‘Did you see them?’ asked Nose Uncle.
The Inspector nodded. ‘They were too quick for us,’ she said. ‘They split up and ran down those two paths.’ She pointed to small tracks leading into the bush.
‘Did you see their faces?’ asked Nisha.
‘No, they were dressed like dacoits with their faces covered. One was tall and wearing scarlet and the other was short and in black.’
‘It’s really them,’ cried Ram.
‘We must catch them before they get away,’ said Nose Uncle. ‘We’ll have to split up.’ Again he sniffed the air. ‘The children and I will go this way,’ he said, indicating a path to the right.
Immediately, the Inspector and the driver took the lefthand path and disappeared into the bushes.
‘Come on,’ said Nose Uncle, ‘this way for the scarlet woman.’
‘How do you know she went this way?’ asked Nisha.
‘Nose told me,’ was the reply. ‘Let’s go!’
They turned down the track, running as fast as they could. The path wound in and out, crossing other smaller tracks, till they reached a junction. Here Nose Uncle let Nose once again point the way. They had no idea where they were. It seemed as though they were going deeper into the bushes, when suddenly they burst out into a small compound surrounded by a tall wooden fence. There, turned to face them like a cornered tiger, was the woman in scarlet.
Chapter 23
The Inspector and the police driver, whose moustache was now looking rather limp with the heat of the chase, soon found themselves out in the open. They had left the bushes lining the path and had moved on to a broad redearth area surrounding the Matri Mandir whose huge dome was sparkling in the sunlight. More and more people were joining them and they realized that some kind of ceremony was going to take place at the dome.
The Inspector’s heart sank as she realized that the people would give the dacoit a chance to lose himself among them. She took out her police whistle. Without stopping, she blew it several times to try and make the crowd part so that she might spot the dacoit.
One or two of the pilgrims stopped and stared at her, but most of them carried on walking towards the dome. She knew that at certain times the people of Auroville went to the dome to meditate around the giant crystal ball inside. Clearly that was what was happening now. She was beginning to think that the dacoit had got away, when she caught a fleeting glimpse of a short tubby figure dressed completely in black running towards the Matri Mandir.
The idiot, she thought to herself, if you had walked instead of carrying on running, I wouldn’t have seen you. Again she raised the whistle to her lips and this time, after blowing a couple of blasts, she gave orders to the crowd.
‘Stop that man!’ she cried. ‘He is a criminal and will defile your sacred dome if he enters it!’
One or two of those around her stopped and then began to hurry towards the black-clad figure, calling out to others as they did so. Soon, over a score of pilgrims were aiming to cut off the dacoit before he could enter the dome. The Inspector could see one or two people near the entrance, moving to block the dacoit’s path.
The dacoit looked for a way to escape. Then, to everyone’s surprise, he made a sudden dart up the ramp leading to the giant globe as if intending to go inside. One of the people at the entrance launched himself at the dacoit in a flying rugby tackle and the pair of them fell off the ramp and crashed to the ground in a cloud of red dust.
There was a loud cheer from the assembled pilgrims as the Inspector and driver pushed their way through to the tangled pair lying on the ground.
‘Thank you for stopping him,’ she said to the tall thickset red-haired foreigner who had tackled the dacoit. ‘The man is a dangerous criminal.’
A look of surprise crossed the man’s face.
‘A criminal?’ he said with a strong Scottish accent. ‘Now there’s a turn up for the books! I just thought he was trying to jump the queue!’
‘Let’s see who we have here,’ said the Inspector, signalling the driver to pull the dacoit to his feet. The dacoit, still dazed, swayed in the policeman’s firm grip. His clothes and face were streaked with sweat and dust and the Inspector called for someone to bring some water. A thin woman in a faded pink sari handed her a bottle of mineral water and the Inspector used this to wash the dust from the dacoit’s face. When his features were revealed, she stepped back and gave a cry of recognition.
‘You!’ she said.
The woman in scarlet towered over Nose Uncle and the children and, behind the mask covering her face, they could hear the rasp of her heavy breathing. Her hands were stretched out in front of her, like claws, and Ram recalled a kung fu film he had once seen on television. The scarlet woman was not going to be captured without a fight.
Although there were three of them and only one scarlet woman, Nisha and Ram were aware that this would be tough. They were still children and Nose Uncle, though blessed with a brain as sharp as a knife, was no longer a young man. Nisha wished that Preeti and her fellows were with them, while Ram hoped that the Inspector would soon turn up. But for the moment they were alone with this frightening figure before them. The woman raised her arms and they heard her hiss as she drew in her breath. Suddenly Nisha was reminded of a tiger she had seen in the zoo at Vandalur; it was caged to protect onlookers, yet it looked as if it would spring at you any moment.
