Then he saw them, one by one gently trickling down towards their own level, unbruised, adamant, the coloured pebbles from the mountains at the other end of the world. He met and pa.s.sed them on his way upwards, and gathered the ones that came most easily to hand, so that no one else should mount here and accidentally follow Govind Das to his death. But many eluded him, for all the real pa.s.sion of his senses and his heart was fixed on the children. Slowly they crept down to meet him, Anjli in front, one hand stretched back to clasp the hand of her friend. She felt her way from step to step with the methodical movements of exhaustion, when you cannot afford a first mistake because it may well be your last. Her face was pale and clear, almost empty as yet because fear had so recently quitted it and left it virgin. Her eyes, immense, so bruised with experience that they might have been darkened with kohl in the native way, clung unwaveringly to his face.
They were above the midway mark when they met. Anjli took her hand gently from Shantila"s hand, so that she could join her palms on her breast in the proper reverence.
"Namaste!"
He held out his arms, and she walked almost shyly into them, and he kissed her forehead. They came down the steps together all linked in a chain of three, Girish in front for a barrier against any fear they might still feel of lesser things, now that the great fear was gone, Anjli"s right hand in his and her left hand in Shantila"s. They came slowly, because none of them was in haste now, and none of them was free of the great, clouding la.s.situde of achievement that hung upon this denouement. They must have heard the voices below, they must have seen the curious gathering at last, too late to be helpful, in time to be in the way. From nowhere someone had conjured two police officers. Through the gates an ambulance was driving. It had failed to find a victim upon the scene of the road accident in Parliament Street, but it would not go back empty-handed from here.
And there were other faces, faces Anjli knew well and some she did not know, but clearly all united in this moment, gathering there at the foot of the steps to welcome her back among them. Dominic, and Tossa, and Mr Felder, all radiant with relief, and an elderly, ascetic gentleman with a saffron robe and a shaven skull and lop-sided spectacles, gently beaming in the background, and an immaculate person in exclusive tailoring, who by his contented smile was clearly also a member of the alliance. She had never realised she had so many friends here. Find one, and you have the key to many more.
Anjli stepped upon solid ground, and her knees trembled under her. The ambulance men were just picking up and screening from sight all that was left of Govind Das.
XII.
There were nine of them present in Dominic"s hotel sitting-room over coffee that night. The promise made to Ashok had been no vain one, after all; he came straight from a recording session, his head still full of music, to find Anjli, in her own western clothes and with her normal poise rather enhanced than impaired, seated dutifully between Dominic and Tossa, and apparently totally engrossed in pouring coffee for their guests. The Swami Premanathanand sat cross-legged and serene at one end of the cushioned settee, with his driver Girish balancing him at the other end, a silent man with a faint smile and a grazed face, one profile beautiful in a falcon"s fashion, the other marred. Felder lay relaxed in a reclining chair, after days of tension. And the last-comers, or so it appeared, surprised everyone, except the Swami, who was not subject to surprise. For Satyavan k.u.mar did not come alone, but brought with him Kamala, fresh from the expensive salon of Roy and James with her glossy pyramid of black hair heady as a bush of jasmine, and her superb body swathed in a new sari of a miraculous muted shade between lilac and rose and peach. She kissed Anjli, with so serene an implication of divine right that Anjli took no offence, fluttered her fingers at Ashok, and said: "Darling!" The simplest chair in the room became a throne when she sat in it. "I should be apologising," she said, smiling at Dominic, "I wasn"t specifically invited. But I wanted to celebrate, too. I hope you don"t mind?"
"I am afraid," said the Swami, looking modestly down his nose, "that some of us here are not as well informed about the nature of this celebration as the rest Perhaps first I should explain exactly what has been happening during the last few days." And he did so, with such admirable brevity that he was done before anyone had breath to comment or question. "The only apology, perhaps, is due to you, Mr Kabir. You must forgive your young friend here, it was at my suggestion that he refrained from telling you the truth yesterday. We have not met before, but by sight and by reputation, of course, I know you well, and I a.s.sure you it was not from any doubts about you that I excluded you from our counsels. I had a respectable reason, which perhaps will appear later. The invitation to you to join us here tonight was a promise, which you see we have managed to fulfil. I hope it may be taken also as an apology in advance."
