We turned into Fairlie Place, where we climbed down from the tonga. We were adjacent to the steps leading to the wide marble principal booking hall of the East Indian Railway headquarters. When I had first come to Calcutta, this place had puzzled me. Why locate a booking office half an hour’s walk from the station it served? Actually, that was the whole point. The booking office was not smudged by the nearness of soot and smoke. This was clean travelling, with the centrepiece, behind the clerks: the giant pink, white and green tiled map of India. But that was only the public part of the giant Moorish-looking castle that was the East Indian Railway HQ, and Fisher now turned and entered the courtyard of the castle . . . while I remained in Fairlie Place with Deo Rana.
I asked him whether he’d been to the railway lands today. He shook his head, meaning yes, he had.
‘See many dodges going on?’
‘Many. And, sahib, I saw the snake men.’
I assumed he meant a squad of snake charmers. There were plenty at Howrah.
I said, ‘Do you think the snake men know about the snake man? The fellow putting the snakes on the trains?’
‘That is possibility.’
I said, ‘I’d like to take it on, but it’s not our investigation. I mean . . . if the villain were sharping the railway, instead of doing people in . . .’
‘Sahib, snake men steal from the railway.’
‘Steal what?’
‘Rats.’
I eyed him. ‘But the railway has plenty of rats to spare, doesn’t it?’
‘Snake men need many rats. Take, take all time – give nothing. They should give, sahib.’
‘Give what?’
‘Informations.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’ll pay a call.’
‘Go tomorrow, sahib. Soon.’
‘Keen on snakes, are you Deo?’
‘I like them very much, sahib. You will be bringing money.’
‘Baksheesh?’
He shook his head, meaning yes.
‘How much?’
‘Ten . . . Fifteen.’
Fifteen rupees. That was more than baksheesh. Deo Rana gave a half bow and departed into the bustle of Fairlie Place. His working day was over, and he was going home. I believed that he lived on the police lines near the jute mill on the other side of the river.
IV
I nodded at the police sentry in his box, one of half a dozen who took turns to guard the main entrance to the courtyard. Neither of the two who’d been on duty during the night when the Schedule C file was nicked had seen any ‘stranger’ enter the courtyard. But it was not unknown for them to make a bed of the table in the little guard house, and there were other ways into the castle for strangers and non-strangers alike who had the right keys or were in the know.
Some tongas waited in the cobbled courtyard, and two motors. Around the perimeter were palm plants in highly polished brass pots. Two of the courtyard walls had verandas halfway up and here stood white-suited Europeans in sola topees, men of the railway detective force. There were some uniformed men in addition, both Indian and European. A sort of late tiffin was going on up there, with bearers moving between the men. Punkas flapped above them, like so many giant birds trying to take off. It was amazing how many police a single railway could throw up.
In one corner of the courtyard was a rickety, hot iron staircase that seemed like an afterthought. Its potted palms were half-dead, and by the time you got to the top it was just stony soil in the pots, and a good many cigarette stubs. But this was the quickest way to the offices of the detective division. I climbed the staircase and opened the door at the top, entering a gloomy corridor with small scruffy rooms running off. All was khaki coloured, right down to the twirling fans, which were all thoroughly stained by cigarette smoke. Anyone might climb the iron stairs and enter the office of the detective division, since the door was always kept unlocked. I heard:
‘Well you’ve got a bloody lunatic on your hands, haven’t you?’
It was Fisher’s voice, coming from an office whose door stood open. It belonged to Superintendent Christopher Bennett, who sat at a small, battered desk with Fisher facing him. Bennett ushered me into the room, and there was no spare chair so I leaned against the peeling wall. They were talking about snakes.
‘It’s the damnedest thing,’ Bennett was saying. ‘The day before yesterday, the information clerk came in here with a report of a snake bite in a first class compartment at Bally. The fellow went out, and he was back five minutes later with a second flash: “Another instance of same, sahib.”’
‘Where was the second?’ I asked.
‘Khana Junction.’
‘Same train?’ I said, because both of those were stops occurring early on the main westerly line of the East Indian Railway, the Grand Chord. Bally was the first station on the line, about seven miles after Howrah. There were some mills at Bally; otherwise it was the start of the paddy fields. As for Khana, that was more like seventy miles out: a railway colony. ‘Different trains,’ said Bennett, ‘both terminating at Khana Junction.’