The Sheriff of Bombay. H. R. f. Keating
even little Ved, had a photograph of Randhir Singh, Rajah of Dhar, pinned up by his bed, and referred to him familiarly as Randy.
And this was the man he had seen sneaking out of a low-class brothel,
Ghote stood where he was at the top of the flight of narrow stairs, looking transfixed along towards the darkness at the end of the passageway where the gharwali and the Sheriff of Bombay — it could be no other — had scufflingly disappeared. In front of him Dr Framrose, the weak light from the open door glinting on his bald splotched skull, called out in his high, erratic voice.
‘Heera. Heera, my dear. I have brought some valuable customers to admire the exquisite female flesh you have on sale. To admire only, I regret to say. They’ll hardly bring you in a rupee. But then, as one of them is a policewalla, you’ll doubtless be glad to be in his good books.’
There came no answer from the far end of the passage. Dr Framrose set out towards it.
‘Heera, Heera. Whatever are you doing out there? You’ll catch some dangerous illness, let me tell you. The back of your house is notoriously unhygienic.’
So, Ghote thought, the doctor has not recognized the Sheriff. If he had, he would hardly be pursuing the fat old gharwali in the way he was doing. She would not thank him if he stopped her whisking away that high personage so unfortunately caught out.
But, of course, the Parsi was probably half-blind, and those spectacles of his must have slid right down to the end of his long nose.
And, another thing. The Svashbuckler, who had after all never visited India before, would be highly unlikely to know the Sheriff by sight, even if once or twice he might have seen him playing when he had led the Indian cricket team to England.
He advanced further along the passage. The gharwali would return in a few minutes and the visit to her establishment must go on. Entertaining the Svashbuckler was his immediate duty, and he would carry it through.
Behind him on the stairs he heard footsteps. He turned and saw one of the prostitutes they had brushed past on the bench in the doorway. Was she coming up to make them an offer? If she did, she was going to get a pretty sharp firing.
But instead, it seemed, the girl had got herself a willing customer. A dark shadow was creeping up behind her, head turned sheepishly to the wall. The girl — she was, Ghote noticed now, a pretty enough thing, young, pleasantly plump and with an air of happy bright-eyed assurance about her — was evidently anxious to occupy the room behind the first of the ramshackle doors, all the while firmly shut.
‘Kamla,’ she called out, loudly and clearly. “Hé, Kamla, what for are you still in there? Don’t you know how to make a man do what he has to do? Come on. My customer can hardly wait, such a lion he is.’
Ghote had some difficulty suppressing a laugh at this: the girl’s customer, standing now three-quarters of the way up the stairs and doing his best to shrink right into the dirty, betel-juice-splashed wall beside him, looked anything but a lion.
‘Kamla. Kamla. Come on.’
There was still no response from behind the flimsy door. Nor had the fat gharwali reappeared from the far end of the passage.
‘Kamla.’
The little prostitute — she can hardly be more than sixteen or seventeen, despite the lively knowingness, Ghote thought — tired of waiting, grasped the top of the partition door with both hands and pulled her plumply rounded body up till her bare toes dangled.
Ghote heard her give a little gasp as her eyes came level with the wide gap at the top of the door.
She slid back with a thump on to the dirt-engrained boards of the passageway. Then she gave the three of them standing waiting for the gharwali a quick, sharp look.
Ghote could read the thought behind it as clearly as if he had been looking at a comic strip in one of the papers and the words had been written out in a bubble. It was a thought he had known applied to himself on countless occasions: Policewalla, watch out.
What had the girl seen, he asked himself, that a policewalla had better not know about? It could hardly be the customary scene that would go on behind that apology for a door. Police officers knew all about that, even participated in it often enough by way of receiving a gift from brothel madams and proprietors. And besides, in the tolerated area it was not even illegal.
So what had the girl seen in that quick glimpse inside the room that had caused her first to gasp and then to go suspiciously silent?
Whatever it was, she was certainly not going to let out the secret. She was turning now to her poor, shame-faced client and telling him, with cheerful impudence, that he should be ashamed of himself coming to a house like this and that he had better get home to his wife before that lady lifted her belna from rolling out chapattis and hit him over the head with it. Next she turned and, pushing past Ghote and the others, head stuck in the air, disappeared round the corner at the end of the passageway where the gharwali and the Sheriff had gone.
Something is definitely wrong in that room, Ghote thought. But something serious? Or something best to ignore? He could not decide. He toyed with the thought of strolling back to the door and casually peering over its top in his turn. But, he realized, he would not be able to do so without standing on tiptoe, and the notion that he would be thought of as doing that in order just to observe the usual goings-on inside was not something he felt prepared to lay himself open to. The Svashbuckler had already shown too much willingness to laugh at him.
He was saved from making up his mind by the abrupt reappearance of the wobblingly huge gharwali.
‘Doctor Sahib,’ she said, gently patting her fat hands together in a show of enormous pleasure. ‘Doctor Sahib, it is good to be seeing you. And these gentlemen, very, very good also.’
She came simpering and waddling up to the Svashbuckler and favoured him with an immense smile, showing betel-red teeth filed to sharpness in wide gums.
‘From Vilayat?’ she said. ‘From England, isn’t it? Ah, I am so glad to see English gentleman. Many, many have I had between my legs when I was a young, young girl only.’
The Svashbuckler, who had been smiling back at her nearly as heartily, retreated a pace.
Well, Ghote thought, the idea of anyone being between the massively fat legs straining that red sari to splitting point was certainly not attractive.
‘But you must have some tea,’ Heera breezed on. ‘Some tea, some cold drink, some paan to chew.’
She advanced again on the Svashbuckler and looked at him roguishly.
‘Perhaps the angrezi gentleman would like a bed-smasher paan,’ she said. ‘Something in it to lend force-force to him before the night is finish. Let us all go along to Olympia Café and have something. Perhaps stop at the paanwalla on the way, isn’t it?’
‘No, no, Heera, my dear,’ Dr Framrose broke in. ‘We haven’t come here just to be taken to that wretched eating-place. We’ve come to see the full delights of your establishment, to fill these gentlemen’s heads with thoroughly disturbing visions. And then take them off to safety before they can do anything to make fools of themselves. You know the way we always do it with the VIPs the police send along. What on earth makes you want to take us to the Olympia?’
Yes, Ghote echoed in his mind. What does make you want to get rid of us? It cannot be the presence in your house of the Sheriff of Bombay. You have spirited him away neatly enough. What is it then?
Well, one thing was certain. Whatever it was, it was something to do with what that plump little prostitute had seen when she had peered over the door. She had been quick enough to go and fetch her madam when she had seen that, and Heera was determined enough to get all three of them out as soon as she possibly could.
He turned, took a few sharp steps back along the passage, put both hands against the mysterious door and gave it a good hard push.