The Complete Adventures of Feluda: Volume I (85 page)

Since Feluda was now going to start reading the diaries, Lalmohan Babu and I decided to go for a drive soon after a cup of tea at four o’clock.

‘If we go towards the main town, we might get to hear the latest on Sultan,’ Lalmohan Babu told me. ‘Your cousin may have found a mystery related to Mahesh Chowdhury’s death, but I think an escaped tiger is much more interesting.’

We didn’t have far to go to get news of the tiger. We had to stop for petrol at a local station, where we saw another group of men gathered round someone who was speaking very rapidly. He raised a hand and pawed the air, so there was no doubt that he was talking of the tiger. Lalmohan Babu got out of the car and went forward to make enquiries. This wasn’t easy, for his Hindi was not particularly good. However, what we eventually managed to learn was this:

To the east of Hazaribagh was a forest, near the town of Vishnugarh. Sultan’s new trainer, Chandran, and a shikari from the Forest Department, had found Sultan there. Apparently, it had looked for a while that the tiger was willing to be captured, but he had then changed his mind and run away again after clawing Chandran. The shikari had shot at him, but no one knew whether the tiger was hurt. Chandran was in a hospital, but his injuries were not serious.

‘Do you know anything about Kandarikar?’ Lalmohan Babu asked his informant. I felt obliged to correct him. ‘It is Karandikar, Lalmohan Babu, not Kandarikar. He’s the old trainer.’

‘No, I don’t know anything about him,’ the man replied, ‘but I do believe the circus isn’t doing so well since the main show with the tiger is off.’

We were both curious to know how Mr Karandikar had reacted to the news of Sultan being shot at, so we went from the petrol station straight to the Great Majestic.

Normally, if Feluda accompanies us, Lalmohan Babu keeps to the background. Today, however, he walked up smartly to the man outside the main entrance and said, ‘Put me through to Mr Kutti, please.’ God knows what the man thought of this strange request, but he let us in without a word. Perhaps he had recognized us from our first visit.

We found Mr Kutti in his caravan, but what he told us sounded like another mysterious riddle. Karandikar had disappeared the previous night.

‘The audience has been demanding to see the tiger,’ Mr Kutti said. ‘I went and personally apologized to Karandikar. I promised him I wouldn’t allow anyone else to train the tiger, if it could be captured. Even so, he left without telling a soul. He used to go off occasionally, but he always came back in a few hours. This time . . . I don’t think he’s coming back.’

There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. We thanked Mr Kutti and left the circus. Lalmohan Babu said as we came out, ‘Now we’ll never get to see Sultan being captured, Tapesh. We simply won’t get another chance.’

I, too, felt sad and depressed. So we decided to go for a long drive instead of returning home. Debating over whether to go towards the Kanari Hills in the north, or Ramgarh to the south, we eventually tossed for it and got Ramgarh.

‘There are hills there, didn’t you see them that day? They’re just as beautiful,’ Lalmohan Babu remarked.

I agreed with him, and we set off in the direction of Ramgarh. Neither of us had any idea of what lay in store.

Things began to go wrong as we passed a signpost that said ‘11 kms’. To start with, Lalmohan Babu’s car—which he had bought only six months ago—hiccuped three times, slowed down and then died altogether. His driver got out to investigate. He was our only hope, for Lalmohan Babu knew nothing of cars and engines. ‘If I can move about without knowing how many bones and what muscles I have in my legs, where is the need to worry about how my car moves on its four wheels?’ he had once said to me.

We climbed out of the car and went and sat on a culvert. The sun was about to set, and the time was 5.20 p.m. There were dark
patches of clouds in the sky, behind which the sun happened to be hiding at the moment. It peeped out for just a second a little later, only to call it a day almost at once.

‘I think I’ve fixed it, sir!’ the driver called. ‘I am ready when you are.’

We rose, and I looked at my watch. It said 5.33 p.m. It is important to mention the time, for it was at this precise moment that we saw Sultan.

I might have described the event in a much more dramatic fashion, but Feluda has always told me not to use cliches and other hackneyed phrases just to create an effect. ‘Keep your descriptions brief and simple,’ he tells me often, ‘and you will see how effective that can be.’ I shall therefore try to relate what happened as briefly as possible.

I had seen a tiger in the wild before, about which I have written in
The Royal Bengal Mystery.
On that occasion, we were accompanied by several other armed men, including Feluda; and Lalmohan Babu and I were sitting on a treetop, out of harm’s way. Now, we were standing by the side of an open road that was lined by trees and woodland. There were bound to be wild bears in the wood, and it was quickly getting dark. Worst of all, Feluda was not with us.

The tiger came out of the trees to our right and appeared on the road, barely fifty yards away. All three of us saw it together, for each one turned into a statue. The driver had stretched out an arm to open a door. He stood still with an outstretched arm. Lalmohan Babu had leant forward slightly to blow his nose. He remained in that position, clutching his handkerchief. I was in the process of dusting my jeans. My hands remained stuck at my waist.

The tiger, at first, did not see us. It began to cross the road, took four steps, then suddenly stopped and turned its head to look at us.

