wyatt scathingly. “You were on board the launch for a tour of the canal system, which leaves London Bridge every hour on the hour!”

  “You’re being sarcastic because you’re angry,” said Andrew patiently, “but it really wasn’t our fault. We were on the launch because we’d been kidnapped.”

  “Kidnapped where and when?”

  “At Beasley’s shop this morning.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Looking for Sean.”

  “Why?”

  Andrew hesitated, glancing at Sara. They were standing just outside the warehouse—he, Sara, Wyatt, Beasley, and, somewhat surprisingly, Captain Clemson. The reason he hesitated was that Wyatt might have a right to be angry at this point.

  And then, again surprisingly, Clemson spoke up. “Excuse me, inspector,” he said. “I don’t want to interfere, but they weren’t on the launch of their own free will. The Indians had them in the house and brought them along.”

  “Is he a friend of yours?” Sara asked Wyatt, looking at Clemson.

  “In a way,” said Wyatt. “But he seems to be a friend of yours, too, trying to find excuses for your being in a place where you shouldn’t have been.”

  “Look, we all know why you’re so angry, inspector,” said Beasley. “It’s because you like this pair of rapscallions—as who doesn’t—and you were worried about them. But I suspect things wouldn’t have worked out as nicely as they did if it wasn’t for them. I’ll bet they were the ones who spotted us from the house.”

  “You don’t say! And what do you want me to do about it—give them each a medal?”

  “No,” said Andrew, playing on the fact that Wyatt was speaking a little more moderately. “All we want is for you not to be quite so angry with us.”

  “And of course let us know what’s been going on,” said Sara. “Exactly what’s been happening and why.”

  “You would want to know that,” said Wyatt dryly. “And you’ll remember everything I say, and the next time it’ll be even harder to keep you out of any case you get within a mile of.”

  “No, it won’t,” said Andrew.

  “Yes, it will. I’m not saying that the two of you aren’t smart and useful. What I am saying is that Beasley’s right. I do worry about you, and this case was dangerous, more dangerous than any you have been involved in. Still … all right. Come on inside and we’ll go over things.”

  He opened a door and led them into the warehouse, which was empty except for a few scattered crates and bales. The large, sliding door on the opposite side that led to the street was open, and Sergeant Tucker was standing there, supervising as the handcuffed Indians were loaded into a black police van. When it left, he closed the door and joined them. All of them, Clemson and Beasley included, walked toward a sink where Whispering Willie was washing the dust and dirt from his hands and face. He turned as they approached and, although he was still wearing his dustman’s clothes, he no longer had on his fantail hat and without it, he looked completely different; not just cleaner, but more intelligent and alert.

  “I’d like to introduce two young people whom, I believe, you’ve already met,” said Wyatt. “Sara Wiggins and Andrew Tillett. Captain Ian Ross, formerly of the Punjab Rifles and later of the Indian Criminal Investigation Department.”

  “Yes, we have already met,” said Willie, smiling. “But of course I’m delighted to meet you both again under happier and more salubrious circumstances.”

  “Thank you,” said Sara. “Then you’re Mr. X?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The British agent who penetrated the Thugs’ organization and helped destroy it,” said Andrew. “At least, that’s what Bannerji called you when he told us about you.”

  “He told you about me, did he? Yes, he would. And I suppose I am the man he called Mr. X. At least, I’m the man he and his friends have been looking for.”

  “It�
�s all pretty confusing,” said Sara. “There were times when I rather liked him—Bannerji, I mean—and times when I didn’t. But now … well, am I right in thinking he was a Thug, too?”

  “Not just a Thug, but the leader, the brains, of the small group that was left—the most dangerous group of all, and the one that the Indian government asked Scotland Yard to find and capture. And yes, it is all rather confusing. Perhaps the best thing to do is to tell the whole story from the beginning.”

  “I wish you would,” said Wyatt. “While I know some of it and have guessed still more, there’s a good deal I don’t know.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” said Captain Ross. “You seem to have done a remarkable job of foreseeing everything that happened and preparing for it. Still.… As the inspector told you,” he said to Sara and Andrew, “my name is Ross, and I come of an old Anglo-Indian family.”

