Bhowani Junction

by John Masters

  Colonel Savage spoke to one of the signallers who’d been laying cable behind us, and the signaller gave him a field telephone. He spoke to Lieutenant Glass in Shahpur station and told him to stop all traffic until further orders. Then Govindaswami said, ‘But where has K. P. Roy got to?’

  Kasel said, There’s no reason why any of them should be in the tunnel, is there? The last down train went through at twenty-two hundred—Five-Ninety-Nine Passenger.’

  I said, ‘No, there have been two down goods since then. If the last one was on time it came through about twenty minutes before we got here.’

  Colonel Savage said, ‘Then Roy could have got out before we blocked the portals.’

  I said, ‘Yes. But the troop trains are going to Bombay. Why has he put the charge under the down line? He is crazy, if you ask me.’

  Of course Roy was not a railwayman, but he ought to know that trains keep to the left. The whole thing began to look crazy, because up trains cannot go fast in the Mayni Tunnel, so even if he’d got the charge on the proper line he wouldn’t have done much damage, unless he’d blown the whole tunnel in.

  But Govindaswami said, ‘I don’t think he’s crazy,’ and Colonel Savage said, ‘Oh. I see. Who is it?’ and Govindaswami said, ‘Wait and see.’

  Then Colonel Savage said, ‘We’d better get on. There may be another charge. Same formation as before.’

  We started off. This time everyone must have been feeling that Roy and his men were very unlikely to be in the tunnel still, and we moved quite a bit faster. My feet hurt more too, because I was thinking more about them.

  I don’t know how long it took us, but we found no more charges and we were going along with the torches like fireflies in front when suddenly a light shone down from ahead and I saw the arch of the tunnel mouth, and there were three Gurkhas with revolvers. Someone from outside the tunnel shouted, ‘Halt!’ One of the Gurkhas shouted, ‘Friend!’ and at once a blast of machine-gun bullets ripped into the tunnel, and two of the Gurkhas with revolvers fell over, and some torches went out and other torches came on, and Colonel Savage swung round and dropped his carbine. The Bren guns outside hiccuped and roared hysterically, and orange flames streaked out everywhere in the darkness. I pushed Victoria down, jumped up, and shouted, ‘Stop, it’s us!’

  For one second the firing stopped everywhere, and I saw the third Gurkha with the revolver running out into the rain. It was pouring again, and there were lightning and thunder. Savage ran forward, shouting. ‘Don’t stop firing. Shoot that man!’

  Some of the torches held steady; some waved wildly about, and I saw that Colonel Savage’s right hand was bleeding and he hadn’t got his carbine. Victoria was lying safe in the ditch behind me. My heart turned over when I thought that I had stopped them from getting Roy. Of course the Gurkhas outside had fired at once because they came from the war, and because the ‘Gurkhas’ with the revolvers weren’t Gurkhas, and they’d said, ‘Friend’, instead of giving the countersign.

  I ran out after Colonel Savage into the rain. I was beside him in ten seconds. It was pitch-black whenever the lightning stopped. There were Gurkhas beside us, and I heard bushes shaking on the right. Savage shouted, ‘First Thirteenth, stand fast! Shoot anything moving.’ But the thunder drowned his voice.

  In a thin streaky bit of lightning I saw a Gurkha walking across the hill about thirty yards up among the bushes. Savage said, ‘There!’ and flung up his arm. I shouted, ‘He may not have heard your order, sir!’ My God, I’d killed one Gurkha that day. But Savage yelled, ‘Shoot, damn you!’ and I took careful aim at the Gurkha, who wasn’t hurrying, and shot him. He stopped, looked round, and waved his arm as though he was rather tired, and then fell face downward into the bushes.

  When we got up to him he was dead, and he was K. P. Roy. He was dressed in jungle-green Indian Army uniform except for bare feet. You could buy those chothes anywhere, and a Gurkha hat is easy to hide under a burqa. I wiped the rain off my face—I was trembling like a jelly—and said, ‘It was lucky he wasn’t one of your men after all, Colonel.’

  Colonel Savage said, ‘I recognized him. That’s how I saw him at the village near Malra, only it was moonlight instead of lightning.’ Well, I’d seen what he’d seen, but, as I said, Colonel Savage was a man who used darkness, and I suppose he recognized something about the way the light moved as the man walked—but of course the real thing is that Colonel Savage would take any risks because his luck never let him down. He must have been thinking the same thing, because he said to me, ‘Your luck’s changed, Patrick. Congratulations.’