"No one owes me any," said Ashok. He looked at Anjli, and his sensitive, mobile face pondered in silence the changes in her. "If this thing had happened, all of us who knew of Anjli"s background were suspect. How could I be exempt? You say that Dominic heard and recognised my music... Kamala"s lullaby. Where else should you look, then, but among those of us who knew that music? And we were not so many."
"Not so many," agreed the Swami. "And most of them like Mr Felder here, were in Sarnath at the time of the kidnapping, as you were in Trivandrum, though we did not then know that."
"I was in Delhi," Kamala said helpfully. "Yashodhara doesn"t appear in the Deer Park scenes. None of the women do. And Subhash Ghose was here, too, and..." was in Delhi," Kamala said helpfully. "Yashodhara doesn"t appear in the Deer Park scenes. None of the women do. And Subhash Ghose was here, too, and..."
"And Govind Das," concluded Felder ruefully.
There was a small, flat silence. "We hadn"t realised," said Dominic then, "how many might be left in town. We thought the whole company had moved to Benares. Of course we thought first of the company, but filming in Sarnath seemed to put you all out of the picture. And yet I was always quite certain about Ashok"s morning raga. I knew what I"d heard. I"ll admit there were times when we didn"t know whom we could trust, or even whether we could trust anybody... even the Swami here. Even you..." He looked up across the room at the two handsome, smiling people sitting comfortably side by side there, with an almost domestic ease and felicity. "Last night, Mr k.u.mar, after you left, Tossa and I were walking round by Claridge"s. We saw you leaving together by taxi..."
Ashok"s eyebrows had soared into his hair. "k.u.mar?" he said half-aloud, astonished and mystified.
Kamala laughed gently. "Yes, I see that we made difficulties for you. After all these years we still prefer to dine together when we can. Krishan is a serious character actor, I am, let"s face it, a fashionable star. Never in our whole married life have we been able to play together in the same film. We are both contrasuggestible. The whole pressure of our work drives us apart. That is why we spend all the time left to us together."
"Krishan?" Dominic said, confounded.
"Married life?" repeated Felder, slowly sitting upright in his chair. "I didn"t even know you life?" repeated Felder, slowly sitting upright in his chair. "I didn"t even know you were were married..." married..."
"No, darling, of course you didn"t. We have a theory. The least publicised marriages are the most durable ones, and we happen to like being married to each other. And after all, you"ve known me only a little while, and only as one of a company at work."
"But to k.u.mar k.u.mar here...?" here...?"
"Oh, no darling, not k.u.mar k.u.mar. How confused you are, I"m so sorry I"m not making myself clear. No, my husband is Krishan Malenkar, and if I may say so, a very good actor indeed. If you should ever be casting a film with an Indian business background, the Swami tells me he made a most appealing, as well as convincing tyc.o.o.n."
"But if he"s he"s not k.u.mar," persisted Felder feverishly, "then not k.u.mar," persisted Felder feverishly, "then who is who is?"
Anjli looked all round the ring of astonished faces, and suddenly rose from her place, unable any longer to subdue the blaze of joy and achievement that shone out of her. She crossed the room to where Girish sat, and put a hand possessively on his shoulder, and he smiled and drew her down beside him.
"This is my father," she said proudly, as if she found it incomprehensible that they could ever have been in doubt. is my father," she said proudly, as if she found it incomprehensible that they could ever have been in doubt.
"I knew him as soon as I saw him driving after us. I knew he would come for me."
All eyes had turned upon the Swami. "But why why?" demanded Felder on behalf of them all. "Why was it necessary to conceal the fact that her father was right here with you? I don"t understand what sense it makes."