  “Meaning that you were born in India?” said Andrew.

  “Yes. My father came to India as a very young man with a commission in the Punjab Rifles, married the colonel’s daughter, and later became a district commissioner. Though I came back to England and was educated here, during my early years I learned Hindustani, Urdu, and several other dialects from the Indians who were part of our household. And so I was particularly well qualified for the role I was to play later on.”

  “How were you selected?” asked Wyatt.

  “I wasn’t selected. A good friend of my father’s was on the viceroy’s staff. He knew of my knowledge of Indian languages and customs; and when the Thugs became active again, he asked if I would be willing to do what Captain Sleemen had done, penetrate the organization in disguise and help to destroy it. I knew something about the horrors for which the Thugs had been responsible—the parents and sister of an Indian officer who served in the Rifles with me had been killed by them—so I agreed.”

  “I gather you were successful,” said Andrew.

  “Not I, we, for I wasn’t alone. A Muslim constable from the CID named Amir Ali worked with me from the beginning, and whatever we accomplished, we did together. I won’t go into the details of how we got the evidence we wanted. The fact is that we did. There was a new series of trials, and it was clear that the organization had again been effectively smashed. But Amir Ali and I were convinced that there were a few high-ranking Thugs still at large, men we had never been able to identify. And we finally got word from an informer that such men not only existed, but had sworn to find out who we were and take vengeance on us.”

  “They had no idea who you were?” said Sara.

  “No. Our identities had been carefully protected. But the Indian government was unwilling to take any chances, so they gave us both an extended leave and suggested that we go to England for a time while other members of the CID tried to find out who these men were who were determined to kill us.”

  “Wasn’t the fact that you were leaving India apt to make them suspicious?” asked Wyatt.

  “We hoped not,” said Captain Ross. “My brother had been in the Indian service, too, and had been invalided home about a year before with relapsing fever. He had just died, and the leave was ostensibly given to me to go home and help settle his estate. I left on a P & O boat. Amir Ali, traveling second class, left on the same boat, supposedly to do some work with the East India Company in London. We carefully avoided one another, acted as if we did not know one another. But someone either knew or guessed the truth about Amir Ali. He went ashore when we stopped at Alexandria and did not return. He was found strangled in an alley.”

  “Isn’t it possible that he was killed by a robber?” asked Andrew.

  “No,” said Ross. “A note pinned to his chest said, ‘The vengeance of Bhowani on all who betray her.’ I did not find that out until later, but I did not need to know it. As soon as I heard he was dead, I knew who had killed him and decided I couldn’t trust anyone to protect me and I’d better disappear.”

  “We were fairly sure that that’s what you’d done,” said Wyatt. “What we weren’t sure of was how you’d done it.”

  “I left the boat and went to France as a Swedish engineer,” said Ross. “I traveled through France and entered England as a French archeologist, back from Cambodia, and going to London to do some work at the British Museum.”

  “But you still didn’t come to the Yard,” said Wyatt.

  “No. Though I have the greatest respect for you in ordinary criminal matters, I didn’t think you knew enough about Indians to be able to handle this. So I decided to continue on my own. Or at least without official help, but with that of your good friend Beasley.”

  He turned and bowed to him, and Beasley bowed back.

  “How did you get to him?” asked Sara.

  “When my father returned to England some years ago, he met Beasley and they became friends. When Father died, Beasley sold some of his Indian artifacts for my mother. She wrote me about him, speaking very warmly of him, and so did my brother when he got to London. He sounded like the kind of person who could help me, so I went to him, told him who I was, and what my problem was and what I needed.”

  “You mean you wanted him to help you create an identity that would keep you safe,” said Wyatt.

  “Exactly. He told me about you and said he was sure you could handle the Thugs. But, since you were away at the moment, he suggested I go into hiding until you returned. We discussed several possible identities, but when he suggested that of a dustman, I felt that was ideal for several reasons.”