  Govindaswami came out of the tunnel and told us the other two men were dead. Then Colonel Savage said to him, ‘Well, Sammy, I think we can say that we’ve got the man who murdered Macaulay.’ He waited quite a time before he added, ‘Don’t you?’

  Victoria began to say something—she’d come up with Kasel—but Kasel said, ‘As far as I’m concerned, I think so, and Govindaswami said, ‘In the circumstances, yes.’

  Then Colonel Savage said, ‘Good. Any objections if we resume traffic now?’ Govindaswami answered, ‘No,’ and I agreed.

  I was quite dazed and not even realizing how wet I was. Colonel Savage took the field telephone again and spoke to Lieutenant Glass. He said, ‘C.O. here. All clear. Tell the Stationmaster, from Taylor, to resume normal working, and pass the message on…. Okay…. At the vehicles. About an hour and a half. We’ve got to go back through the tunnel.’

  Govindaswami said, ‘Yes. And I want to see the troop trains through.’

  Victoria asked me whether I was all right, and I asked her whether she was. Her chothes were wet through, and her hak was soaked under her cap. Govindaswami was talking to someone on the telephone when I suddenly remembered the Colonel’s wound and went to ask him about it, but Victoria said, ‘Don’t bother him, Patrick. He got a bullet through the wrist. It’s being bandaged now.’

  Then we got into the tunnel, out of the rain, and the first troop train must have been waiting at Mayni, because it passed us almost at once. We got over on to the down line, and the driver was leaning out, looking at us as he went by. He was a fellow from Gondwara, Blair, and he looked surprised when he saw me with the soldiers.

  The Gurkhas had cleared the charges away when we got that far, and they walked out to the north portal with boxes of the explosive on their shoulders, and the jemadar had the wires and the electrical gadget which would have set off the explosion. There was enough to blow half the hill down.

  We came to the p.w. stores chamber and scrambled up into it. The floor of it is level with the floor of a flat, so that heavy stores can be pushed straight across without being lowered or raised. Savage looked up the ventilation shaft and said, The fourth man probably lowered the boxes of explosive down here. We’ll find out one day.’ Then the second troop train came. It passed so close, going slowly uphill on the up line, that I could have reached out my hand and touched the glass of the windows. The lights were on, but most of the troops were asleep. There were a few playing cards in their underwear and one man with a mouth-organ. It was a little past four o’clock in the morning then, but they were on their way Home, so I suppose they didn’t want to sleep.

  The last troop train only just got by before Number 1 Down Mail came into the tunnel from the other end. Govindaswami stood up, and we all stood up. I don’t know what we were expecting. The searchlight of Number 1 Down Mail leaped into the tunnel, and she was already going fast. The beat of the exhaust was light and quick and getting quicker. The whole tunnel roared as the train wheels clattered faster and faster over the rail joints. The engine raced past on the down line. The driver leaned out and peered at us and waved his hand. He was Charlie Eastman of Bhowani. The carriages came. The first- and second-class compartments were dark, but there is always a light left on in the thirds, and Govindaswami said loudly and sharply, ‘Look carefully now!’

  The fifth third-class carriage was only half full. Everyone was sprawled all over, asleep i
n it, except for a little group at one end. We had all seen a thousand pictures of that grizzled, naked little man who was squatting on a bench there, his spectacles on the end of his nose, and his hands folded in his lap. There were three or four men and women round him, waving their arms, and he was talking, I think.

  After the train had gone, no one moved or spoke for a long time. Then Colonel Savage said, ‘And why is he awake at this hour?’

  Govindaswami said, ‘Because Lanson ordered him out of the train at Shahpur and wouldn’t let him back in until you sent your message.’

  Savage said, ‘And what was the purpose of your cryptic conversation with Lanson back there?’ I didn’t know Lanson was in Shahpur station at all, but he must have been.

  Govindaswami turned to Kasel and said, ‘Lanson was arresting your mother. She got into that compartment with Gandhi at Gondwara—where she got out of Ninety-Eight Up. She had a loaded revolver on her.’

  Kasel stood quite still and after a time said, ‘The revolver was in case this failed? At the risk of her own life?’

  Govindaswami said, ‘Yes. To make sure. She does not lack courage, as you ought to know. This is the thing that was important enough to put off her trip to Moscow. But she’ll set out again soon. We won’t charge her with attempted murder, because Gandhi will only get her off if we do. She’ll do a few weeks in jail for illegal possession of arms.’