"Oh, come!" protested the Swami mildly. "You do yourself less than justice, Mr Felder, I"m sure. It cannot be so difficult to see a good reason for suppressing Satyavan"s ident.i.ty, since circ.u.mstances made it possible. I did not then know which of you, if any, could be trusted. Satyavan, since he left home, has indeed been a law unto himself, and like everyone else, I have seldom known for long where he could be found; but at various times he has been working in several of the Mission"s projects, and from time to time I have been in touch with him. At the time of his mother"s death I had no idea where to find him, and he did not read the papers regularly, and only learned of her death too late to be present at her funeral rites. As soon as he did hear, he came. To me! We drove together to his house, it was his intention to begin at once to set his affairs in order. You," he said, turning his mild, bright eyes upon Dominic and Tossa, "know what we heard and saw when we came to Rabindar Nagar. Should I then have produced him and named him to you, whom we did not know, you, who had been in charge of the child and might be involved in her abduction? No! It was the strength of Satyavan"s position that he had not been seen in Rabindar Nagar for more than a year, that many of his neighbours were new, that he returned now straight from the field, not a Delhi businessman but weather-beaten and dressed for work, and driving the Mission car... He wished to remain in the background, unknown and free to move as he would, for it was his his daughter who was at risk. From that moment, therefore, we watched you in everything you did, and equally all those who had contact with you. It seemed that any demands for ransom must come through you, and so it turned out. And after the first payment failed to produce Anjli, I judged it necessary to provide another father, a convincing father of the right type, and to have him emerge into the limelight and take charge." daughter who was at risk. From that moment, therefore, we watched you in everything you did, and equally all those who had contact with you. It seemed that any demands for ransom must come through you, and so it turned out. And after the first payment failed to produce Anjli, I judged it necessary to provide another father, a convincing father of the right type, and to have him emerge into the limelight and take charge."
"But why?" insisted Felder. "I still don"t see the purpose of it."
"Oh, a very specific purpose. His job was to insist on seeing Anjli alive before more money was paid. For, you see, until then we had no means whatever of being sure that she had not been killed. Yes, yes, Mr Felder, you were horrified at that suggestion, I know, nevertheless it is common form in these cases. But when my good friend Malenkar played his scene, insisted on seeing with his own eyes and incidentally with ours, too! that she still lived, and when there was no demur and when there was no demur, then we had a certain degree of security. A fairly substantial degree, in fact. Enough to make plans. For Satyavan, apparently a servant, and therefore virtually invisible, was free to observe and to act. On his behalf no one ever made any bargains. These are my reasons for acting as I did. Was it well done?"
"Yes!" said Dominic and Tossa together fervently. "Very well done!" well done!"
"And that is why I could not let Mr Kabir come upstairs and join us here last night. I cannot say whether he actually knows Satyavan by sight, though I thought it a possibility. But I did did know that he is very well acquainted with Malenkar, and would most probably have given the show away on the spot." know that he is very well acquainted with Malenkar, and would most probably have given the show away on the spot."
"To which one of us?" Dominic asked very gently.
The Swami"s mild eyes sharpened upon him almost alarmingly, if there had not been in the brief, brilliant glance a suggestion of distinct approval.
"Ah, I did not then know of the activities of Govind Das. I was still acting on the a.s.sumption that the director of the affair might be any one of you. It seems now that the whole thing was planned and carried out by this one man."
"A bad business," said Felder soberly.
"As you say, a bad business. It turned out so for him."
"Small part actors don"t make much money. Probably here they don"t get too many parts, either. Or anywhere, for that matter, these days. I suppose seeing temptation trailed in front of his nose like that was too much for him the daughter of a milllionaire and a film star, and only two students new to India taking care of her. It must have looked easy! Well, thank goodness it"s over! The poor wretch who planned and did it is dead. He"s paid. That"s the end of it."
A long, communicated sigh went round the room, and subsided into a deep and thoughtful silence.
"Except," said Anjli suddenly, erect and sombre by her father"s side, "if he did it all alone, why did Shantik say he did it all alone, why did Shantik say they"d told him they"d told him not to hurt me? That"s what she said. Tomorrow you can ask her." not to hurt me? That"s what she said. Tomorrow you can ask her."
A curious flutter of uneasiness stirred the air.
"And if if he did it all alone," Dominic said slowly, "then he must be a genius, to be able to come up with that scheme about lunch at Sawyers" and a taxi to the sweet shop opposite, the very minute he was faced with having to arrange a way of letting us see Anjli. Now if he"d already been primed by somebody who he did it all alone," Dominic said slowly, "then he must be a genius, to be able to come up with that scheme about lunch at Sawyers" and a taxi to the sweet shop opposite, the very minute he was faced with having to arrange a way of letting us see Anjli. Now if he"d already been primed by somebody who knew knew what was going to happen..." what was going to happen..."
