The Complete Adventures of Feluda: Volume II (9 page)

7/1 Ballygunj Park stood with clear and visible signs of age and decay. Naturally, if its owners had had the means to remove those signs, they would have done so. It could only mean that the Dattas were not doing all that well financially.

If there was a garden, it was possibly at the back. The front of the house had a circular grassy patch, in the middle of which stood a disused fountain. Gravelled paths ran from the grassy patch to the porch. A marble plaque on the front gate said, Golok Lodge. That appeared to intrigue Feluda. Subir Datta explained that his grandfather was called Golok Bihari Datta. It was he who had had the house built.

Inside, Golok Lodge still bore signs of its past elegance. Three steps from the porch led to a marble landing. A marble staircase to its left went to the first floor. Through an open door in front of me, I could see a corridor which ran alongside the two flats which were let. To the left of this corridor was a huge hall, which the Dattas had retained. At one time, lively parties had been held in it.

We were taken to the living room upstairs, which was directly above the hall. Hanging from the ceiling was a chandelier, wrapped in a cloth. Its main stem had several branches, but clearly it was never going to be lit again. On one of the walls hung a huge mirror set in a gilded frame. Subir Datta told us it had come from Belgium. There was a thick carpet on the floor, but it was so badly worn in many places that, through those gaps, the marble floor was exposed. It was chequered, like a black and white chessboard.

Mr Datta switched on a lamp, which dispelled some of the darkness. As we were about to sit down, we heard a noise in the passage outside. Tap, tap, tap, tap!

It was a combination of a pair of slippers and a stick.

The sound stopped just outside the threshold, then the owner of the stick entered the room. We remained standing.

‘I heard some new voices. So these are our visitors?’

The man had a deep, mellow voice that seemed to go very well
with his height, which must have been around six feet. All his hair was white and a little dishevelled. He was wearing a fine cotton kurta and silk pyjamas. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. The explosion had affected not just his eyes, but also other parts of his face. Even in the dim light of the lamp, we could see that clearly.

Subir Datta went forward to help his brother. ‘Sit down, Dada.’

‘Yes. Ask our guests to sit down first.’

‘Namaskar,’ said Feluda. ‘My name is Prodosh Mitter. On my left is my cousin, Topesh.’

‘Namaskar!’ I said gently. It would have been a bit pointless to raise my hands since Nihar Datta could not see me.

‘Mr Mitter is possibly as tall as myself, and his cousin is five feet seven inches, or may be seven and a half?’

‘I am five seven,’ I said quickly, silently applauding Nihar Datta for his accurate guesses.

‘Please sit down, both of you,’ Nihar Datta sat down himself, without taking any assistance from his brother.

‘Have you ordered tea?’

‘Yes, I have,’ replied Subir Datta.

Feluda got straight down to business, as was his wont. ‘When you were doing your research, you had a partner, didn’t you?’

Subir Datta moved restlessly in his chair, which implied that he knew about the partner, and was perhaps feeling a little awkward for not having told us.

‘No, I wouldn’t call him a partner,’ said Nihar Datta. ‘He was my assistant, Suprakash Choudhury. He had been a student in America, but he could not have got much further without my help.’

‘Do you know where he is, or what he’s doing now?’

‘No.’

‘Didn’t he stay in touch with you after the accident?’

‘No. He lacked concentration. Biochemistry wasn’t his only interest in life—he had various other distractions.’

‘What caused the explosion? Negligence?’

‘I was never negligent, or careless. Not consciously.’

The tea arrived. The atmosphere in the room had turned sombre. I cast a sidelong glance at Subir Datta. He, too, seemed a little tense. Feluda was looking straight at Nihar Datta’s dark glasses.

There were samosas and sweets to go with the tea. I picked up a plate. Feluda did not appear interested in the food at all. He lit a
Charminar and said, ‘So your research remained incomplete? I mean, no one else did anything after—?’

‘If anyone had done any useful work in that subject, I would certainly have heard about it.’

‘Do you happen to know for sure that Suprakash did not do any further research afterwards?’