The woman in scarlet moved menacingly towards them, planning to break through and escape once more. The children stood rooted to the spot. What could they do? Were all their efforts for nothing? Was she going to escape justice?
It was then that they noticed Nose Uncle’s nose. It had turned a delicate shade of yellow that seemed to glow like a miniature sun. And the colour, slowly and rhythmically, turned bright and soft, bright and soft.
Then Nose Uncle himself began to move, from one foot to the other, in a kind of gentle swaying dance.
Now the woman in scarlet had stopped advancing on them and stood still, gazing at Nose Uncle and his yellow nose. As he swayed, she, too, began to rock from side to side, in time with him. Her green eyes had lost some of their angry sparkle and began to lose focus. Nisha realized that Nose Uncle was hypnotizing the woman in scarlet.
He began to speak in a hushed dreamy voice.
‘Listen. Listen to me. Your arms are heavy and you cannot lift them. Your blood flows weakly through your veins and you have no strength. No longer can you resist us. You are tired. You cannot go on.’
The woman in scarlet staggered a little, blinked her eyes and shook her head as if trying to throw off the soft words invading her mind. Her hands dropped and her shoulders sagged.
‘Listen,’ continued Nose Uncle. ‘Listen to me. You no longer have any will. There is no point in resisting. It’s all over. You are mine. Surrender.’
The woman in scarlet gave a small cry and collapsed on the ground.
Nose Uncle swiftly moved to her side and felt her pulse.
‘She’s all right,’ he said. ‘But she no longer is a threat to us. Let’s see who she is.’
He bent forward to remove her mask, but before he could do so there was the sound of several people moving through the bush towards them. The children tensed and then relaxed as the Inspector burst upon them, with the police driver dragging their captive behind them.
‘Look!’ said Ram, pointing at him. ‘It’s Lentil Brain’s assistant!’
Sure enough, under the sweat and grime was the unmistakeable face of the small round man who had accompanied Rigolet when they first saw him at the Roman dig in Nose Uncle’s field.
‘And who is that?’ asked the Inspector, indicating the figure in scarlet lying inert on the red earth.
‘I was about to find out,’ said Nose Uncle, ‘but I have a pretty good idea.’ With a quick flourish he pulled off the scarlet hood, revealing a long plait of blonde hair. It was the European woman they had seen before.
‘It’s Rigolet’s assistant!’ cried Nisha.
&
nbsp; ‘Yes,’ grinned Nose Uncle. ‘As I suspected, the two assistants were actually the two chiefs. Now, shall we return to Kumar’s stall? I could just murder a cup of coffee!’
Chapter 24
‘I was ready for that,’ said Nose Uncle, downing his coffee. ‘Great stuff, second only to mango juice in taste.’
The others, including the Inspector and the police driver, were also sampling Kumar’s best offerings. Kumar himself, his eyes sparkling at having such famous and important customers, was still wondering at the arrival, not long before, of several police vehicles that had carried away the two dacoits. Such excitement was not usual at Auroville, and the other inhabitants were nowhere to be seen. It was as if they were anxious to return to normal as soon as possible.
‘So, are you ready to explain what this was all about?’ asked the Inspector, looking at her watch. ‘We have caught the criminals, but I’m still not totally clear what the crime was!’
‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Nose Uncle beamed at everyone. ‘It was all about money, of course.’
‘What money?’ Ram wondered. ‘Do you mean treasure?’
‘In a way. You see, those two were using the dacoits to steal ancient treasures from our temples and museums and shipping them overseas to the Free University of Central Quebec.’
‘But you said there was no such place,’ pointed out Nisha.
‘Ah, well, I was wrong. At first, I looked for it in one of my reference books, but what I didn’t do was look on the Internet. It’s a virtual university, existing only on the Internet, and it was opened a couple of years ago. Rigolet is a genuine professor there, and I had seen his face some time ago in a newspaper article but forgotten all about it.’
‘I see,’ said the Inspector. ‘And I suppose the stone carvers were making copies of the original artefacts in order to place them in the temples and museums so no one would know they had been stolen.’
‘Exactly,’ said Nose Uncle. ‘And Rigolet’s assistant—what was her name?’
‘Madame LaCroix,’ said the Inspector.
