The Goose Girl and Other Stories (43 page)

‘By tomorrow night, then,' said Sikander Shah, and reached for his lathi, the five-foot iron-shod bamboo that was either a staff or a weapon.

‘In the name of God!' jeered Daud Khan, but Syed, staring sullenly, said nothing.

Sikander Shah stood up and prepared to go. ‘What's the good of the Kashmiri girl if she can't find eighty-four rupees for you?' he asked, grinning in the lamplight so that his teeth shone and shadows darkened the harsh lines of his face.

But Shamsi Mia Syed was still silent, and the two nightwatchmen went off to the half-built houses near by, their lathis ringing once or twice on loose stones as they moved through the darkness.

The three others sat where they were. Daud Khan, with a kind of sullen inquiry, looked at Syed, who avoided his eyes, while Mahomed Khan impassively sucked the smoke of a cigarette through his clenched fist.

‘He has two hundred rupees at the very least,' said Mahomed Khan quietly. ‘He offered to lend so much to the Parsi who has the toddy shop, and showed him the money.'

Syed looked up and caught the eyes of Daud Khan. A grin spread over the younger man's face. Syed's mouth was twitching. ‘Come,' he said, and stood up. The three of them went down the road in the opposite direction to that taken by the nightwatchmen.

It was about three o'clock in the morning when Sakharan Ragu, a cart-driver, stirred in his sleep, woke, and rose from his charpoy coughing in the chilly darkness. He lived in a grass-roofed shed between the teashop and the two new houses over which the Punjabi and Sikander Shah kept watch; and across the road, in another draughty hut, slept the two bullocks he looked after. Grumbling and half-asleep he pulled a red shawl round his head and went to feed his beasts. The great humped cattle were warmer than he was. They had filled their shed with an odorous heat, and when Sakharan came out of their stable he shivered and coughed again. His throat was dry and sticky from the pan-leaves he had chewed the night before, and he went to a near-by water-tap to drink and clean his mouth. But he heard the water running before he could see the tap, and he approached cautiously to see who was there.

Three men were washing their hands. They were tall and burly, and Sakharan Ragu was neither big nor bold. He drew into deeper shadow and watched them. By the shape of their pagris, by their full flowing trousers, and by their size he knew they were Pathans, and Sakharan stood very still. It would be unwise, he thought, to intrude unnecessarily on their society in the darkness and loneliness of night. The stars were bright enough for him to see what they were doing. They were washing their hands and arms and feet, and one was scrubbing something that he put, after cleaning, into his pocket. None of them spoke, and in a little while they went off together down the road towards Bombay.

Sakharan went to the tap—the Pathans had left the water running—and cupping his hands, rinsed his mouth and drank. Those Pathans were devils, he thought, walking mysteriously at night. It was lucky they had not seen him, or what might they have done to him? Robbed him if he had any money—which he had not—or murdered him for spite at his poverty. Sakharan Ragu went back to his grass-roofed hut and thankfully fell asleep again.

It was a little nearer morning when Police Sepoy Ramchandra Krishna, standing at the mouth of a dark lane on the outskirts of Bombay, saw three Pathans walking swiftly under the light of a street lamp. He was a zealous young man, and Pathans, when walking abroad at such an hour, were a suspect people. He saw moreover that the tallest man of the three was holding one hand in the other, as
though it had been hurt. Ramchandra Krishna called softly to another policeman, who was smoking a cigarette in the deeper darkness of the lane, and together they followed the Pathans. After doubling down a lane, along another street, and back to the main road by a dark alley, they confronted the suspects at a well-lighted corner.

‘It's late to be out,' said Ramchandra. ‘Where are you going?'

‘What's that got to do with you?' growled the tallest man. The Pathans looked stupid at the sudden encounter. They might have been dazed with drink, or heavy from lack of sleep.

‘What have you been doing?' asked the sepoy.

‘By God and by very God,' said the tall one explosively, and stopped, having no more to say.

‘We were at the house of my father's cousin, who lives in Bandra,' said another, ‘and now we are going back to our lodging to sleep.'

‘Was there any fighting in Bandra?' said Ramchandra, and he touched the hand of the tallest one that was tied in a rough bandage. The Pathan drew back and made, half-heartedly, a threatening movement with his lathi.

‘So that's your game,' said the sepoy, drawing his truncheon. ‘You'll come to the Police Station, then, and tell your story to the Inspector.'

