The book, I saw, had been produced in 1919, evidently late in the year.
I looked at my watch. I could not sit here all day. I collected up some of the more promising-looking papers, and put them inside the pages of the East Indian Railway Magazine, making a neat bundle that I thrust into my suit-coat pocket. It was time to pay a second call on Dr Ganguly at Old Court House Corner. On my way there I called in at the hotel. There was no message from Lydia.
II
On the dark staircase, the door of Miss Hatsuyo was firmly closed, and no sounds came from within. The same went for the door of Dr Ganguly, but this door was opened at my second knock by a green-eyed nurse who might have been Anglo-Indian. She admitted me to a room that was long and thin, like a railway carriage. It was very brightly coloured because of the jumble of posters on the two long walls. At one end, a wide window looked down on to Old Court House Corner. The other end of the room was screened off by a pretty curtain of green and red stripes. The doctor must be behind there, and if he were behind there, then that would make three of us in the room, since no patients waited on the rows of chairs lining the two long walls.
The green-eyed nurse ushered me over to one of the chairs, and sat down next to me in a companionable way. She turned towards me with a pleasant rustling of her white cotton uniform, and in good English she asked me why I wanted to see the doctor. I said I was a policeman and would like to ask him some questions in connection with an investigation I was conducting. I showed her my warrant card. She took this in her stride, as I believe she would have taken almost anything in her stride. She walked towards the curtain, and I experienced a sad enjoyment in watching her do so. As she went behind the curtain, I thought of Miss Hatsuyo and I thought of Lydia. From behind the curtain came the sound of a door opening and closing. So these premises must be bigger than I thought. I looked at the posters. ‘Chiefly for Mothers: Robinson’s Patent Barley.’ The stuff was bright yellow in the glass the woman was drinking from. ‘Ensure a Robust Constitution: start a course of Dr Hornby’s Number 9 Pills.’ The man who’d done so had a very pink face, and he was contemplating a multi-coloured sunrise.
The curtain parted, and the doctor came out. He was older, taller and thinner than I had expected, with sparse and disordered grey hair. He was very well dressed though, and wore a bow tie under his white coat. I had no doubt that the colourful posters would cease once one got behind the curtain: there, all would be scientific and serious, but I would never find out for certain, because the doctor sat down next to me in the same companionable way as the nurse had. He took out a silver cigarette case and offered it to me. He had a very languid manner, and he spoke in a drawling way. He lit our cigarettes, saying, ‘You are from the East Indian Railway Police, whereas the other man was from the criminal investigation department of the civil police.’
‘Detective Inspector Khan,’ I said, trying not to make a question of it.
‘But you two are co-operating, presumably.’
‘Yes,’ I said, after a while.
‘You don’t seem very sure of that,’ said Dr Ganguly.
I said, ‘Did you book a ticket on the Jamalpur Night Mail of 23 April, and then cancel the booking?’
‘No,’ said Dr Ganguly, blowing smoke, and watching the smoke that he had blown. ‘I neither booked nor cancelled. That must have been the other R. P. N. Ganguly, the fellow Khan asked me about two months ago . . . Just in case you didn’t know.’
‘I—’
‘Khan did not seem to me the type who would share his hard-won information very readily. A good man, no doubt, but costive.’
Ganguly withdrew two newspaper cuttings from his pocket, saying, ‘I had these from the offices of The Statesman. I didn’t see them when they originally appeared.’
The cuttings were both small, and the dates were marked on them in handwriting. The first was from February of the present year, the second from March. The first was headed ‘Alleged Seditious Speech’. I read:
A non-co-operation backer was arrested in Dalhousie Square on the strength of a writ of arrest issued by the Chief Presidency Magistrate. He was taken into custody on a charge of having made a seditious speech in College Square.
The second read:
On the strength of a warrant issued by the District Magistrate of North Calcutta, the Criminal Investigation Department, assisted by local police, searched the house of Ram Chandra Deep in Upper Chitpur Road. Copies of Vanguard, Advance Vanguard and other seditious publications were seized.
‘Concerning the speech,’ observed Dr Ganguly, as I handed back the cuttings, ‘. . . they had to drop the charge for insufficient evidence. As you also may or may not know. And regarding the search and seizure . . . he wasn’t in the house. Khan visited me at the start of April and I managed to extract that data from him.’ Dr Ganguly turned and looked kindly at me. ‘Let’s assume you do know everything, and that I am boring you by this repetition.’