Mourning Raga Part 4

Leaning over the rail of his balcony, Dominic p.r.i.c.ked up his ears abruptly, listening.

'Hey, did you hear that? Listen!'

'Somebody whistling,' said Tossa, unimpressed, 'that's all. They do it even here. You remember, Ashok said...'

'Hus.h.!.+'

She hushed obediently; he was very serious about it. She held her breath, following the tiny, silvery trail of notes up and down, a curiously rueful air. It receded, suddenly muted by the high hedge, but still heard, growing clearer again for a while as the angle changed, then cut off finally by the bulk of the wing. Now he must be in the street, lost among the trees. Theirs was a select residential road, silent at night. Indian cities have their preserves of silence, even close to the hub and the heart.

'Did you hear it? Did you get it?'

'I heard him whistling,' she said wonderingly. 'What about it?'

'You didn't get what it was he was whistling?' And Dominic picked up the air himself, and whistled it softly in his turn; he had an ear for a tune even at first hearing. 'You don't recognise it? But was it the same? The same as his?'

'I think so. It sounds the same. Why? How did you know it?'

'I heard it the other day, and so did you. It's the song from Ashok's music to the film, don't you remember? The simple one, the one Kamala sings. He said said he'd be disappointed if they weren't whistling it in the streets before long. But not before the film's released! What on earth's going on?' he'd be disappointed if they weren't whistling it in the streets before long. But not before the film's released! What on earth's going on?'

'But are you sure?' she asked doubtfully. 'After all, the ragas are everybody's property, you just take them and improvise on them, don't you? Somebody could accidentally produce a tune that recalled Ashok's, couldn't he? I mean, the unit is in Sarnath or back in Clark's Hotel at Benares, probably, at this hour. Not in Delhi, anyhow.'

'I know. I must be imagining things,' agreed Dominic, s.h.i.+vering, and turned back from the staring stars into the warmth of the room.

V.

Anjli arose in the early hours of the morning, and stood beside her bed for a little while, listening to the silence, which was absolute. Not even a stirring of wind in the trees outside the open window. The air was clear, still and piercing, like dry wine.

She was just getting used to the size of the room, which held two beds, and could have accommodated ten. The distance between her single bed and Tossa's made movement easy and safe. She dressed with care and deliberation, because she had the deep conviction within her that she was not coming back, that she had better get everything right the first time, for there was not going to be any chance of revising measures once taken. Delhi would be as cool as an English spring for some weeks yet, the nights cold, midday perhaps reaching summer warmth in the sun. Better be prepared for all temperatures. She put on the lambswool and angora suit in muted strawberry pink, took a scarf and her light wool coat, and slipped her feet into supple walking shoes. Then she carefully tucked into her large handbag a cotton dress, sandals, toilet necessaries and a towel. That was all. The Lord Buddha, when he pa.s.sed through the palace gardens among the oblivious sleepers, carried nothing but what he wore, and even that he gave away when he entered the outer world and sent Channa back with the weeping white horse Kantaka.

She had some money of her own, changed into rupees for shopping, and some travellers' cheques. Her pa.s.sport, her own personal papers it seemed wrong to possess any of these. But she was living in this present world, and its customs were not those of Kapilavasru, and a certain respect was due to the laws of the land. So she allowed herself the money and the credentials. And at the last moment she turned back to her dressing-table, and painstakingly tied round her left wrist the slightly wilted bracelet of jasmine buds. Dominic was, after all, rather sweet, and it wasn't like allowing oneself real jewels. The Lord Buddha had divested himself of all his jewels before he exchanged his rich silk robes for a huntsman's homespun tunic in the woods. Maybe she could exchange her expensive cardigan suit for shalwar and kameez and a floating, infuriating gauze scarf, such as the schoolgirls wore. She peered into the dark mirror, where a faint cadence of movement indicated the ghost of Anjli peering back at her, and imagined the transformation.

In the other bed Tossa slept peacefully. She never stirred when the door of the room was gently opened. Anjli looked back, and was rea.s.sured, and at the same time curiously touched. She hadn't expected much from Tossa, to tell the truth; anyone her mother deputed to do her dirty work for her was automatically suspect. But Tossa had been a surprise; so quiet, and so reasonable, and so aware, as if she knew just what was going on. Which was nonsense, because there couldn't really be two Dorettes, could there? And how else would she know? Not stupid, either, she could put her foot down gently but finally when she liked. Anjli hoped they would not feel too responsible, and that she would soon be able to get in touch with them and put their minds at rest. Also that they would spend the last dollar of Dorette's money on seeing India before they went back to England.