‘Thank you. Yes, she followed Rigolet around, and when he was working on an archaeological site, she used that to bury the copies at night in the earth so that they would soon look old. It was also the ideal place to hide them because if they were discovered, no one would ever think that they were stolen property. LaCroix used her drawing skills to help the carvers make exact copies.’
‘Ingenious,’ murmured the Inspector.
‘Lentil Brain’s—I mean Chandrasekar’s—assistant was the local contact. He visited temples and museums and identified the pieces to be stolen. He also organized the actual thefts. LaCroix handled the international side of things. The shop here at Auroville was used to send goods to the University in Canada.’
‘So Chandrasekar was not involved himself?’
‘He hasn’t got the brains,’ sniffed Nose Uncle. ‘They used his stupidity to mask what they were doing and give it some kind of official approval. Idiot!’
‘Why did they shoot at Rigolet when we were at Alamparai?’ asked Ram.
‘I think it was probably because they followed him and thought he might start working with us and put them in danger.’
‘You don’t think they were shooting at you?’ asked Nisha.
‘They wouldn’t dare!’ said Nose Uncle.
It was now evening back at Nose Uncle’s little house in the middle of his mango grove. Hurricane lamps were hanging from trees nearby, attracting hundreds of moths and other insects besides lighting a small clearing in front of the house.
Nose Uncle, Nisha and Ram, accompanied by the Inspector and Rigolet, with a dressing round his head, and Lentil Brain, sitting stiffly in his cane chair, were on the edge of the clearing. Little plumes of smoke from mosquito coils drifted around their feet.
On the other edge of the clearing, Siva and the other villagers, together with all the village children, sat on the ground, chatting and laughing with each other. They, like Nose Uncle and the others, had finished a huge meal of many dishes provided by the villagers, including a feast of mangoes. Now they were all waiting for the entertainment to begin.
Three women, clad in saris of pink and yellow and green, entered the clearing and sat at one end. They were all hijras from Preeti’s group. One of them carried a flute, another a tabla and a third a kattak. They sat down, muttered a swift prayer, and briefly tuned their instruments and then waited.
A hush fell over all the spectators. Then a young woman entered and stood near the centre of the circle, followed by about a dozen others who arranged themselves in a circle around her.
The flute struck up a slow, sad tune and the young woman sang.
It was a simple song that told of the flowers and the birds, the gods and goddesses, the sky and the sea. Each note held a crystal clarity that pierced the night and entered the hearts of all those there. Everyone swayed to the music, listening in total silence to the woman and her song, and even the insects seemed to suspend their own songs.
Then Preeti and the others in the circle around her took up the beat of the tabla and the kattak and slowly and gracefully danced to the song.
It was not a new song nor was it a new dance, but they both seemed reborn that evening under the stars in Nose Uncle’s mango grove.
When the singer and the dancer finished, they bowed and swiftly ran back into the dark night.
‘Well,’ said Nose Uncle after a long silence. ‘A perfect end to a perfect adventure.’ He turned to Nisha and Ram. ‘You two had better turn in. It’s been a long day.’
‘There’s just one thing, Nose Uncle,’ said Nisha, hesitantly, as she rose from her chair.
‘What’s that?’
‘The bones that were found in the field, the one with the false teeth; what did they have to do with everything else?’
‘Ah,’ said Nose Uncle, looking slightly sheepish. ‘I’m glad you asked me that.’ He hesitated. ‘Well, you see, it has been there for years. I knew it was there all along. My father told me about it and his father told him, and his father told him, and so on. It’s almost part of the family.’
‘Yes, but who was it?’ said Ram. ‘Rigolet said it was a Roman.’
Nose Uncle looked over his half-moon spectacles and grinned at him.
‘It was a Roman,’ he said. ‘In Roman times, some people did have false teeth made of iron.’
‘But why did you say it wasn’t?’
Nose Uncle had the grace to blush.
‘To annoy Lentil Brain and Rigolet,’ he said. ‘They had invaded my property and taken over my dig. I’m afraid I was not in the mood to be very helpful, so I decided to pull their legs. In any case, Rigolet, as an archaeologist, should have known about the Romans and their false teeth, especially when one was found about ten years ago. In France, of all places!’
And Nose Uncle tapped the side of his magnificent nose and laughed and laughed and laughed.
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lished in Puffin by Penguin Books India 2009
Copyright © Jaspar Utley 2009
Cover illustrations by Priya Kuriyan
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ISBN: 978-01-4333-085-1
This digital edition published in 2012.
e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-812-2
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