"And what," wondered Tossa, "if he did did do it all alone, what has he done with the money from the first payment we made at the Birla temple? Because you know what the police said they haven"t found a trace of it at his house or in his sister-in-law"s quarters at the office." do it all alone, what has he done with the money from the first payment we made at the Birla temple? Because you know what the police said they haven"t found a trace of it at his house or in his sister-in-law"s quarters at the office."
"And if it wasn"t he who took the money from the briefcase," supplemented the Swami, warming to the theme, "then who was it? And where is it now? It would be so much more satisfactory, would it not, to recover it? Even film stars who do do make a great deal of money should not be made the victims of extortion." make a great deal of money should not be made the victims of extortion."
"They certainly shouldn"t," agreed Felder warmly. "I"ve still got to justify that to Dorrie, but at least she still has a daughter, thank G.o.d. It does seem a pity, but it hardly looks as if we"ll ever see that money again."
"Oh, do not lose heart," the Swami encouraged him benignly. "Perhaps, after all, there is still hope that the police may discover it somewhere."
"Well, if they do, presumably there may be some hope of deducing how it got there. Until then I"m afraid we haven"t much chance."
And indeed it seemed that it was over, and that there was no longer anything to hold them all here together; yet no one made any move to go. It was almost as if they were waiting for something to happen which would release them and let them fly apart again into their proper orbits, Dominic and Tossa, tired, relieved and infinitely grateful, back to England, the Swami to the minute office from which he pulled so many valiant and unexpected strings in the life of unprivileged India, Krishan Malenkar and his Kamala to their well-guarded private life, Anjli wherever her new father led her, deeper and deeper into the complex soul of this sub-continent, Ashok back to the cosmic solitude where the great artists create their own companions, like self-generating G.o.ds; and Felder...
Someone rapped at the door, briskly, quietly and with absolute authority.
"Come in! " called Dominic.
Inspector Kulbir Singh came in with aplomb. His black beard was tucked snugly into its retaining net, his moustache was immaculately waxed at the ends, which turned up in military fashion to touch his bold cheek-bones. In his hands gloved hands he held a large, fat bank envelope, linen-grained, biscuit-coloured. Every eye in the room fastened on it, and for an instant everyone held his breath.
"Ladies... Swami... gentlemen, forgive this intrusion. There is a small matter of identification with which you can help me, if you will." He came forward with a.s.surance, and laid the envelope upon the coffee table, drawing out delicately wad after wad of notes. "No, no, please do not touch. There is the question of finger prints. I would ask you only to look at this packet... you, Mr Felder, Mr Felse and Miss Barber. The total amount, you may take my word, is two hundred thousand rupees, as you see in notes of various values. It is contained in an envelope of the State Bank of India, issued at the branch here in Parliament Street. Their stamp bears last Sat.u.r.day"s date. I must ask you if you can identify this package."
They stood staring all three, alike stricken into silence. Dominic was the first to clear his throat. "It looks very like the money Mr Felder drew from the bank, in my presence, on Sat.u.r.day morning. The amount is right."
"Miss Barber?"
"I wasn"t at the bank. I saw the package the next day, when Mr Felder left it at the desk, downstairs. This one looks the same. I feel sure it is. There was a linen thread half an inch too long, projecting out of that left corner of the flap, just like that one. My prints should be on the envelope, if it"s the same one. I collected it from the desk, and Dominic put it into the briefcase."
"Thank you, that is very helpful. Mr Felder? Does it appear the same to you?"
"I can"t be sure. One bank envelope is very like another. It could be the same."
"Even to the amount inside it, Mr Felder?"
"I"ve said, it could be the same."
"In that case your prints should also be on the envelope, I take it, since you handled it."
"Yes, certainly I did. I kept it safe until I delivered it to this hotel on Sunday morning."
"But you would not expect your prints also to be on the notes?"
"Of course not, why should they be? I took the package from the bank teller intact, and as you know, it was paid over to Miss k.u.mar"s kidnapper at the Birla temple on Sunday afternoon." He raised his head, and stared Inspector Singh stonily in the eyes. "Where did you find it?"
"In a locked suitcase in a room in the Villa Lakshmi at Hauz Khas, Mr Felder the bedroom occupied by you."
Felder drew back from him a long pace; all the deep, easy-going lines of his face had sagged into grey pallor.