The corridor was lit only by a small lamp at the end. No one was moving. She listened, and the whole house seemed to be one silence. Anjli closed the door of the room softly behind her, and tiptoed along the darker wall towards the landing window that led to the balconies. There was a stairway to the courtyard there; and there were no gates or doors closing the archway that opened into the street. She knew the lie of the land by now; by the carriage gates farther along there were always a few rickshaws and taxis hopefully waiting, even at night.

She was not going back to Dorette's synthetic world. Not now, nor ever. There were plenty of things in India that she didn't want, the c.o.c.kroaches, the flies, the dirt, the lean, mad-looking tonga horses, half-demented with overwork and rough usage, the maimed animals that no one was profane enough to kill but no one was vulnerable enough to pity, the hunger, the disease, the monumental indifference. Nevertheless, India was all she wanted, India and the links that bound her to it, notably her father, the indispensable link.

There was a room-boy curled up asleep in the service box at the end of the corridor. She pa.s.sed him by silently, and he slept on. Down the stairs into the courtyard she went, and from shadow to shadow of the s.p.a.ced trees across to the end of the box hedge perhaps it wasn't box, but it looked like it, and that was how she thought of it and round it into comparative security. Now there was only the porter's box by the archway. They were asleep there, too. She stole past them like a ghost, and never troubled their dreams. She was in the street, melting into the shelter of the trees, alone in the faintly lambent darkness.

She thought of the receding red turban, and the fine thread of melody whistled across the evening air to her, like an omen; it no longer troubled her, it was inevitably right now, at this hour. The early morning, and the guests the guest! departing...

At the last moment she thought better of taking a rickshaw from the end of the carriage drive, though there were two standing there. She crossed the road, instead, and circled round them, keeping in the shelter of the trees; for when enquiries began to be made about her departure, these would surely be the first people to be questioned. Close to the southern end of Janpath was Claridge's Hotel, and there would just as surely be a taxi or two waiting there.

There was one car, the Sikh driver asleep behind the wheel, and one cycle-rickshaw, with a lean brown boy curled up in a blanket inside the high, sh.e.l.l-shaped carriage. Anjli chose the rickshaw. It would take longer to get her out to the edge of town, but it would pa.s.s silently everywhere, and not be noticed. It would be cheaper, too, and she might yet need her money. Who knew how far she would have to travel to find her father, even if Arjun Baba could tell her the way?

The boy awoke in a flash, uncurling long, thin limbs like a startled spider, and baring white teeth in a nervous grin.

'Will you take me,' said Anjli, low-voiced, 'to the new school in Rabindar Nagar?' She could have given the number of the house and been dropped at the door, but the hunt for her, if pursued devotedly enough, might even turn up this boy; and besides, if her father's secret was so urgent, she did not want any witnesses.

The boy bowed and nodded her into the carriage, and pushed his cycle off silently into the roadway. It was a long drive, she knew, perhaps a little over two miles, but she was a lightweight, and the bicycle was new and well-kept; it would still be practically dark when they arrived. The shapes of New Delhi flowed past her mutely in the dimness, trees and buildings, occasionally a glimpse of a man stumbling to work, still half-sleeping, sometimes the smoky glimmer of little lanterns attached to the shacks where vegetable-sellers slept beside their stalls, waiting to unload the goods brought in at dawn. The stars were still visible, silver sewn into velvet. Now they were out of the city and cruising along the airy terrace of the Ridge for a while, where the air was sharp and bitterly cold, dry and penetrating as the sands from which it blew. And now the first small white villas, making pale patterns against the smoke-coloured earth that would be tawny by day.

The boy halted obediently at the s.h.i.+ny new gates of the school, and asked no questions. Probably he had no English, for he said not a word throughout the transaction, though he must have understood enough to bring her where she wished to be. When she opened her bag they needed no words. He had already summed up her appearance, her clothing and her innocence, perhaps even over-estimating the innocence. He smiled at her beguilingly, and deprecatingly raised two fingers. He thought she didn't know exactly how many new pice per mile he was supposed to charge; but her mind was on other things, and in any case her mood was that of one turning her back upon the world's goods. She gave him his two rupees, and it was a good investment, for he promptly mounted his cycle and rode away before she could change her mind. So he never saw which way she turned from the school.