  “I think I know one of the reasons,” said Andrew impulsively.

  “What’s that?” asked Captain Ross.

  “In India a dustman is an Untouchable, which means that most Indians—Hindus, anyway—would avoid you, keep as far away from you as possible.”

  “Very good! How did you happen to think of that?”

  “I remember Bannerji’s reaction—how he drew back—the first time he met you.”

  “While we’re at it, I think I know why you pretended you had a sore throat and talked in a whisper,” said Sara. “Wasn’t it because you weren’t sure of your Cockney accent and slang?”

  “Well, well,” said Ross approvingly. “Were they always this perceptive?” he asked Wyatt. “Or did they become this way through their association with you?”

  “A little of each,” said Wyatt. “But go on with your story.”

  “One thing I’m not clear about,” said Andrew, “is how the Indians came to suspect that Beasley knew the man they were looking for.”

  “We’re not positive,” said Ross, “but Beasley and I think it may have begun with that statue of Kali.”

  “Was that the one you had in your shop?” Sara asked Beasley. “The one that Sean hated and that you finally took home and hid?”

  “Yes,” said Beasley. “It belonged to Captain Ross’s brother, and his wife didn’t like it either. When his brother died several months ago, his widow gave it to me to sell. Eventually, I put it in the window, but when Captain Ross came to the shop, he told me about Kali’s connection with the Thugs and advised me to get rid of it. I did, but in the meantime Bannerji saw it. He knew that the man he was looking for had to be an Anglo-Indian and, looking for an Indian connection, he probably went to the British Museum and asked them for the names of anyone interested in Indian art or artifacts. They had originally given my name to Captain Ross’s father and now they gave it to Bannerji, very likely telling him how useful I had been to the old man. Bannerji came to the shop, saw the statue and that must have made him decide there was something worth pursuing there.”

  “We think that at that point he probably checked back,” said Captain Ross, “and realized that we—a Ross father and two Ross sons—could be the Anglo-Indian family he had been looking for. Then he found that, although I had left India supposedly to help my sister-in-law settle my brother’s estate, I had never arrived here. That must have made him fairly sure that I was the man he wanted and that Beasley had helped create a new identity for me. So he ha
d his fellow Thugs—Chunder Das and the others—use every trick he and they could think of to get Beasley to tell them what they wanted to know.”

  “That was what he was trying to do when he wanted to hypnotize you, wasn’t it?” Andrew asked Beasley. And when Beasley nodded, “I thought so. That was when I first began to become suspicious of him. But what happened when we thought you were sick? Was it because of some kind of drug as Dr. Reeves thought?”

  “It was,” said Wyatt. “One of the first things I did when I heard what had happened was to ask Reeves to go to Beasley’s house and see if he could find what had been giving him that terrible anxiety and those frightening hallucinations. And he did find it—in the tea Beasley had been drinking.”

  “My tea?” said Beasley.

  “Yes. It was a drug made of spoiled rye and other grain that is sometimes used as a poison and sometimes to cause hallucinations. When the Thugs decided to go to work on you they must have gotten into your house somehow and mixed it with your tea.”

  “I can understand why I felt better when I left the house then,” said Beasley. “But why did I feel worse when you moved me from hospital to Andrew’s house?”

  “Because somehow and at some point Bannerji substituted more of the drug for the medicine that Dr. Reeves had prescribed for you.”

  “It must have been when he brought you that Mogul painting,” said Andrew. “If you remember, he bumped into the night table, almost knocked it over. And after that we all spent some time looking at the painting.”

  “Of course,” said Beasley. “That’s probably one of the reasons he wanted me out of hospital, so no one would notice that the bottle had been changed. And of course he wanted to give me more of the drug so I’d agree to let him hypnotize me.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Though we followed your instructions this morning,” said Captain Ross to Wyatt, “and Beasley wasn’t the least bit surprised that you had a plan of action ready so quickly, I must confess that I was. Will you tell us how you worked it out?”