Bhowani Junction (40 page)

I said, ‘Well, they got off somewhere to rest and have a meal and go on in a later train. Or they decided to spend the night at Shahpur. They do things like that. The ticket allows them to.’

The A.S.M. said, ‘Those possibilities had not eluded me, Mr Taylor. But Stationmaster Pipalkhera in meantime examined bangle and found inscribed on it, as mark of ownership in just such eventuality as this, the name Kasel. We were thinking perhaps Mr Ranjit Singh Kasel might be knowing information that would help us to locate owner of bangle. Most probable owner is Sirdarni-sahiba his mother, but that lady left for foreign trip on Ninety-eight Up Express. So here is further small element of mystery in affair.’

I thought about it, but I shall be damned if I could see what there was I could do, or even what there was that needed doing by anyone. So I told the A.S.M. to get hold of Ranjit Singh Kasel in the morning. In the meantime, my God, I was not a lost-property office.

I went back to bed and tried to go to sleep, but as soon as I lay down to sleep the sleep ran away and I was thinking of Victoria as a baby, as a little girl, as a woman, the thousand things we had done together.

Then I got to thinking other thoughts about her, so to stop myself thinking about Victoria I began to think about the bangle. What could be the solution? I have read millions of jolly good detective stories, and this was like the same thing. This story about the bangle would be like a due, and the detective from Scotland Yard (me) would have to work out where the lady was, because she would be the murdered man’s first wife. Of course, the purdah ladies might have got off at any station, and there was no reason why anyone should report it. But suppose they hadn’t? Suppose it wasn’t the murdered man’s first wife, but the master criminal in disguise. Then he’d
have to get off between stations. But he couldn’t, because it would be terribly risky, except in the Mayni Tunnel.

I nearly fell out of bed as the thought struck me. Suppose the purdah ladies were bolshevist women! The Indian women are the worst; Congress had some really terrible ones—like demons, they looked in their pictures, and their speeches made your blood run cold. Suppose three of them had dynamite hidden under their burqas. Both ends of the Mayni Tunnel were guarded by watchmen, but a bolshie could get in by buying a ticket on an up-train and stepping out when it was going very slowly up the bank in the tunnel in all the smoke and darkness. That was why they had travelled second-class, my God, because the upper-class compartments are nearly always empty except on mails and expresses.

I lay back and lit a cigarette. It was really a silly story. I daren’t wake up Colonel Savage with a story like that, not after what I had done to him to-day of all times. The thought of getting all the Gurkhas up at one o’clock and driving fifty miles and then finding nothing, and the purdah ladies arriving at Chakraj Nawada on the next train, was like being surprised in the lavatory by a lady; it made me blush and shiver. Actually it would not be as bad as that, because the colonel wouldn’t send anyone out. He would just tear into me and be sarcastic, and I would deserve it.

I sat up again. The troop trains were going through tonight. I got out of bed and walked up and down. I went twice to the telephone. Each time I walked away again. I cursed and swore and groaned. Then I fairly ran to the telephone, grabbed it up, and shouted at the operator and got Colonel Savage’s number. Whatever they did to me, I had my duty to do.

The colonel sounded quite wide awake when he came on the line. I said, ‘This is Taylor here, sir.’ Then I stopped. I couldn’t go on with this balderdash.

I thought he would be in a terrible temper—as, my God, he could be—but when he spoke again he spoke very nicely and gently. He said, ‘What’s the matter?’ and he called me Patrick.

I began to explain the whole thing to him, but the moment I
said that the three women had not reached Chakraj Nawada, he said, ‘The Mayni Tunnel. Tell me the rest later. Bring your rifle and get to the Collector’s bungalow as fast as you can.’ He rang off.

I threw on my chothes and was up at the Collector’s very quickly. When I got there I found Ranjit there with Govindaswami. I suppose Mr Stevenage had gone to bed. Govindaswami said, ‘Miss Jones has given me the outline of the story. Tell us the rest. The troops won’t be ready for a few minutes yet. Ranjit came back to dinner here. He’s been here ever since. We had a lot to talk about.’

So I explained about the bangle and everything, and Ranjit first looked sad and then he looked grim, and he said, ‘My mother
must
have gone to Bombay. I can’t think of anything that would be more important to her than that. But the bangle. It sounds——’ He stopped and thought and said, ‘But I think she must have given that bangle to K. P. Roy to help him disguise himself for this.’