Only a hundred yards to go now. It was still almost fully dark, only the faintest of pallors showed along the horizon, transforming the sky into an inverted bowl of black rice-grain porcelain with a thin golden rim. She saw the shape of Satyavan's house rise along the sky-line ahead, the only one with that little princely pavilion on the roof; she wondered for a moment if he had a garden up there, or at least small decorative trees in tubs, like the one beside the front door below. All the whites of the white walls were a shadowy, lambent grey, for as yet there were no colours, only cardboard forms, not solids but merely planes. She came to the gate of filigree iron, and for a moment wondered what she would do if it turned out to be locked or chained; but the latch gave to her hand soundlessly. At the end of the garden wall, drawn aside from the roadway, a small van sat parked in the worn, straw-pale gra.s.s. Did that mean that someone had come home? Or was it merely the property of the man next door, the plump lady's husband, who was probably a travelling salesman, or a veterinary surgeon, or something else modestly professional with need of transport?

She let herself into the compound. The house was dark and quiet, and Kishan Singh, with no need to rise early, was surely still fast asleep. But in the distant corner of the earth yard a small gleam of light shone, and the now familiar scent of dust and humanity and incense, funereal, vital and holy, stung her nostrils as she tiptoed across the front garden.

In front of his corner kennel, under his lean-to roof, Arjun Baba sat just as she had seen him three days ago, huddled in his brown blanket against the night's cold, peering down sightlessly into the minute flame of his brazier. A glossy red reflection picked out the jut of cheek-bones and brow from the tangle of grey hair and beard that hid his face. When he heard her step he raised his head, but did not turn towards her. She had a feeling that three days had been lost, and all that had pa.s.sed in them was a fantasy, not a reality; or perhaps that those three days had been demanded of her as a probation for what was still to come. Perhaps he had not even expected her. Yet she was here.

She crossed the few yards of bare, beaten earth with the soft, gliding walk of a woman in a sari, and sank to her heels, squatting to face him across the brazier.

'Namaste! Uncle, I am Anjli k.u.mar. You called me, I have come.'

The old man s.h.i.+fted slowly in his blanket, and linked his hands beneath his chin in greeting. A creaking voice blew through the tangle of grey hair and said hoa.r.s.ely: 'Namaste!'

'Uncle, you have something to tell me?'

The ancient head wagged in the ambiguous manner she had learned to interpret as: Yes. Slowly he shrugged back the blanket from his shoulders, and lifted his eyes to her face.

It was the gleam of the brazier that warned her. She had braced herself unconsciously to contemplate once again the opaque white membrane of cataract filming over the sightless eyes, and instead there was a bright darkness with a hard golden high-light, the sharp pheasant-stare of eyes that saw her very clearly. For an instant she stared back transfixed and motionless; then without a sound she recoiled from him and sprang to her feet, whirling on one heel to run like a deer.

A hand reached out across the brazier and caught her by the long black braid of hair, dragging her back. She opened her lips to cry out, but the blanket was flung over her head, and hard fingers clamped the dusty folds tightly over her mouth and nostrils, ramming the cloth between her teeth. A long arm gripped her round the waist and swung her off her feet, and in a moment she felt something drawn tightly round her arms above the elbow, pinning them fast. She tried to kick, and the voluminous folds of the blanket were drawn close and tied, m.u.f.fing every movement. A hand felt for her mouth, thrust the woollen stuff in deep, and twisted a strip of cloth round her head to fasten the gagging folds in place.

The hair-line of gold along the horizon had thickened into a pale-rose-coloured cord. Just before the first backdoor tradesman pushed his hand-cart into the alley between the houses, the little van parked on the gra.s.s started up, and was driven decorously away towards the main road.

VI.

Dominic awakened to an insistent tapping at his door about eight o'clock, to find the room flooded with sunlight. He rolled out of bed and reached for his dressing-gown so abruptly that one gecko, until then apparently petrified in a corner of the ceiling, whisked out of sight under the rickety wiring, and another, prowling within inches of Dominic's heel as he hit the floor, shot away in a fright, leaving behind on the boards a two-and-a-half inch tail that continued to twitch for ten minutes after its owner had departed.

