Short enough. But it said all that it needed to. That there were twelve days only now till the thirtieth anniversary of the Madurai Conspiracy Trial, till the anniversary of the day on which old Sir Asif, then still quite young Sir Asif, must have pronounced in public the identical words to the note’s last typed sentence.
He thought rapidly.
Yes, any one of the four possible English-speaking typewriter users could have put the note where he had found it. The window over by the big table was half open. Any one of the four of them out in the garden beyond the open house door could have slipped away from the others in the darkness for a few moments. Begum Roshan would be particularly skilled in not waking her father. Mr Dhebar might have come into the room for the quite legitimate purpose of asking the Judge for his article and then have taken advantage of finding him asleep. Father Adam had been standing, when he himself had come out, at the greatest distance from the others. The Saint, wildly unlikely though it seemed, could on his bare feet have crept up least noisily to the sleeping Judge.
As soon as there was a chance he would have to make discreet inquiries about what each of them had seen during the short time he had been up in his room himself. But there would be difficulties over that. Embarrassing difficulties. He was not there in this cursed crumbling place as a public servant authorized to question. He was only Doctor Ghote. Of philosophy.
No, it was still through the Judge that his way to bringing the case to a proper conclusion must lie. Unless … Unless here in this stiff sheet of paper he had a way of by-passing that stone-like obstacle. If only he could get the paper quickly to Bombay and the Fingerprint Bureau.
‘Well, Inspector, let me see it. It is after all addressed to me, is it not?’
He looked down. The Judge’s eyes were wide open and bright with awareness and command.
‘Yes, sir, the note is addressed to you. But may I keep it and tell you what it says? It is quite short only.’
‘And addressed to me.’
A flesh-shrunk hand was held out.
He put the sheet of stiff white paper into it. He had considered for a moment begging Sir Asif to hold the sheet as delicately as he himself had done, but at once he had realized that the old man would never tolerate the thought of what he would consider his private correspondence being pored over by Bombay technicians. In fact, it was most unlikely now that the note would ever come back into his own hands.
He watched the Judge read those few, all too clear words and tried to quell the anger he felt at the old man’s useless obstinacy. An explosion of protest would get him not one inch further forward.
As far as he could make out the old man had experienced no emotion whatsoever in reading this new threat to his life.
A short grunt was the only acknowledgement that the sombre, stiffly worded message had been absorbed. And then the sheet had been folded – he knew it – and put firmly into the inner pocket of the beautifully-cut white silk coat.
But now was the time to tackle him. It could be put off no longer.
He gave a short cough.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘it is becoming more and more clear that the individual who is writing these notes intends to carry out the threat he has repeatedly made.’
‘Of course.’
‘Of course, sir? Sir, have you some other evidence of the firmness of this person’s intention? Isn’t it that you have in fact some good idea who the person actually is?’
‘Inspector, I was merely making the reasonable assumption that if someone declares unequivocally that he intends to do something he must be presumed to be going to carry out whatever action it is.’
‘Yes, sir.’
But ‘No, sir’ was what he would have liked to have said. No, Sir Asif, the world is not all peopled with men and women of your always unbending cast of mind. Yet it did hold one supreme example of inflexibility: Sir Asif himself. Who, from the way he had just taken possession of that one piece of solid evidence, was plainly as determined as ever, despite having granted this interview, not to co-operate in any way.
However, he must go on making the attempt.
‘Please, sir, may we now have a thorough discussion of the whole situation? A person is threatening your life. That to begin with is a criminal offence. Your daughter is aware that this threat has been made, and she is most naturally concerned for your safety. I have been sent here with the two duties of, number one, protecting you from any possible assault, and, number two, discovering who it is who has been making these illegal threats. Now, sir, surely I am entitled in this to your maximum co-operation.’
‘Inspector, I have never requested police protection.’
‘No, sir.’
Ghote paused, took his life, he almost felt, in his hands.
‘No, sir, you did not request protection. But all the same, sir, you have in fact consented to have me in your house.’
The Judge’s eyes came swivelling round to him with the swiftness of a vulture’s.
‘Inspector – Doctor – Whatever I am to call you. I agreed to the ridiculous charade of having you here because I knew that my daughter would make my life more of a misery than she habitually is apt to do if I did not. But you are free to leave at any moment that you wish. Free to pack your bags and go.’
Battered though he felt, flogged even, he brought himself once more to state the full truth of the situation.
‘And free also to remain, sir?’
Silence.
In the high, hardly lit room the only sound to be heard was the muffled chugging of the generator engine down in the tin shed under the tamarind tree at the far end of the gardens by the ruin of the old fort. A steady relentless chugging, for all that at each chug there was a choke.
‘Inspector, understand this. I am perfectly willing to face the consequences of my own actions. I am aware that the sentences I passed in the Madurai Trial brought on me a storm of opprobrium scarcely equalled before or since. I am aware that a great many people believed, and still believe, that I ought not to have condemned those men to death. But, Inspector, it was my duty to do so. They had been found guilty of a crime that carried sentence of death and there were no mitigating factors I could properly take account of.’
In the circle of light from the lamp on the ivory-inlaid table the old man’s face, which had looked as if it too had been made out of unfeeling ivory, broke into a small smile.
‘Inspector, my duty then was harder, you know, than that of Allah above. He is all-powerful. He can at His will let the wicked go unpunished. I am only human. I could not then, as a duly appointed Judge under human law, go one step in mercy beyond the bounds of that law.’
A cough. A dry little cough.
‘I passed on those men the only possible sentence.’
Looking back down at the old man, he endeavoured to suppress any least show of emotion.
‘Let me tell you something, Inspector,’ the Judge added, with a palpable change of direction.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘It is a matter I have not put before another living soul for fifty years. It concerns one of the very first cases that came before me. I was then a Sub-Judge. It was a trial in a remote area, a case that had its origin in a village which, in those distant days, hardly came into contact with the outside world at all. And it was an affair about which there was scarcely a scintilla of doubt. But you know what things are like in those deep mofussil areas. Every witness is likely to be related in some manner to either the victim or to the suspected perpetrator, and there is a tendency always to improve upon the evidence. To burnish up the already bright.’
The old man’s narrative had bit by bit slowed. It was as if, even