The other sepoy shrilly blew his whistle as the Pathans backed against the wall, and in a few seconds two more policemen ran up, their round yellow caps like little haloes in the dark.

‘Come,' said Sepoy Ramchandra Krishna, and marched off his captives. The Pathans offered no resistance. The tall one's little show of defiance seemed to have exhausted him. They were listless and dumb, as though only half-awake, or too weary to care what happened. They showed no wish to escape, till, at the door of the police station, the youngest of the three, who wore a richly embroidered waistcoat, suddenly turned and kicked the bare shins of the sepoy beside him and made an effort to bolt. But the sepoy jumped and clung to him like a terrier, and another struck the Pathan heavily with his truncheon; the blow was softened by the smart blue pagri it fell on, but it was heavy enough to sober him. The three were pushed into the station and the door banged behind them.

They were searched. They all carried fairly large clasp-knives, in the joints of which were little packings of damp mud, as though they had been cleaned in the ground and washed in water. The tall one had a cotton bag in his shirt which held, in small notes and coins, a hundred and sixty rupees.

‘It is money I have saved,' he said, and looked greedily at the dirty notes.

The Sub-Inspector who questioned them got no satisfaction. The oldest of the three, who had said they were coming from Bandra, repeated his story, but as if worn out by so much invention he could not find a name for his father's cousin whom they had been visiting.

‘Were you drinking there?' asked the Sub-Inspector.

The oldest one thought awhile. ‘Yes,' he said.

‘No, we drank nothing!' shouted the tallest one, and glared angrily at his friend. He had once got into serious trouble for beating a man when he was drunk.

‘How did you hurt your hand?' asked the policeman.

‘I fell,' mumbled the Pathan.

‘Take that rag off, and we'll see what you fell on. A knife, wasn't it?'

The bandage was stuck in a clot to the back of the hand, and when a sepoy ripped it off, a long cut, running from the knuckles over the wrist on to the outer forearm, began to bleed again.

‘Lock them up,' said the Sub-Inspector, and telephoned to police headquarters. He described the three Pathans, and asked if there were news of any violent misbehaviour in which they might have been concerned. But so far as police headquarters knew, the night had been peaceful.

An hour after dawn two children and a pariah dog found the evidence the Sub-Inspector wanted. Bhana, the four-year-old son of a toddy-drawer who lived some distance from the half-built houses where Sikander Shah and Gulab Singh had been employed, wandered from their hut among the trees in pursuit of a pariah puppy. His sister was with him—she was a year younger than he—and they were ineffectually pelting the puppy with small stones. The puppy, yelping thinly, ran through the undergrowth to the compound enclosing the houses, and entered through a gap in the unfinished wall. It stopped beside a broken charpoy, and sniffed curiously at what lay on the ground. Then it threw up its head and tried to howl. But unhappy squealing was the best that its puppy voice could do.

Led by the uneasy notes the children came into the compound and trotted up to the broken charpoy. They stood silent for nearly a minute, eyes wide and mouths open, staring at the ugliness that lay in the calm blue sight of the morning. It was maimed and red. And then, together and without speaking, Bhana and his sister ran back to their friendly hut, to their father and mother and their father's mother who lived in it.

Wide-eyed still, Bhana gasped and pointed to the compound, and said something about a man and blood. His sister, who had tripped and fallen in the undergrowth, lay howling twenty yards away, unregarded. The toddy-drawer called to a neighbour, and, a little frightened, went to see what was wrong.

A dead man lay beside the wreckage of a string-bed. His throat was cut and a gash on his right cheek ran down into his beard. The face, drained of blood, was yellow, and the eyes were wide open.

‘It's Sikander Shah, the nightwatchman,' said the toddy-drawer to his neighbour.

‘And there, in the grass . . .' said the other man.

The pariah dog had found something else, half-hidden in a tangle of long grass and rank creepers; another body, bruised and bloody about the head, and gralloched as though it had been a stag.

‘The Punjabi,' said the toddy-drawer, fascinated by the horrid sight.

‘This is murder, undoubtedly,' said his neighbour solemnly. ‘We must call Sithiram, the policeman.' And he ran off to the road.

Moved by the inquisitive sympathy that violent death excites, a little crowd gathered quickly round the bodies. Toddy-drawers, coolies, a few shopkeepers, and a dozen curious children stood enthralled by horror.