My legs began shaking and a hammering started in my chest. Yet, I could not move my eyes away from the tiger. Out of the corner of my eye, I could vaguely see the outline of Lalmohan Babu’s body getting lower and lower, which could only mean that his legs were going numb and were unable to support the weight of his body. Then my vision began to blur. The figure of the tiger became hazy, and its stripes suddenly started to vibrate.

It is impossible to say how Song Sultan stared at us. The time seemed endless. Lalmohan Babu likes to call it eight to ten minutes, but I think it was eight to ten seconds. Even so, it was a long time.

Once he had finished looking at us, Sultan simply turned his head away, crossed over to the other side and made for the wood. We saw him gradually disappear among the tall trees.

Strangely enough, we remained rooted to the spot for nearly a whole minute even after Sultan had gone (Lalmohan Babu said fifteen minutes). Then we uttered only three words before getting back into the car. The driver said, ‘Sir!’; I said ‘Coming!’; and Lalmohan Babu said ‘G-go!’ Fortunately, it turned out that the driver’s nerves were strong and steady. He began to drive with admirable equanimity. Apparently, when he used to work in Jamshedpur before, he had once seen a tiger by the roadside.

We returned home to find Feluda still deeply engrossed in Mr Chowdhury’s diaries. I knew Lalmohan Babu was dying to tell him about our experience, so I said nothing. Instead of coming straight to the point, he decided to create a preamble. First, he began humming a tune, then remarked casually, ‘Tell me Tapesh, tigers have padded feet, don’t they?’

‘Yes, so I’ve heard,’ I replied, hiding a smile.

‘It must be true, for we didn’t hear its footsteps, did we? And we were only a few feet away!’

Sadly, this great build-up to his story had no effect on Feluda. He didn’t even look at us. All he did was put one diary away, pick up another and say, ‘If you have seen the tiger, you should tell the Forest Department immediately about the exact spot and the time it was seen.’

‘The time was 5.33 and the place was near a culvert close to the “11 kms” signpost on the road to Ramgarh.’

‘Good. There’s a directory in the living room. The Forest Department’s office will be closed at this hour, but you can look up the residential number of the Chief Forest Officer and inform him. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.’

Lalmohan Babu licked his lips. ‘You are asking me to ring the officer?’

‘Yes. You saw the tiger, I didn’t.’

‘That’s true. So what should I tell him? “The tiger which escaped from the circus . . .”?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Go on.’

I found the number in the directory. Perhaps I should have made the phone call as well, for Lalmohan Babu picked up the phone, coughed twice and said, ‘Er . . . the circus that escaped from the
Great Majestic tiger . . . oh sorry!’

Luckily, Feluda had heard him from the next room. He rushed in, snatched the receiver from his hand and passed on the information himself.

Bulakiprasad brought us tea in our room. He had already told Feluda about the attempt made to catch Sultan, and Chandran being injured in the process. It was Feluda’s belief that no one but Karandikar could catch the tiger alive.

Lalmohan Babu took a long, noisy sip from his cup and asked, ‘Did you find anything interesting in those diaries? Or was Arun Babu right?’

‘You tell me.’ Feluda opened a diary and pushed it towards Lalmohan Babu.

‘Self elected president of club—meeting on 8.4.46,’ he read aloud. ‘Tea party at Brig. Sudarshan’s, and, on a different page—Trial for new suit at Shakur’s . . . why, Felu Babu, you think any of this stuff has any relevance?’

‘Topshe, have a look and tell me what you think.’

I had been leaning over Lalmohan Babu’s shoulder. Now I picked the diary up.

‘Bring it closer to the light,’ Feluda ordered. I went forward and put it directly under a table lamp. A shiver of excitement ran down my spine.

The diary was fairly large in size. The main entries had been made in ink, but on the top of the page, over the printed date, something had been scribbled with a hard pencil. The words were barely legible.

‘Why, this seems to be a message of some kind!’ I exclaimed. ‘Read it out.’

‘Conveyance destroyed because of two.’

Good heavens, more puzzles?’ Lalmohan Babu gave a start. ‘Yes. Now look at this. This is the first diary, going back to 1938.’ On the very first page, Mr Chowdhury had written: ‘Shambhu is ruled by two and five.’

‘Who is Shambhu?’ Lalmohan Babu asked, surprised. ‘Shambhu is another name for Shiva, like Mahesh. Mr
Chowdhury referred to himself in his diaries by using various names for Shiva.’

‘All right, but what’s this about “two and five”?’

‘Do you know about the six deadly sins that Hindus believe in?’

‘The six
ripus?
Yes, yes. They are . . . let me see . . .
kaam, krodh, lobh, maud, moha, matsarya.’

‘Yes, but not in that order. The correct order is
kaam, krodh, lobh, moha, maud, matsarya.
What do they mean?’

‘Lust, wrath, greed, attachment, drinking, envy.’

‘Right. So two and five are wrath and drinking.’

‘I see, I see. That’s easy, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Now if you look at the message Topshe read out, you’ll get his meaning.’