‘It might have been only to help him raise money,’ Govindaswami said—to save Kasel from thinking that his mother was in such a murderous plot, I suppose. But Kasel said, ‘I don’t think so. The bangle probably got weakened and broken by being on a man’s ankle instead of a woman’s.’

The Colonel Savage hurried in with Victoria. He said, ‘Five minutes, Collector.’ He turned to me and said, ‘Why don’t we stop all rail traffic until we’ve searched the line?’

I said, ‘We could, sir, but I don’t think we are really sure enough, are we? If you stop the trains now, with all the troop specials and the grain specials going down to the famine area, it would really be worse than wrecking a single train.’

Govindaswami thought for a time. He said at last, ‘All right. Especially as I think we can be in time. There is nothing due through now before the troop specials?’

I said, There is an up goods. Roy won’t touch that though, will he?’

Govindaswami went out to telephone. Inside the study I waited a minute or two with the others, and Victoria had a carbine just like the colonel’s, and I couldn’t hold my tongue
any longer, but said respectfully, ‘I don’t think this is the proper kind of affair which Miss Jones ought to attend, Colonel.’

He looked at her, and then he said, ‘Nothing women do is quite proper. But she’s coming, to see you catch Roy.’ That was rather a cruel thing to say, when he knew I would probably shoot one of his Gurkhas by mistake, but he couldn’t help being cruel, and Victoria said, ‘Yes, I’m coming, Patrick,’ so I shut up.

Then Lieutenant Glass, the officer who had been adjutant of the Gurkhas since Lieutenant Macaulay was murdered, hurried in and said everything was ready. I squeezed into the back seat of the jeep beside Victoria. Colonel Savage sat in front, driving, with a Gurkha I didn’t know beside him. He was an older man than Birkhe, and Colonel Savage called him Mandhoj and seemed to be just as pally with him as he had been with Birkhe. It was rather shocking, really, to think how quickly they forget people in the Army.
I
wouldn’t have had another orderly for a long time.

The Austin followed us with Govindaswami and Kasel and two armed constables. After that there was a jeep with a wireless set and another with several Gurkhas; then a lot of the Dodge lorries and then another jeep. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the night was dark and gusty, and big pools of water lay in the road and on the Collector’s grass.

We started off down the Pike, and the colonel said over his shoulder, ‘Victoria, tell him the plan. And try not to do another Absalom this time, Patrick.’

Absalom was a fellow in the Bible who caught his hair in a tree. My hair is quite short, and it couldn’t possibly get caught in a tree. Anyway, the branches were twelve or fifteen feet above our heads, so Colonel Savage had no need to warn me about that.

Victoria explained the plan. When we got near the Mayni Tunnel the Gurkhas would split up into four parties. One would go to the north portal, which was nearest us, and block any escape that way. One would do the same at the south portal. A third party would go up the hill, to the outlet of the
ventilation shaft, which takes off from a stores chamber about half-way through the tunnel. The fourth party, which we were going with, would sweep the tunnel from south to north. There were other bits in the plan too. Lieutenant Glass was going to Shahpur station, and there were going to be walkie-talkies and other wireless sets and field-telephone lines, and more soldiers in reserve on the road and hiding everywhere in the jungle.

While Victoria was telling me all this the colonel must have been listening because he said, ‘Masterly. If you’d let me iron out those hillocks under your shirt I’m sure you could stay on with us for ever. Nigel wouldn’t notice.’

She said, ‘I’m not sure that the brigadier wouldn’t prefer it, sir.’ They both laughed. They were in awfully good temper, but somehow they included me in it, so I didn’t feel bad.

The lights of the Austin threw our shadows in front of us and glittered in the water and mud that splashed out from under our wheels. The Deccan Pike runs like in a tunnel itself there, only the top is not stone or earth but the trees, which meet and sometimes twine together. We passed many bullock carts grinding slowly through the darkness. We forded the Cheetah a mile below the Karode railway bridge. The water was up to our axles, but it would soon go down, and the big ferryboats were still hauled up on the bank. The river does not stay deep enough for them until nearly the middle of July.