"You know what this is, don"t you? A plant to leave me holding the baby. Yes, I drew the money, yes, I handled the parcel, that you know already from all of us, what have I got to deny? We paid that money over at the temple, as we were told to do. There was a parcel of sliced-up newsprint left in its place, and that we"ve told you, too, it isn"t any secret. But if you think I made that exchange, think again. k.u.mar here was watching me all that afternoon. He knows I never went near the place where the briefcase was." He swung on Satyavan, who sat unmoved, his arm round his daughter, his grazed cheek seamed with darkening scars beneath the levelled black eye. "Tell him! You were watching me as I was watching the briefcase. You came and started talking to me, and that cost us how many minutes? Three? Enough for the exchange to be made. I wasn"t watching during those few minutes, and neither were you."
"That is true, Inspector," said Satyavan. "I spoke to him. For perhaps as long as three minutes he was not watching the case, and neither was I."
"But I was," said the Swami"s voice, with infinite gentleness and absolute certainly.
Everyone turned, almost cautiously, as though he might vanish if they were too abrupt. He sat relaxed and tranquil, his face fixed in a slight and rueful smile, and all the reflected light in the room had gathered in a highlight on his golden shoulder, like a lantern set in the protruding bone.
"Yes, I, too, was present. Satyavan and I had been following your movements and those of these young people ever since the murder and the abduction of the child. Satyavan came and spoke to you because he believed you had noticed him, and suspected his interest in you. But as it appeared, his approach was welcome and useful to you. Yes! But all that time I was sitting in meditation on the terrace of the temple. No one finds it strange that such as I should sit and meditate, even for long periods, even upon something so mundane as a briefcase and two pairs of shoes. No, it is perfectly true, you did not go near them in all that time. That I confirm. But neither did anyone else But neither did anyone else!"
The silence waited and grew, allowing them time to grasp that and understand what it meant.
"From the moment when this boy placed it there to the moment when he took it up again, no one touched it. Therefore it was, when placed, exactly as it was when removed, filled only with newsprint. The ransom the first ransom had been collected in advance. By you! Miss Lester would have repaid it to the company without a qualm, would she not, since it was employed in her daughter"s interest?"
Felder opened his dry lips, and tried to speak, but made no sound.
"Even film directors, Mr Felder, do not always make enough money for their needs, and cannot resist temptation when it walks across their path. It is a question rather of the moderation and control of one"s needs. Of the conquest of desire. But your desires were clearly immoderate. Therefore, when you could not resist retaining Anjli in the hope of further easy gain, we placed before you the bait of a second and greater ransom, to discover whether she was still safe, and to ensure that you would keep her so."
"What do you take me for?" Felder had found his voice now, it burst out full and strong with genuine indignation. "I wouldn"t have hurt a hair of her head. I always meant to give her back safe and sound. What do you think I am? I may have needed money, I may have taken short cuts, but Dorrie"s girl wasn"t expendable."
"No," agreed the Swami, with deep sadness. "No, the half-American child, your friend" your friend"s child, was not expendable to you. You gave your accomplice his orders to keep her safe, not to hurt her... of course, you are a humane man, you did not kidnap or kill not in the first person, only by proxy not in the first person, only by proxy. When you hired him, did you ask him how he meant to carry out his coup? Did you tell him, no violence to anyone? No, you shut your ears and left it to him. He was paid, was he not? A wisp of Indian dust, an old, decrepit creature, a beggar, hardly a man at all to you Arjun Baba was expendable Arjun Baba was expendable!"
"Let us, however, be realistic," observed the Swami, breaking the long silence which had descended on the room after Ernest Felder had been taken away. "He cannot be charged with the murder of Arjun Baba. Quite certainly he did not commit that crime himself, and with Govind Das dead it will be almost impossible to prove that it arose as a direct result of the conspiracy Felder inspired. Indeed, I doubt if they will ever be able to charge him with the abduction, unless he is foolish enough to repeat the virtual confession we have just heard. Govind Das cannot convict him, and I doubt if Mrs Das ever so much as heard his name mentioned. Probably the only charge they can hope to bring home is of the misappropriation of that company money."
