‘But — But, I say, old man, is it — Well, isn’t it asking for trouble? I mean, those girls up there look pretty rough customers.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Ghote said, ‘the lady is a visitor to India only, and a lady also.’
He had hardly time to reflect that the Svashbuckler’s attitude was scarcely that of the man he had watched, long ago, entering bars in tough New Orleans, in wicked Surinam, in frozen Alaska to mop up whole roomfuls of sailors insulting his heroines before he had pushed his way through the bystanders and reached the lady with the notebook and, he saw, a well-soaked skirt.
‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I am a police officer and you are seeming to be in grave troubles. May I ask what it is you are doing here? This is a very, very notorious area.’
‘I should hope it is,’ the girl’s victim replied in a strongly accented American voice. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’
‘But, madam,’ Ghote said. ‘Madam, the only class of women in this locality are — They are gay girls only, madam.’
‘Gay girls? Gay girls? Boy, I’ve heard whores called by any number of substitute terms since I landed in this country: “magdalenes” and “members of the ignoble profession” and “crossers of the moral barrier” and “women of doubtful character”. But that I do believe is the worst yet.’
From behind his shoulder Ghote heard the Svashbuckler break out into a great bray of laughter.
‘Nevertheless, madam,’ he said, determinedly addressing the lady with the notebook, ‘it remains true that this is an area devoted to prostitution only. It is not at all proper that you should be here.’
She gave a sprightly look round about.
‘Seems to me there are plenty of people here just to rubberneck,’ she said. ‘Just because all of them are males, doesn’t seem any good reason why I shouldn’t come too. Specially as I’m here for strictly scientific reasons.’
‘For scientific reasons, madam?’
Again Ghote heard a bellow of laughter from the aging British film star.
‘I am a sociologist, I’d have you know, Officer. Dr Dorothy Ringelnatz, North Adams State. And I’m in Bombay to make a study of behavioural attitudes among Third World prostitutes. Tonight I was carrying out a little preliminary field-work — only the subjects seemed to object.’
She looked down at her bleached old skirt, patched with a large area of wetness. Ghote confirmed through his sense of smell that what had been flung at this extraordinary visitor was not water.
‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I would most strongly advise for you to secure the company of some Indian sociologist if you are wanting to make further visits to this area. But now, please, let me find for you a taxi. In what posh hotel are you staying, please?’
‘Well, I guess you’re right, Officer. I can’t say I’ve made much effective contact here tonight.’
Dr Ringelnatz closed her notebook with a definitive snap.
Ghote, to his great relief, spotted the yellow roof of a taxi halted to set down a pair of prospecting customers not far along the street. He shouted and waved and managed to catch the driver’s attention.
‘Well,’ came the Svashbuckler’s loud tones as at last the cab’s door closed on the rescued American, ‘I’ll be able to dine out on that lady when I get back home, never mind the night that lies ahead.’
The night that lies ahead. Ghote’s heart sank. Was his hero of old really intending to do more than just look at the Cages and their occupants? And, if he was, what should his own attitude be? Would he actually have to stay there and wait for the girls’ notable client in case, a fairly unlikely event in fact, he was robbed? And what about the rather more likely event of him catching an infection? What could he do about that?
But perhaps this Dr Framrose whom the A.C.P. had suggested as a knowledgeable and reliable informant would be able to persuade the Svashbuckler to behave with discretion.
He set off along the crowded street in search of the doctor’s dispensary, ignoring the shouted invitations from the blue-painted barred windows and dark doorways and hoping that the Svashbuckler was proof at least against the cheap allurements of the more blatant of the girls thrusting forward half-naked bosoms or turning to flick up short skirts — like the one worn by the girl in Inspector D’Sa’s trick picture — to display cheeky behinds.
Tea-boys with their newspaper cones of snacks and glasses of milky liquid clutched in strong fingers dodged away in front of them. Squatting circles of card-playing pimps and hangers-on glanced up angrily when they chanced to brush against their backs. Slow rivers of male humanity, young and old, the bare-chested and the well-dressed, mill-hands and briefcase-clutching babus, flowing in counter-currents along the narrow thoroughfare, jostled them and swerved to either side to let them pass.
Then at last, just beyond the big Olympia Café, he spotted a painted sign on the wall proclaiming Dr Falli Framrose, Sexologist, FRSH (UK), Sex Diseases, Sex Changes. He pushed his way towards the place, a wooden house as narrow and dilapidated as any other in the street, and no cleaner. But inside light shone brightly, and it looked as if the doctor was at least there.
Could he be relied upon to issue a sufficiently stern warning about the dangers of frequenting the houses of his neighbours?
Ghote stepped up into the barely furnished front room of the narrow house, the ex-film star at his heels.
Dr Falli Framrose was not a person whose outward appearance immediately impressed. To begin with, his face and narrow bald skull were blotched all over with the dark patches of leucodermia, the skin disease that inbred Parsis often suffer from. Then he was, as well, fearfully thin, the very opposite of the picture of well-fed healthiness that a hundred film idols had established as the peak of desirability. Finally the large horn-rim spectacles he wore had slipped almost halfway down his long droopy Parsi nose in a manner which hardly gave the impression of high efficiency.
Ghote introduced himself and his distinguished visitor.
‘Ah yes. Come to see the sights, eh?’ Dr Framrose said in a high-pitched, erratic voice. ‘Come to see the coupling and the copulating going full swing. You know what it all means to me? I’ll tell you. Buboes and itches, sores and syphilis. That’s what it all amounts to in the end, see it from my point of view.’
Ghote took a quick look at the Svashbuckler. Yes, an expression of apprehension had appeared on the face that once had smilingly confronted any danger the magic of the cinema screen could produce. Well and good.
‘My Vigilance Branch colleagues are telling that you would be the best guide to a decent brothel, Doctor Sahib,’ he said. ‘If you are able to take the time I would be very, very grateful.’
‘Yes, yes. I’ll lead you to my good friend Heera’s. She’s as typical a gharwali, a madam, as you’ll ever see.’
He gave a cackle of laughter.
‘That’s to say,’ he added, ‘as rapacious, unfeeling and self-seeking a woman as you could find. Come along, come along.’
From a nail on one of the pale green, decidedly scabby walls he plucked an old black umbrella and hung it down his back from his ridge-like left shoulder. But at the door he darted back in again.
‘Drugs cupboard, drugs cupboard,’ he said. ‘Must make sure that’s locked. They’d break in here and take every blessed thing out of it, poisons and all, if they thought they could get that open. You know that every man jack on this street is a thief, don’t you?’
Ghote did not feel the need to confirm or deny the statement to his British companion. He watched the doctor plunge into an inner room and saw him test vigorously the doors of a strong-looking steel cupboard attached to its far wall.
Well, at least