‘Look, all I know is that there is no way he could have proceeded without my notes. The notes related to the last stages of my research were kept safely in my own personal locker. No one from outside could have had access to them. All those papers came back to India with me, and I have now got them. If I could complete my research, Mr Mitter, I know one thing for sure. It wouldn’t have been difficult to win the Nobel Prize. Treatment for cancer would have been revolutionized!’

Feluda picked up his cup. By that time, I had already sipped the tea and realized that it was of such high quality that even Feluda— who was always fussy about his tea—was going to be satisfied with it. But I didn’t get the chance to see his face when he took his first sip.

The light suddenly went out. Loadshedding.

‘Over the last few days, we’ve been having a power cut about this time in the evenings,’ said Subir Datta, leaving his chair. ‘Koumudi!’

Outside, it was not yet completely dark. Subir Datta went out to look for their servant.

‘A power cut?’ asked Nihar Datta. Then he sighed and added, ‘It makes no difference to me!’

At this moment, a grandfather clock suddenly started striking, startling everyone. It was six o’clock.

Subir Datta returned, followed by Koumudi, who was carrying a candle. Once it was placed on the centre table, every face became visible again. Two yellow points began glowing on Nihar Datta’s dark glasses: the flame on the candle.

Feluda sipped his tea and looked once more at Nihar Datta. ‘Suppose your notes fell into the hands of some other biochemist, would he gain a lot?’

‘If you think the Nobel Prize is a gain, then yes, most certainly he would gain a lot.’

‘Do you think the burglar came looking particularly for your notes in your room?’

‘No, I have no reason to believe that.’

‘I have one more question. Who else knows about your notes?’

‘There are plenty of people in scientific circles who might be able to guess—or assume—that I have such notes. The people in this house know about their existence. And so does my secretary, Ranajit.’

‘When you say the people in this house . . . do you mean your tenants as well?’

‘I have no idea how much they know. Both are businessmen. Papers related to scientific research should not be of any interest to them. But then, these days, everything under the sun can be bought and sold, can’t it? So why not a scientist’s research data? Not every scientist is a paragon of virtue, is he?’

Nihar Datta rose. So did we.

‘May I see your room?’ Feluda asked.

Nihar Datta stopped at the threshold. ‘Yes, certainly. Subir will take you. I must go up to the roof now, for my evening walk.’

All four of us went out into the passage outside. It was much darker than before. Candles flickered in various rooms that lined the passage. Nihar Datta went towards the staircase, tapping his stick. I heard him mutter under his breath, ‘I’ve counted the steps. Seventeen steps from here, turn left, and there’s the staircase. Seven plus eight. . . fifteen steps to climb, and then there’s the roof. Call me if you need me . . .!’

Nihar Datta’s bedroom turned out to be large. An old-fashioned bed took up quite a lot of room on one side. A small, round table stood by the bed. On it was a glass of water covered with a lid, and about ten tablets sealed in aluminium foil. Perhaps they were sleeping pills.

Next to the table was a window. An easy chair was placed before it. Clearly, the chair had been in use for a long time, for its backrest had developed a dark patch. It could be that Nihar Datta spent much of his time resting in that chair.

In addition to this furniture, there was a desk with a flickering candle on it; a steel chair faced the desk, which had writing material on it, a rack to store letters, an old typewriter, and a pile of scientific journals.

A steel Godrej safe stood by the desk, to the left of the door.

Feluda ran his eye quickly over the whole room before taking out a mini torch from his pocket to examine the keyhole on the safe. ‘Yes, someone did try very hard to open it. It’s full of scratches.’ Then he moved to the table and picked up the tablets. ‘Soneril . . . yes, I thought as much! If Mr Datta wasn’t used to taking a strong sleeping pill every night, he would have woken up.’

Koumudi was hovering near the door. Feluda turned to him. ‘How come
you
didn’t wake up, either? Is this how you guard your babu?’

Koumudi hung his head. ‘I’m afraid he’s a heavy sleeper,’ Subir Datta informed us. ‘When he’s asleep, I have to call him at least three times before he wakes up.’