"There is also something to be said, "Satyavan said softly, "even for Felder." Anjli"s eyes were drooping into sleep, and her head was heavy on his shoulder. "My wife was indebted to him for all her early chances in films. He is not the only one of whom she has made use when it suited her, and forgotten for years in between, but perhaps he was the most complaisant. If she wanted to send Anjli here to me, it would be quite natural to her to look round and see who might be useful to her in the matter. Ernest is filming in Delhi? How convenient! Of course, get him to meet the party and do whatever is necessary. He always had complied, why should he let her down now? She is now much more successful, much more wealthy than he, but she still asks, and he still complies. She put the opportunity into his hands, perhaps even the temptation into his mind. It may well have seemed to him that she owed him far more than he meant to extort from her. And am I not partially guilty? I do not believe he decided to act until I failed to come to the aid of both my mother and my child, and left her an easy prey. It"s too deep for me. Maybe justice will have to find its own way to every one of us in its own time. I have no doubt it will arrive in the end."
"It has caught up already," said Ashok gently, "with you." And he caught the drowsy eye Anjli had just re-opened, and made a faun"s face at her. "Have you forgotten? When Yashodhara bore a child, the Lord Buddha cried: "It must be named Rahula. For a fetter is fastened upon me this day!""
"I shall call you Rahula," said Satyavan, tightening his arm about his daughter, "when you most tyrannise over me."
Anjli smoothed her cheek against his shoulder like a kitten, and smiled. "Rahula was a boy. Girls are different. The Lord Buddha should have had a girl." She looked up at him, suddenly grave and momentarily wide-awake. "What will happen to Shantila"s mother? She was good to me. As good as she dared be."
"Be easy, my Rahula! No charge will ever be made against Mrs Das with my support. If she had not had a daughter, I should now have been searching in vain for mine."
"And Shantila?"
"Shantila is your sister, and therefore my child. We must find a safe job for the mother, and she shall be always with you, if you want her."
"Yes, please, I do want her. We ought to buy her another necklace," she said indistinctly, "in place of the one she broke."
"That is very true," he said, drawing her more securely into his arm, for she was half asleep. "Remind me!" He looked up over her head at Dominic and Tossa, and said in a glowing whisper: "It is late, I shall take her away with me. But tomorrow, wait for us, we shall come to fetch you to Rabindar Nagar."
They protested dutifully that their job was done now, that they must make their preparations for going home.
"Not yet, not until you must. You will be her guests, she will be happy harrying Kishan Singh to make everything ready for you. Do you not see that my mother Purnima left a true Indian matriarch to be her heiress? I have resigned my life to this creature." By then she was fast asleep in his arms. "Ashok, I must warn you, for I see that she may well demand that I propose a match with you she will have no dowry, she has been urging me to give away everything I have."
It was past midnight, and they had hardly marked the hours slipping by. When they went out by the balcony to the garden stairs, the stars were lacquered in thick coruscations over the velvet Delhi sky, and there was the shimmer and purity of frost in the air. One by one, a procession ma.s.sed reverently about Anjli asleep on her father"s shoulder, they went down the white steps, and issued with shadows for sails upon the white, paved ocean of the patio.
"At this same hour, I think," said Satyavan, whispering over his daughter"s head, "I got up in Rabindar Nagar, and found, like the Lord Buddha himself, that the G.o.ds had filled the universe with the thought that it was time to go forth."
"Where?" asked Dominic, hypnotised.
"That is of secondary importance. What matters is to leave what has always been, and look for what has never been yet. I had had riches and marriage and a child, and I had nothing. Nothing is not enough for any man. The only answer is to abandon that nothing, and go in search of something. A different kind of treasure, perhaps. A different kind of salvation. Perhaps not salvation at all, only the loss of oneself."
"What will you do now?"
"My cousin you hardly know him he is a good fellow, he will enjoy living in my mother"s house and managing my mother"s companies. He will make money, but not want to keep it. As for me, in the past year I have become half a soil scientist and half a stock-breeder. What this Rahula of mine will become I cannot yet guess. I told you, she is encouraging me to put everything I have into the missions. n.o.body knows yet what she she has to put into them. I am afraid it may be more than I can command. We have a whole sub-continent to grow into, she and I. Tomorrow," he said, with deep content, "you will come and join us." has to put into them. I am afraid it may be more than I can command. We have a whole sub-continent to grow into, she and I. Tomorrow," he said, with deep content, "you will come and join us."