  Rasel said, ‘When did you know the Mahatma would be on Number 1 Down?’

  Govindaswami said, ‘Long enough. His movements are not secret. I believed, and have been trying to make you believe, that K. P. Roy’s people had to assassinate Gandhi. And as Roy was specializing in train-wrecking, I thought he’d probably attempt it by that method. But Wardha to Delhi is a long way, and the exact place and the particular journey Roy would choose were the problems, Both were solved by Mr Taylor.’

  Colonel Savage said, ‘Put him in for an M.B.E. too. For one thing, he’s deserved it. For another, their gongs will rattle together like eymbals at the appropriate moments of joy.’ Govindaswami looked quickly from the colonel to Victoria to me, trying to see if we understood what the colonel was talking about, I suppose; but Victoria was red in the face from so much excitement, and Colonel Savage often said the most extraordinary things which no one could understand.

  At last we were out on the road. The Gurkhas had brought the bodies of Roy and the other two men there and laid them down beside the lorries. It was actually not raining. It was then about five o’clock.

  Colonel Savage got slowly into his jeep and sat hunched in the back seat. Everyone was busy, and he was alone. He didn’t look like he used to. His face was white and smooth, and—of course it must have been his wound, but if I hadn’t known him so well I would have said he was lonely and miserable.

  But it was silly even to think that I could help him, so I got to thinking how wonderful it would be if I really got an M.B.E., even for saving Gandhi’s life, of all people, whom I would just as soon shoot really—when I saw a car coming very fast up the Pike from the direction of Bhowani and showering mud on everybody as it came. All the lights of the Gurkha lorries were on, and there were soldiers everywhere, smoking and talking and getting ready to go back. In the lights I saw that the car was a brown Army station wagon. It stopped opposite us, and a tall thin old man poked his head out. He was wearing a pink shirt and he had a soldier driver, so he must have been an officer, I suppose, but he didn’t look like one.

  Colonel Savage seemed to wake up, shaking his head and putting his face back the way it really was. Then he held his wounded hand behind his back and strolled over to the strange man. He was quite pale, and his nostrils were tight and his eyes big and glittery blue. Victoria was there already.

  The man in the car said, ‘My dear fellow, what on earth are you all doing out in this terrible weather? You’ll catch your deaths. Who are those people?’ He looked at the corpses with the Gurkha hats over their faces.

  Colonel Savage said, ‘Oh, we’re all playing soldiers, Nigel.’

  The man said, ‘Yes, yes, of course. I suppose you have to, to keep your wonderful little fellows happy. Do excuse me, Rodney. Paul has run away and sent me a telegram from Gondwara, of all places, that he’s working in the club there. I’m going to persuade him to come back.’

  ‘Paul’s the chef, isn’t he?’ Colonel Savage said.

  The peculiar man in the car said, ‘Yes. We had a silly misunderstanding over some foie gras. How’s Victoria?’

  Victoria said, ‘I’m very well thank you, Nigel,’ and the old man said, ‘Good. Keep beautiful, my dear. Nothing I can do for you, Rodney? No? Well, good-bye, good-bye.’ Then he pulled his head in, and the car drove on.

  Colonel Savage started to laugh—silently at first, but soon he was bellowing. Govindaswami and Ranjit began to laugh with him, and Victoria was absolutely shaking. I didn’t really see anything to laugh at, but I couldn’t stop myself from laughing with them, so there we all were, shrieking like lunatics, at five o’clock in the morning on the Deccan Pike a couple of miles outside Shahpur.

  Victoria finally got herself under control and said, still giggling a little, ‘Are you sure you don’t want any morphia before we go back, sir?’ and Colonel Savage bawled at the top of his voice, ‘WiIl you bloody well leave me alone, woman? Go and do good works elsewhere. Buy a pair of shoes for the manager of the Cholaghat cement-works railway. How many men do you want to look after, anyway?’

  She said, ‘One,’ and scrambled into the jeep beside me, and I began to curse and swear under my breath, because I’d left my shoes in the Mayni Tunnel.

  By the Same Author

  Also by John Masters in the Story-tellers series:

  NIGHTRUNNERS OF BENGAL

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 1954

  by Michael Joseph Ltd

  This edition published 2001 by Souvenir Press Ltd.,

  43 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3PD

  This ebook edition first published in 2012

  All rights reserved © 1954 by Bengal-Rockland

  The right of John Masters to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 9780285641723