The Sheriff of Bombay. H. R. f. Keating
leapt to his feet, gave one swift glance to the small square of mirror that hung on the far wall of his cabin, brushed a somewhat sweaty hand over his hair, pulled his shirt a little straighter and left almost at a trot.
Only at once to encounter Inspector D’Sa.
Grizzled, long-serving Inspector D’Sa, one of the last of the breed of Anglo-Indian and Indian Catholic officers who long ago at the time of the British Raj as well as in the years afterwards had been the backbone of the Bombay force. Inspector D’Sa, on the verge of retirement, stuffed deep and spilling over with memories of days gone past and liking nothing better than to pour them out over anyone he could manoeuvre into listening. Inspector D’Sa, his own particular bugbear.
‘Ah, it is you, young Ghote.’
‘Yes, yes, D’Sa Sahib. But I am very much in a hurry. A.C.P. Sahib —’
‘You remember I was telling you only yesterday, man, about how things used to be in Bombay? About how high moral standards were, even among the natives. Begging your pardon, young Ghote.’
‘That is quite all right, D’Sa Sahib. I am very much allowing for the way you were taught in your community in the old days. But, please, I must —’
‘I won’t keep you a minute, man. My God, have you youngsters got no politeness nowadays?’
‘But — But a very important task is —’
‘I just want to show you one thing, Ghote. Something that proves my point right up to the hilt.’
‘Well, yes. Then what is it only?’
‘Look, man. Look at this.’
From the top pocket of his plain-colour bush shirt D’Sa took a small flat object. He held it out in the palm of his hand.
Ghote looked down. It was a picture, a tiny, crudely coloured picture of a woman, a Western woman it looked like, dressed in a short red skirt and a bright blue blouse.
‘Well,’ he said, after a while, ‘I am not seeing anything altogether proving what you are saying about old-days morals, D’Sa Sahib. A picture of a girl only. And now I must —’
‘No, look. Look, man, look.’
D’Sa twisted his upraised palm to and fro.
‘Now do you see?’ he asked.
Ghote saw.
The picture was evidently one of those trick ones covered with clear plastic strips in such a way that you saw one thing looking from one angle, something different looking from another. In this case the slight shifting in D’Sa’s palm had simply stripped the girl of all her clothes.
‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose such a picture would not have been seen in Bombay when you first came into the service, Inspector.’
‘No, it would not. And where do you think I got hold of this, man?’
‘I am having no idea whatsoever. But, D’Sa Sahib, the A.C.P. himself —’
‘A boy was selling them, Inspector, selling such displays of flesh and obscenity on the footpath in Hornby Road, not one hundred yards from this headquarters.’
Ghote experienced a momentary impulse to point out to Inspector D’Sa that the name of the street had long ago been changed to Dadabhai Naoroji Road and that nowadays almost everybody called it D.N. Road, and to add as well that measures in yards had been officially replaced by metres many years ago. But he knew that to do so would only get him embroiled in yet other arguments.
‘Well,’ he said instead, ‘that is not really so terrible, Inspector. In Hutatma Chowk they are selling on the footpath sex-casettes, from England also. And, so they tell, in them you are made to hear all the sounds of intercourse taking place.’
‘The vendors should be whipped, Inspector,’ D’Sa broke out. ‘Whipped in the open maidan.’
He gave a sharp, reminiscent laugh.
‘At least my toe connected with the backside of that boy in Hornby Road,’ he said. ‘And sent every one of his filthy pictures into the roadway except the specimen I kept to show you, man.’
Ghote thought of the boy’s little stock of merchandise brought to sudden ruin. But again he checked a comment.
‘Yes, yes, but I must be going to the A.C.P.,’ he said, turning away.
‘Quite right, Inspector. Never keep a superior officer waiting. That’s the way I was brought up in the days when the police service was the police service.’
But Ghote was already at the entrance to the winding stone stairway leading up to the veranda outside the A.C.P.’s office.
Just as he was about to step into its coolness he heard D’Sa call out again.
‘Oh, Ghote. One thing more. The Police Vegetable and Flower Show, I would want some help —’
He poked his head back into the sun.
‘Sorry, Inspector,’ he called. ‘Too much of work-load now.’
Let old D’Sa organize the Vegetable and Flower Show on his own. That was about all he was fit for these days.
He took the winding stone stairs at a run, hurried along to the A.C.P.’s door, paused one instant to draw breath, looked in through the glass panel in the door, saw that the A.C.P. was unoccupied, knocked once and went in.
‘Ah, Ghote. Good man.’
Ghote clicked his heels to attention in front of the A.C.P.’s wide semi-circular desk.
What was the task he was about to be assigned? The task that the A.C.P. himself would have liked to have taken up?
‘The swashbuckler, Inspector. That mean anything to you?’
The swashbuckler. The swashbuckler. Had he misheard? What could the A.C.P. be talking about? The only Swashbuckler he had ever known of, and that had been long ago in his teenage days, had been a British film star, called then by all his friends, who did not fail to see each and every one of his pictures, invariably the Svashbuckler. But Swashbuckler or Svashbuckler, the A.C.P. could not possibly be referring to that figure of old.
‘A film star, Inspector. British film star. I should have thought you’d have at least heard of him. I’d have hoped you’d have had the guts to bunk the class in those days and go and see his films.’
‘Yes, sir. Film star, sir. The Svashbuckler, sir.’
He had had the guts, once or twice, when he should have been in class to pass through the classic-arch entrance of the old Edward Cinema and sit, feet tucked comfortably under him, watching hypnotized the Svashbuckler’s daring feats until the moment came when, with the tension suddenly released, he in common with almost all the young audience felt impelled to jump up on his seat and cheer. But he could hardly claim still to have those guts.
‘The fellow’s here, Ghote.’
‘Here, sir?’
He actually took a quick look round the A.C.P.’s big, airy office to see if this mythical figure was somewhere in the room, concealed perhaps behind the screen that hid the cot on which in times of emergency the A.C.P. slept? Or sitting quietly, unnoticed till now, in the shadow of the big standing fan underneath the huge wall map of Bombay and its police districts?
‘Not here, Inspector. Not in this room. In the city. Here in the city. Camping at the Oberoi-Sheraton.’
‘Yes, sir. Of course, A.C.P. Sahib. At the Oberoi-Sheraton Hotel.’
Of course a big star, a real hero, like that would be at the Oberoi. Or shouldn’t he rather be at the Taj? Wasn’t a hotel like the Taj Mahal, built in the British days, somehow more in keeping? But no doubt he had chosen the newer, more modern, more American place for some good reason.
‘We’ve