'Dominic, are you awake? It's me, Tossa. Open the door! ' She fell into the room in a cloud of nylon ruffles. 'You haven't seen anything of Anjli, have you?' A silly question, she realised, his eyes were barely open yet. 'She's gone! I woke up a little while ago, and she isn't anywhere to be seen, and her bed's cold. I thought at first she was in the bathroom, but she isn't. Her pyjamas are there folded on the pillow. But she's gone she's gone!'

Her glance fell upon the wriggling tail at that moment, and her eyes opened wide in incredulous horror, for she had read about, but never yet encountered, the more unnerving habits of the smaller lizards. But she was too preoccupied to spare a word for the phenomenon Dominic plainly had not even noticed.

'It's a fine morning,' he said reasonably, 'she'll have gone off for a walk. I don't suppose she's any farther away than the garden.'

Tossa shook her head emphatically. 'She's taken that outsize handbag of hers. I checked as soon as I realised... It's got all her money in it, and her pa.s.sport. Her coat's gone from the wardrobe, and a cotton dress... and her was.h.i.+ng things have vanished out of the bathroom. No, she's up to something on her own. Whatever it is, she planned it herself. You know what I think? I'd have sworn even at the time she was being too quiet and reasonable. When it came to the point, she simply didn't want to go back home.'

'But she surely wouldn't run off on her own, just to give us the slip? She's got n.o.body here to turn to, after all, even if she does hate the thought of going back to England.'

'She's got a cousin,' Tossa reminded him dubiously.

'She didn't show much sign of taking to him.'

'I know. But he's the only relative she has got left over here, as far as we know. We'd better try there first, hadn't we?' Her eyes remained fixed on the abandoned tail, now twitching solemnly and regularly as a metronome. Her toes curled with horror. 'Don't step back! ' she warned; his bare foot was just an inch from the pale-green tip.

Dominic looked down, uttered a startled yelp, and removed himself several feet from the improbable thing in one leap. 'Good lord, what on earth...! I I haven't done that, surely? I swear I never touched... haven't done that, surely? I swear I never touched...

'They say they do it when they're scared,' said Tossa, and wondered if she had not shed an appendage herself this morning, a taken-for-granted tail of European self-confidence and security. 'I think they grow another. She can't really have gone off and left us permanently, can she? Surely she'd be afraid!'

'Go and get dressed, and we'll see if she comes to breakfast. If not, maybe some of the hotel staff will have seen her go out.'

That was good sense, and Tossa seized on it gratefully; Anjli had a healthy appet.i.te, and was always on time for meals. But this time the magic did not work. The two of them met at their table in the ground-floor dining-room, the garden bright and empty outside the long windows; the tea arrived, strong and dark as always, the toast, the eggs; but no Anjli.

They went in search of the room-boy. Last night's attendant was off-duty for the day, and the shy southerner who had just tidied away the gecko's tail, finally limp and still, had seen nothing of Miss k.u.mar. Nor had the sweeper in the courtyard, nor the porters at the gates. All this time Dominic had had one eye c.o.c.ked for the truant's return, fully expecting her to saunter in from a walk at any moment; but time ticked by and the possible sources of information dried up one by one, and still no Anjli. By a process of elimination they arrived at the reception clerk, who was hardly a promising prospect, since he had come on duty only at eight o'clock this morning, when Anjli's absence had already been discovered. However, they tried.

'Miss k.u.mar? No, I have not seen her this morning, I am sorry.' The clerk was a dapper young man, friendly and willing to please. He looked from one anxious face to the other, and grasped that this was serious; and it was in pure kindness of heart that he felt impelled to add something more, even if it was of no practical help. 'I have seen nothing of her since she came in with you yesterday evening. To be sure, I remember there was a note delivered here for her later...'

'Note?' said Dominic, p.r.i.c.king up his ears. He looked at Tossa, and she shook her head; not a word had been said about any note. 'Did she get it?'

'Of course, sir, I sent it up to her as soon as it came, by the room-boy.'

'You don't know who it was from? Who brought it?' Certainly not the postman, at that hour.

