Night Train to Jamalpur(90)

‘All right,’ I said.

‘Khan thinks there’s more to this man who sometimes calls himself Deep than seditious speeches and papers. He’s been on his tail for months. He thinks he’s the brains behind the arson attacks at Howrah.’

‘The burnt godowns.’

‘Yes. Also two murders of police constables in the past eighteen months. Khan really has a bee in his bonnet about this man, and he thinks that, of late, he’s started using my name.’

‘I suppose because it’s displayed in the centre of town. You’d think he would have varied the initials, at least.’

‘Yes, you would think that.’

‘I suppose he can’t be very imaginative.’

‘If anything, I’d say the fellow was over-imaginative.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve met him; he consulted me. At least, I think he did. I have him down as a fellow who came to see me in February, I suppose at about the time he was making seditious speeches.’

‘What did he come to see you about?’

‘Oh, nerves. Nervous neuralgia. Acute toothache and pains about the jaw. I told him to drink cocoa at night and have a good long walk every day.’

‘What name did he give?’

‘Of course, I asked his name, and he came out with “Mr Mukerji”, but he’d told the nurse it was S. T. Dutt.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Pale. As Bengalis go, you understand.’

‘Hair?’

‘Yes. I mean, he wasn’t bald.’

‘Centre-parted, like mine?’

‘Yes.’

‘Moustache similar to mine?’

‘Not dissimilar. What are you driving at?’

What I was driving at was that if his features were similar to mine, then he would have looked even more like the murdered man, John Young, being closer to Young in colour. But I kept this from Dr Ganguly.

I said, ‘It seems, then, that he walked away from here with your name?’

‘And a bottle of Sloan’s Liniment that he bought off the nurse . . . Didn’t believe me, you see, when I told him that all he really needed was rest.’

‘It was reckless of him to take the name of a man who’d met him.’

‘Yes. But then he obviously is a reckless man. I gave his description to Khan and he disclosed, in a roundabout way, that this was very likely the fellow he was after.’

Dr Ganguly walked over to the window and looked down on the fuming traffic of Chowringhee. He made a half turn towards me, saying, ‘And now he’s in Jamalpur?’

‘Not necessarily,’ I said.

‘You are becoming as cryptic as Detective Inspector Khan.’

‘. . . But it is useful to discover it wasn’t you who took the train,’ I said, hoping he wouldn’t guess that I knew any more than that.

I walked up to the window, and we shook hands. We both looked down on the traffic.

‘Do you know much about women’s cycles?’ I asked Ganguly.

‘Women’s bicycles, you mean?’

‘No.’

‘Then yes, I do.’

‘Well . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘My dear sir, you have now exceeded your colleague in opacity.’


III

At eight o’clock I sat on the terrace of Willard’s Hotel. Darkness had spread over the maidan, but here the fairy lights blazed, the caged birds chirped and the fountain played, doing its best to dispel the memory of the day’s heat. There were not many on the terrace, in these evenings of the dog days. I was drinking my daily allowance of Beck’s beer and smoking a cigar I had bought at Hatzopolo’s on Lindsay Street. It was a Havana, a half corona. I had bought the cigar at five o’clock. At four, I had been standing in front of the massed typists of Chowringhee, and speaking to the man who had been summoned by his colleagues just in case I kept my promise of the day before, and had turned up again to seek a translation of the words on the two crumpled scraps of paper. The man had given me the translation. The language was similar to Bengali, but was not Bengali. It was called Hajong, or something like. It was a dialect spoken in the north-east of Bengal, towards Assam, a district lying a fair distance from Jamalpur; but still it was not impossible, according to the translator, that people around Jamalpur might know it, or might have relatives who knew it, or might use it for covert purposes. The first message translated roughly as follows:

Khan sahib, you asked of us a very hard thing. We had much trouble, but work is complete. Where is the payment?

The second said something to the effect of:

Khan sahib, thank you for payment. Sorry for trouble but it was not our making.