There were footsteps outside. A man of about thirty entered the room. He was slim, wore glasses and had wavy hair. Mr Datta introduced us. He turned out to be Nihar Datta’s secretary, Ranajit Banerjee.

‘Who won?’

Feluda’s unexpected question was meant for Mr Banerjee. He was so taken aback by it that he could only stare. Feluda laughed. ‘I can see the counterfoil of your ticket in your shirt pocket. Besides, your face looks sunburnt, so it’s not really that difficult to guess that you went to watch a major League game!’

Mr Banerjee smiled in return. ‘East Bengal,’ he replied. Mr Datta was also smiling, with a mixture of surprise and appreciation.

‘How long have you been working here?’

‘Four years.’

‘Has Mr Nihar Datta ever spoken about the explosion?’

‘I asked him, but he did not say very much. But sometimes, even without realizing it, he talks of the terrible damage caused by his loss of vision.’

‘Does he speak of anything else?’

Mr Banerjee thought for a moment. ‘There’s one thing I’ve heard him say. He says that if he’s still alive, it is because a job remains unfinished. I haven’t dared ask him what it is. Perhaps he still hopes to finish his research.’

‘But obviously he can’t do it himself. Maybe he thinks he can get someone else to work for him. Could that be it?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘What are your working hours?’

‘I come at nine, and leave at six. Today, I wanted to leave early to see the game. Mr Datta raised no objection. But if I leave the house
during the day, I normally drop by in the evening. In case he has . . .’

‘Where is the key to that safe kept?’ Feluda interrupted him. ‘Under that pillow.’

Feluda lifted the pillow and picked up a key ring. Five keys were hanging from it. He chose the right one and opened the safe.

‘Where’s the money?’

‘In that drawer,’ Mr Banerjee pointed at a drawer. Feluda pulled it open.

‘Wh-wh-what!’

Mr Banerjee gasped in horror. Even in the dim candlelight, I could see that he had gone visibly pale.

Inside the drawer was a rolled up parchment, which turned out to be a horoscope; and in an old wooden Kashmiri box, there were some old letters. Nothing else.

‘How . . . how is it possible?’ Mr Banerjee could barely whisper. ‘Three bundles of hundred-rupee notes . . . about thirty-three thousand rupees . . .’

‘The research papers? Were they in this other drawer?’

Mr Banerjee nodded. Feluda opened it. The second drawer was completely empty.

Tap, tap, tap, tap! Nihar Datta was coming down the stairs. ‘There was a long envelope . . . with a seal from the University of Michigan . . . it had all the notes . . .!’ Mr Banerjee’s throat had clearly gone quite dry.

‘Was the money here this morning? And the research papers?’

‘Yes, I saw it myself,’ Subir Datta told us. ‘The numbers on all the hundred-rupee notes have been noted down. My brother has always insisted on that.’

Feluda’s face looked grim. ‘It means that the money and the papers were stolen in the last fifteen minutes—soon after the power cut began, when we were sitting in your living room.’

Nihar Datta entered the room. It was clear from his face that he had heard everything. We stepped out of his way as he went and sat on his easy chair. ‘Just imagine!’ he said with a sigh. ‘The thief walked away with his loot from under the detective’s nose!’

We left him and went out to the corridor. ‘Is there another staircase anywhere, apart from the one we used?’ Feluda asked Subir Datta.

‘Yes. There’s a staircase at the back, which the cleaners use.’

‘Do you have a power cut at the same time every day?’

‘Over the last ten days or so, yes, we’ve been having a power cut
every evening, from six to ten o’clock. Some people have started to set their watch by it!’

I tried to think if a similar thing had happened before in Feluda’s career as a detective. Not a single instance came to mind.

‘Has either of your tenants returned?’ Feluda asked as we reached the top of the stairs.

‘We can find out. They normally return about this time.’ Opposite that landing on the ground floor was the door to Mr Dastur’s flat. The door was closed and it wasn’t difficult to see that the room behind it was in complete darkness.

‘We have to go to the rear of the house to find Sukhwani,’ said Subir Datta.