We had been going fast for a long time when the colonel slowed down and stopped. The convoy came up behind the little Austin and stopped. A lot of officers ran forward. The colonel held a quick conference and said, ‘No lights from here on. Any questions?’ Everyone knew what to do, and in less than five minutes we were on the move again.

The jeep hummed quietly. I would have said the night was pitch-black, but there must have been some light for Colonel Savage and the Gurkha drivers behind, because we went at a fast running pace. About there we came on a bullock cart go ing the same way as us, and passed it silently. The driver yelped with fright as we crept up on him out of the darkness and rolled silently by.

Again the jeep stopped. Victoria whispered, The party for
the north portal is leaving its vehicles here.’ I knew all that road very well of course, and the north portal was about half a mile away to the left. I was glad to notice that Victoria’s voice trembled. I was not afraid myself at all at that time, except that I should do something wrong.

After a minute we started off again and five minutes later stopped again, for the party that was going to the ventilation shaft. Five minutes after that we stopped once more, and all got out. The Austin and the lorries closed up. The Gurkhas slid down, split into groups, and moved off the road. The jeep at the back of the convoy crawled past us and went on south, a Gurkha in the back throwing out cable from a drum as it went. Two Gurkhas passed close to me on foot, carrying another drum on a stick between them. The sky was a little lighter over us, and I saw the nodding rod aerials of the wireless sets. I expected to see the bayonets shining, but I remembered that this was a war battalion. The men’s bayonets were black. They had been sandblasted years ago to give out no reflections. The colonel tapped me on the shoulder, and I got into a rough line with him and a lot of Gurkhas, and we started up the hill to the left of the road.

For a few minutes we hurried through scrub jungle and spear-grass; then everyone stopped. Already I was soaked to the waist, and the trees kept dripping on our heads. We were on top of a steep bank, and at the bottom there were four faintly shining curves—two pairs of rails. We were just above the south portal of the Mayni Tunnel, on the down side. On our right there was the tall post of Shahpur Up Distant signal with its red light, and beyond that a dim glow in the clouds, reflected up from Shahpur station.

Everyone sat down on the top of the cutting. We were so wet it made no difference. I heard a rumble, and beside me Victoria looked at the sky, but I knew it was a train in the tunnel—the up goods. All the same it was a disturbing noise, just as if it had been thunder coming closer. Shahpur Up Distant flicked to green, and a second later we heard the clang of the falling signal. The rumbling grew louder. My God, I am a railwayman, but as I held my breath and listened that
noise could have been coming from anywhere, and it was like being in another world to be sitting there among a lot of soldiers with a rifle across my knees. I stood up, and my shoes creaked, and a gust of wind blew a shower of raindrops on to me from the trees. The night smelled of the rain and the perspiration on the Gurkhas.

The rumble became very loud. Now it sounded like steel and had a heavy rhythm, like a big steel drum. The earth shook, and I heard the rails singing. The curved rails began to shine, then the shadows got so strong you could see the shape of each stone of ballast and the edges of every fishplate and sleeper. The wind still blew in gusts, and now, in the headlight, the brown grass on the banks of the cutting seemed to run slowly about as the wind blew over it and the water hissed in it. The engine came out of the tunnel with a big
whoof
. Its searchlight showed up every blade of wet grass and made the lines curve off in front like snakes of light. The fireman opened his firebox door, and I sank down. Now it was a strong violet light shining back on the stone-faced arch of the tunnel portal, on the banks of the cutting, on us. Then it was gone, and thousands of red sparks drifted down on us in the wet wind.

The train passed at last. As soon as the brake van passed with its red light shining, and Shahpur Up Distant changed back to red, and the counterweight clanged down, and the driver up there shut off steam because he had come over Mayni Summit, we slithered down the sides of the cutting.

Some Gurkhas stayed outside the mouth of the tunnel, where we woke up a sleepy and frightened watchman. The rest of us moved in. A brick-lined drainage ditch runs down the centre between the two pairs of rails. We went in in five columns—one along each wall, one between each pair of rails, one along the ditch. No one made a sound except me, and I realized they must all be wearing their P.T. shoes. I took my shoes off as quickly as I could and went on in my socks. Savage was the third man in the middle column, in the ditch, with his new orderly, Mandhoj, just behind him. I was immediately behind Mandhoj, and Victoria behind me. Govindaswami was somewhere on the right with his policemen, and Kasel on the left.