He opened the door of his room with caution, remembering that its seldom-used hinges squealed out a brief protest every time it was swung back at all quickly. Then he set out along the wide corridor that would bring him eventually, unless he once more got the geography of the big house confused, to the ornately carved central staircase. There, with any luck, he might be able to lean over the banisters at the top and hear, or even see, what was going on in the entrance hall below.
Perhaps Raman, shyly grinning his quickly-come, quickly-chased-away, wide horseshoe smile, would come to the heavy house door and greet the visitor by name if he knew him, or ask him his business if he did not.
The corridor stretched ahead, wide, high, its walls damp-mottled, its marble floor echoing clackily to his steps, quiet though he tried to keep them. Rapidly as he could he went past its long row of identical, polished, dark-wood doors. How many bedrooms were there in the whole huge house? Was there perhaps, tucked away quietly in one of them, some other inhabitant whom he had not even been told about? Perhaps there was someone speaking good English and capable of using a typewriter whom no one else in the whole big pea-rattling place so much as knew existed.
He shook his head angrily. Fantasy. Fantasy.
Yet a thorough quiet search of the whole house would be worth carrying out as soon as there was a chance to do it.
He turned the corner, and, yes, there in front of him was the head of the staircase, dark and heavily carved. He advanced at a slithering half run. From below there came no sound, until just as he reached the top of the stairs there suddenly groaned out the noise of the wide double doors of the house being dragged open.
Just in time.
Then he heard Raman’s sing-song South Indian voice. ‘Good morning, Mr Dhebar, sir.’
He had noticed before that, irrespective of the time of day, the Orderly always greeted everybody with ‘Good morning.’
But ‘Mr Dhebar’. That name rang a bell. An urgent, strident bell. And, before the newcomer had had time to reply to Raman, the answer had come to him. One of the Madurai Conspirators had been named Dhebar. And it had been a decidedly special one. The sole member of the party who had succeeded in avoiding capture when the police had raided the house where they were hiding the dynamite intended to cause their ‘explosive detonation’. The man had, in fact, never been captured. ‘The missing conspirator’, he had been called throughout the trial, or ‘the man Dhebar’.
Could this be him? Could that rather squat, weighty, deliberate figure who had come beetle-buzzing to the house crouched over his little scooter be the very man Sir Asif had sentenced to death thirty years ago though he was not standing in the dock with his fellow conspirators? Thirty years ago, all but twelve days?
A single long stretching stride and he was leaning over the rail of the banisters. He craned down.
Below he saw Raman’s curly-haired black head, with at the crown a small round patch of grey where the hair-dye had grown out. And a foot or two in front of Raman there was the inverted boat-shape of a white Congress cap with beneath it the slopes of the white kurta tautly stretched over a solidly pudgy torso.
Yes, a man in full middle age. He clawed at his memory to recall the exact age of the missing conspirator. It must have been mentioned somewhere in those dusty, dragged-out, long-stored reports he had read back in Bombay. But he could not recall it. Not exactly. Yet the missing man had been young, he was sure of that. A man in his twenties. Which would mean a man now in his fifties. And the solid figure down below, standing on the veined marble flags of the hallway, looked very much as if he was just that age.
And he was named Dhebar.
Was the whole business he had been sent up here to tackle going to be after all quite simple?
‘My dear Dhebar, how pleasant to see you.’
It was the precise Englishman’s English voice of Sir Asif. In friendly greeting. In noticeably friendly greeting.
The old man must have approached without using the polished black, silver-headed cane which he always carried. Its distinctive tap-tap on the marble floors had been totally absent.
And now he had come into sight. A head swathed in the elaborate folds of a white pagri.
But that friendly greeting had in an instant stood the whole situation on its head. The Judge, of all people, must remember the names of the men in the Madurai Conspiracy Case, must know that the missing conspirator had been called Dhebar and would be now about fifty years of age. Yet he was evidently on the friendliest of terms with the newcomer.
Or was he?
Because Mr Dhebar seemed distinctly surprised, and even put out, by the warmth of his greeting.
‘Yes,’ he was saying. ‘Yes, Judge. Yes. That is – Very, very pleased to see you also, Judge. Most altogether.’
What was the relationship between the two of them then? Who was this Mr Dhebar who had been made so welcome by the customarily reserved Sir Asif?
He set off to creep, step by step, down the stairs till he could get to a position where he could see the newcomer’s face properly.
‘I trust,’ Sir Asif was continuing, ‘that you will be able to stay long enough to take tea with us, my dear fellow. I know that my daughter would particularly look forward to it.’
‘Begum Roshan is most kind, Judge sahib. Begum Roshan is indeed always and invariably most kind to my poor self.’
Now he was far enough down to be able to get a reasonable view of the fellow’s face, although at a sharp angle.
A jaw, heavy and pear-shaped. Above it a small mouth. And above that – he stooped so as to improve his line of vision – a drooping pendulous nose. Just visible to either side of that were two large brown eyes, looking at this moment, so far as he could tell, as if they were desperately searching round for some explanation.
And the Judge’s next remark seemed to do nothing to reassure those eyes, innocent though it sounded.
‘My dear Dhebar, you know that we both greatly welcome these weekly visits of yours. They are a high point in our somewhat restricted lives. A high point indeed.’
‘If I am giving the least pleasure at all to Begum Roshan it is altogether my honour. Oh, most certainly my honour. And to yourself, of course, also. To yourself especially, Judge sahib.’
His head was a-whirl with thoughts. Why, if this Mr Dhebar was in the habit of visiting the house once a week and apparently gave such pleasure by his visits, had neither the Judge nor his daughter mentioned him when the conversation at the dinner table had turned to the loneliness and isolation of their life here? Because – he was certain of this suddenly – those visits did not give either of them any pleasure. There had been, looking back, an undertone of irony in the Judge’s voice just now, an undertone which he had already begun to be able to recognize. Yet it was plain that Mr Dhebar, whoever he was, and it was clear that he was a person far below Sir Asif Ibrahim in the social scale, did indeed come here on those regular weekly visits. So what could be their purpose? And since, obviously, they gave every opportunity to leave in the house notes threatening the Judge’s life, was this the man he had been sent out here to apprehend? But if he was, what was his motive? Why did he want Sir Asif dead? And why was he giving him these warnings? Could he possibly be the missing conspirator after all?
One thing was certain. As soon as there was the least opportunity he must find out from the fellow his full name and as much else about him as he could, and then he must thoroughly check on him.
But already a mountainous difficulty presented itself. How to get in touch with Bombay to carry out that check? A house without a telephone, miles even from the nearest one. He would have to get to the town. But how to do that? Sir Asif, certainly,