We walked down a path that ran alongside a garden to reach Sukhwani’s flat. There was a fluorescent light on in his front room, the kind that is operated by a battery.

He heard our footsteps and emerged on the veranda. He could see Feluda’s torchlight, but naturally could not see the people behind it. Mr Datta spoke, ‘May we come in for a minute?’

Mr Sukhwani’s expression underwent a rapid change as he recognized his landlord’s voice. ‘Certainly, certainly!’

When he heard Feluda’s name and learnt the purpose of our visit, he grew quite agitated. ‘You see, Mr Mitter, my room is full of valuable things. Any mention of theft and burglary gives me a heart attack! So you can imagine how I felt when I heard this morning about the attempted burglary upstairs!’

Honestly, I could not have imagined that a room could be crammed with so many valuable objects. There were at least thirty statuettes made of stone, brass and bronze, many of them of either Buddha or various forms of Shiv. Apart from those, there were pictures, books, old maps, pots and vases, shields and swords, spittoons, hookahs and containers for
ittar.
Feluda told me later, ‘If only I had the money, Topshe! I’d have bought at least the books and those prints!’

Mr Sukhwani had returned ten minutes before the power cut, he said.

‘Did anyone come this side in those ten minutes? I can see that the second staircase going up is right behind your flat. Did you hear any noise from that side?’

Mr Sukhwani had heard nothing, as he had gone straight into his bathroom. ‘Besides, how could I have seen anyone in the dark? By the way, do you really think an outsider did it?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Have you spoken to Mr Dastur?’ Mr Sukhwani’s tone implied that if we spoke to Mr Dastur, we would see immediately that if anyone should be under suspicion, it was Dastur.

Before Feluda could say anything, Mr Sukhwani added, ‘He is a most peculiar character. I know I should not speak like this about my neighbour, but I’ve been watching him for some time. Before I actually met him, all I could hear through his window was the sound of his snoring. I bet that sound reached the first floor!’

From the way a smile hovered on Subir Datta’s lips, Sukhwani’s remark was not an exaggeration.

‘Then, one morning, he came to borrow my typewriter. That’s when I first met him. I tell you, I didn’t at all like the greedy way in which he was looking at everything in this room! Out of simple curiosity, I asked him what he did for a living. So he said he sold electrical goods. If that’s the case, why doesn’t he get himself a battery light and a fan, when we have power cuts every day? The whole business is highly suspicious.’

Mr Sukhwani stopped. We took the opportunity to rise. Before we left, Feluda said, ‘If you notice anything odd, please inform Mr Datta. It will help us in our work.’

As we began walking down the same path to go back to the front of the house, we heard a taxi toot its horn outside. Then we saw a man on the gravelled path, making his way to the porch. Even in the dim light, I could see that he was of medium height and rather plump. He was wearing a brown suit, and had a neatly trimmed, salt-and-pepper French beard. In his hand was a briefcase, possibly new.

He turned towards us. ‘Good evening!’ Subir Datta greeted him. The man looked taken aback. Perhaps he wasn’t used to hearing ‘Good morning!’ and ‘Good evening!’ from other people in the building. But he returned the greeting.

‘Good evening, Mr Datta!’

His voice was extraordinarily squeaky. He turned to go, but Feluda whispered, ‘Stop him!’ Subir Datta obeyed instantly. ‘Er . . . Mr Dastur!’

Mr Dastur stopped. We strode forward to join him. When Mr Datta explained what had happened, he appeared perfectly amazed. ‘You mean all that happened in just a few minutes? Your brother must be terribly upset!’ he exclaimed.

Feluda had once told me that, sometimes, if a person is profoundly moved or shaken, his voice can change so much that it may well be impossible to recognize it. When Mr Dastur spoke those words, with a mixture of surprise and fear, I noticed that the squeakiness in his voice disappeared completely. It sounded as if a totally different person had spoken.

‘When you arrived, did you see anyone go out of this building?’ Feluda asked him.