‘The Pathans!' cried Sakharan Ragu, suddenly breaking the silence. ‘There were three Pathans here in the night. I saw them washing their hands at the tap!'

A murmur went through the crowd. ‘Pathans!' they whispered.

‘Indeed, that is Pathans' work,' said an old man, pointing to the watchman who had been ripped open.

‘He was drinking tea in my shop last night,' said Haji Miadad, who kept the tea-stall down the road.

‘Even your tea shouldn't do that to a man's guts, Hajiji,' said a tall coolie, grinning. But Haji Miadad did not rise to the insult.

‘These two, and three others whom I did not know, sat and talked together for an hour, or maybe two hours,' he said. ‘Then they went away, and what they did afterwards, God knows.'

A voice of authority announced the arrival of Sithiram the policeman. ‘Let everyone stand back,' said Sithiram. And everyone crowded a little closer to watch him while he examined the bodies. He picked up a small pocket-knife that hung from a chain fastened to Sikander Shah's belt. The knife, open and bloodstained, had been hidden under the broken charpoy.

‘Has anyone touched these bodies?' asked the policeman.

‘No, no!' Hurriedly the crowd assured him. ‘That is just how they were found.'

‘It was thus that my son said they were lying . . .'

‘Who found them?' interrupted Sithiram.

‘I and my son,' said Bhana's father. ‘He came running, saying this one was lying with blood on his face . . .'

‘I saw them too,' piped Bhana's sister.

‘They are both clever children,' said the toddy-drawer, looking down at them where they squatted naked at his feet. ‘Once I remember . . .'

But his reminiscences were spoilt by the cart-driver, Sakharan Ragu, who was eager to share the publicity.

‘And it was I,' shouted Sakharan Ragu, ‘who saw the Pathans in the middle of the night. While I was drinking at the tap there, having fed my bullocks. . . .'

‘Chūp,'
said the policeman. ‘Let all others be silent. Now what is this talk about Pathans?'

‘Am I not telling you? While I was drinking at the tap, about two hours before dawn, or perhaps three, or even a little more, I heard a noise, and turning round saw three men, Pathans, on the road near by. They stayed where they were till I had finished drinking, doubtless being frightened to interfere . . .'

‘Be quiet!' said the policeman again, as the crowd laughed derisively at the cart-driver's claim to have struck fear into the heart of a Pathan.

‘Then,' Sakharan continued, a little sulkily, ‘then they went to the tap themselves, and washed their hands and feet.'

‘There were three Pathans who sat with these two drinking tea last night,' said Haji Miadad.

‘You would know them if you saw them again?'

‘Without any doubt,' said Haji Miadad.

‘And you?'

Sakharan Ragu hesitated. ‘Two perhaps. But the third I didn't see very clearly.'

‘Being very frightened, perhaps he kept his face hidden from you,' suggested Sithiram unkindly, and the crowd laughed again. ‘You and you and you,' he continued—pointing to Haji Miadad, Sakharan, and the father of Bhana—'will likely be wanted as witnesses. So do not go far away from your houses. And now let someone run and tell my sergeant what I have found, and ask him to come quickly.'

Two children ran off, shouting excitedly for the importance of their duty, and Policeman Sithiram squatted on his heels inside the circle
of spectators who still gazed, but no longer in silence, at the dead bodies.

On the following morning, when the inquiry into the double murder was opened, the coroner's court was crowded. There were many Pathans there, some of whom were friends of the prisoners. The police had been busy, and the three men, arrested on suspicion by the alert Ramchandra Krishna, had been identified, satisfactorily by Haji Miadad and not so satisfactorily by Sakharan Ragu, as the three who had sat with the murdered men and later washed their hands and feet of bloodstains at the roadside tap. It was proved that Shamsi Mia Syed owed money to the dead watchman, and it was known that Sikander Shah had had on his person a sum of nearly two hundred rupees. The cut on Syed's hand was such as might have been made by the little knife hanging to the chain at Sikander's waist. The Pathans had refused to make any statement but apparently there had been a short struggle in which the string-bed was broken, Shamsi Mia Syed wounded, and the Punjabi roused from sleep near by. Running to the help of his fellow watchman, the Punjabi must have fallen under the lathis of the murderers, and then, their bloodlust being at its height, knives had finished what the lathis had begun. The dung fire had burst into flame, consuming both itself and what it touched.