I had, in fact, already worked it out. ‘Conveyance destroyed because of two. Could that mean car destroyed because of wrath? Because of his temper?’ I offered.

‘Shabaash. But there’s more. I have not yet been able to understand what the second message means, and that involves these same six numbers.’

Feluda had marked the pages where coded messages appeared. He opened one of these and showed it to us. ‘2+5=X’, it said.

‘X is an unknown quantity, isn’t it?’ Lalmohan Babu asked. ‘Why don’t you just ignore it? Why are you assuming every strange message has a significant meaning?’

‘If a man writes a code on just twenty occasions in a whole year—and don’t forget he writes in that diary three hundred and sixty-five times—then I must assume every code has a special meaning. I just have to work harder to find out what it is, that’s all.’

‘Isn’t there anything else in the diary that might help?’

‘No, but there’s another message ten days after he wrote 2+5=X. Look!’ I read the message Feluda pointed out: ‘Old friend—herbal hair oil. Calms two.’

‘A hair oil that might help him control his temper? This one’s easy, Felu Babu. Only, I can’t make out why he calls it an old friend. Maybe he’d been using it for a long time?’

‘No. You didn’t pay attention to the “dash” after the word “friend”. It can only mean an old friend is in some way related to the oil.’

‘Akhil Chakravarty! He knows about ayurvedic herbs, doesn’t he? He must have given the oil to his friend!’ I exclaimed.

‘Very good, Topshe. Now read these other messages.’

There were two. The first said, ‘Getting rid of five from today.’ That meant he gave up drinking. But, only a month later, he wrote: ‘Bholanath goes back to five. Five helps forget.’

‘The question is, what did he want to forget so desperately?’ Feluda muttered. Lalmohan Babu looked at me, I scratched my head. Now it was obvious why Mr Chowdhury had said his life was full of mysteries. Feluda opened another diary and showed us one more message. ‘I am as feather today. I took charge of SM. SM will be my salvation.’

‘SM is Shankarlal Misra, surely?’ I said. ‘But why is he as a feather?’

‘I think that simply means “light as a feather”,’ Feluda replied. ‘He was happy and possibly relieved by something. Maybe a load had been lifted from his mind. Taking charge of young Shankarlal clearly had a lot to do with it.’

Feluda rose and began pacing. I sat staring at the diaries. If Mahesh Chowdhury had lived a little longer, he and Feluda would have got on very well. Feluda was just as interested in word games and riddles. Lalmohan Babu was sitting quietly, frowning thoughtfully. After a while, he said, ‘Why don’t you have a chat with Akhil Chakravarty? He knew him pretty closely, didn’t he? He made his horoscope, gave him ayurvedic medicines . . . surely he’ll be able to tell you a lot more about the man than his diaries?

Feluda stopped pacing and lit a Charminar. ‘I was trying to get to know the man myself, through his thoughts. Those few messages written with a pencil have kept him alive.’

‘Did you find anything about his sons? Did he mention any of them?’

‘There isn’t much in the first fifteen years. But later—’ Feluda broke off. A car had arrived outside. It stopped and tooted at the gate.

We came out on the veranda to find Arun Babu getting out of his Fiat. In his hand was a small packet.

‘I was on my way to see Mr Singh—he’s our Forest Officer,’ he explained. ‘Since your house was on the way, I thought I’d stop by and give you Biren’s letters. They can hardly be called letters, mind you, but you wanted to see them, so . . .’ he shrugged.

‘I’m very sorry if I have caused you any trouble. You must have a lot on your plate,’ Feluda said.

‘No, no, it’s no trouble at all. Frankly, I cannot imagine what Baba might have tried to say. See if you can figure out his meaning. I hardly knew my father, you see. My visits to Hazaribagh have always been short. I used to come here frequently in the past to go on shikar, but now big game has been banned. However, I may get a chance tomorrow. Let’s see.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That’s the reason why I am going to see Mr Singh. I believe the tiger has been spotted near Ramgarh. One of its trainers is lying in hospital, and the other has disappeared. I’ve already spoken to Mr Singh. “If you must have the tiger killed,” I said, “let me do the job.” It’s already been shot at. If it was injured, it’s now a most dangerous beast.’

I opened my mouth to say the tiger hadn’t appeared to be injured, but shut it at a glance from Feluda.

‘I am taking my .315 with me,’ Arun Babu continued. ‘There’s panic everywhere. I believe it attacked a herd of goats in a village. I don’t think being killed in a forest is in any way worse than growing old in a cage in a circus. Anyway, you can come tomorrow, if you’re interested. We’ll leave early in the morning.’

‘OK. Let’s see how far I can get with this other job I am trying to tackle. My going with you would have to depend on that. Oh, by the way . . .

Arun Babu had turned to go. At Feluda’s words, he turned back again.

‘It was you who fired the shot that day at the picnic, wasn’t it?’ Feluda asked.

Arun Babu laughed. ‘I see what you mean. You must be wondering what happened. I fired a shot, but didn’t produce a dead bird. Your detective’s mind finds that suspicious, doesn’t it? The truth is, Mr Mitter, I missed it. It was a partridge. Sometimes even the best of shikaris miss their targets.’