‘Why, no!’ Mr Dastur replied. ‘But then, I could easily have missed seeing him in the dark. Thank God I don’t have anything valuable in my flat!’

‘Who’s there?’ asked a voice from the landing on the first floor. It was Nihar Datta. We were standing on the front steps near the porch. Now we went back into the house and looked up. Even in the dark, Nihar Datta’s glasses were shining.

‘It’s me, Mr Datta!’ Mr Dastur responded. ‘Your brother just told me about your loss. My commiserations!’

The dark glasses moved away. In a few seconds, so did the sound of his slippers and his stick.

‘Won’t you come in?’ Mr Dastur invited us. ‘After a hard day’s work, it is very nice to have some company.’

Feluda raised no objection. I could see why. It is a detective’s first job to get to know the people in a house where a crime has been committed.

After Mr Sukhwani’s room, the barrenness of Dastur’s was really striking. The only pieces of furniture were a sofa, two couches, a writing desk and a bookshelf. There was a small, low table placed in front of the sofa, on which stood a candle. Feluda flicked his lighter on and lit it. The room became brighter, but there was nothing else in it, except a calendar on the wall.

Mr Dastur had disappeared inside, possibly to call his servant. When he returned, Feluda offered him a cigarette. ‘No, thanks,’ Mr Dastur said. ‘I gave up smoking three years ago, for fear of getting cancer.’

‘I assume you don’t mind others smoking in your house? In fact, I can see a half-finished cigarette in your ashtray.’ Feluda picked it up. ‘My own brand!’ he added. I, too, had learnt to recognize Charminars, even from a distance.

‘You know,’ said Mr Dastur, ‘I have thought many times of getting
myself an emergency light and fan, like Sukhwani. But then, when I think that ninety per cent of the population in Calcutta has to suffer in the dark and the heat, I start feeling most depressed. So I. . .’

‘You sell electrical goods, don’t you?’ Feluda asked. ‘Electrical?’

‘Mr Sukhwani told us.’

‘Sukhwani frequently talks rubbish. My business is to do with electronics, not electricals. I started it about a year ago.’

‘By yourself?’

‘No, I have a partner—a friend. I am from Bombay, though I spent several years abroad. I used to work for a computer manufacturing firm in Germany. Then my friend wrote to me, asking me to join him here. He’s put up the money, I’m providing the technical expertise.’

‘When did you arrive in Calcutta?’

‘Last November. I stayed with my friend for three months. Then I heard about this flat, and moved here.’

A servant entered the room with cold drinks. Thums-Up. Mr Dastur had already learnt that Feluda was a detective. He now lowered his voice as he went on speaking, ‘Mr Mitter, it is true that I don’t have anything valuable in my flat. But there’s something I feel I ought to tell you about my neighbour. He is not a simple and straightforward man. His flat is a place for all kinds of fishy and shady activities, I can tell you!’

‘How do you know?’

‘My bathroom is next to his, you see. There is a door between the two. It remains locked, but if I put my ear to it, I can hear conversations from his bedroom.’

Feluda cleared his throat. ‘Eavesdropping is hardly an honest and straightforward activity, Mr Dastur!’

Mr Dastur remained perfectly unmoved. ‘I would not have eavesdropped. I mean, not normally. But, one day, one of my letters was delivered at his flat by mistake. Do you know what he did? He steamed it open, then stuck it back with glue. When I realized what he’d done, I couldn’t help doing something naughty in return. Look, I don’t like making trouble. But if Sukhwani is going to harass me, I am not going to spare him, either.’

We thanked Mr Dastur for the cold drinks, and left.

Feluda stopped at the front gate to ask the chowkidar if he had
seen anyone go in or come out of the house in the last half an hour. The chowkidar said he had seen no one except Sukhwani and Dastur. That did not surprise us. 7/1 Ballygunj Park had a compound wall that surrounded the house. The house directly behind 7/1 was empty, and had been so over the past few months. Any able-bodied thief could have jumped over the wall without being seen; but all of us secretly thought it was done by someone from within the house. Or someone who lived in the house had hired an outsider for the job. No one knew anything for sure.