'No, sir, I cannot say from whom it came. It was a common peon who brought it, some shop porter, perhaps. Though I do recall that the note was not in an envelope, but just a sheet of paper folded together a little soiled, even...'

It did not sound at all like the immaculate Vasudev. And who else was there in Delhi to be sending notes to Anjli? The film unit was away in Benares, and no one else knew her.

'About what time was this?'

'I cannot say precisely, sir, but a little after nine, probably.'

Anjli had announced her intention of going for her bath at about that hour. And only a few minutes later, that floating wisp of melody had drifted in at the window that overlooked the courtyard... No, he was imagining connections where there were none. Tossa was right, the ragas were there for everyone to use and enjoy. It was placing too much reliance on his unpractised ear to insist that what he had heard was not merely Raga Aheer Bhairab, but Ashok's unique folksong variation of it, and no other.

So they were back to the necessity of beginning the hunt for Anjli somewhere; and the obvious place was Purnima's house. Where, of course, they told each other bracingly in the taxi, Anjli would certainly be.

'Note?' Vasudev's thin black moustache quivered with consternation. 'No, indeed I a.s.sure you I sent my little cousin no note. I would not dream of addressing her except through you, when you have been placed in charge of her by her mother. I have been considering, indeed I intended to telephone you today and ask you to call... Some proper provision must be made, of course. But I did not... This is terrible! You do not think that someone has lured her away...? But who knew of her presence here? Your friends of the film unit, you tell me, are in Benares. Otherwise who could know you and Anjli here in Delhi, and know where to find you?'

'We've been in contact with a lot of people in the town, of course,' admitted Tossa, 'but only casually, the sort of tourist contact one has with shops, and restaurants, and guides... and what could be more anonymous? The only place where we're known known, so to speak, apart from here and the hotel, is the house in Rabindar Nagar your cousin Satyavan's house...'

'Of course! ' Dominic snapped his fingers joyfully. 'Why didn't I think of it! Kishan Singh! A slightly grubby little note brought by a paid messenger... It could be! Kishan Singh may have had some news of Anjli's father. Perhaps he's home!'

Vasudev looked first dubious, and then hopeful; and after a few seconds of thought, both excited and resolute. He came out of his western chair in a nervous leap. 'Come, we shall take the car and I will drive you over there to Rabindar Nagar. We must see if this is the case. Indeed, one hopes! That would resolve all our problems most fortunately.'

He ran to the rear door of the palatial hall, and clapped his hands, and in a few moments they heard him issuing clipped, high-pitched orders. Presently the car rolled majestically round on to the rosy gravel, with a magnificently turbaned Sikh at the wheel. A glossy new Mercedes in the most conservative of dark greys, and its chauffeur's pride and joy, that was clear by the condescending forbearance with which he opened the door to allow them to enter its sacred confines. But that morning he was not to be allowed to drive it; Vasudev did that himself, and did it with a ferocity and fire they had not expected from him. Their taxi driver, on the first occasion, had taken half as long again to get them to Rabindar Nagar.

At the first turning into the new suburb from the main road Vasudev braked, hesitating. 'It is long since I was here, I have forgotten. Is it this turn?'

'The second one. N block, it's only a couple of hundred yards farther on. Yes, here.'

At the half-finished houses the bold, gypsyish, stately women of Orissa walked the scaffolding with shallow baskets of bricks on their heads, and made a highly-coloured frieze against the pale blue sky, their fluted skirts swaying as though to music. At sight of the opulent car the half-naked children padded barefoot across the open from their low, dark tents, running beside it with pinkish-brown palms upturned and small, husky voices grating their endless complaint against possessing nothing among so many and such solid possessions. There was no obsequious tone in this begging, it accused, demanded and mocked, expecting nothing, and ready to throw stones if nothing was given. But this time the plump lady from next door did not chase them away. She was there, she and a dozen others, cl.u.s.tered round the open iron gate of N 305, all shrilling and shrugging in excited Hindi, a soprano descant to a louder, angrier, more violent clamour of male voices eddying from within the compound. No one had time now for errant children; the centre of all attention was there within the wall, out of sight. And even the Orissan infants, having come to beg, sensed that there was more to be had here than new pice, and winding the excitement, wormed their way in under elbows, between legs, through the folds of saris, to see whatever was there to be seen.

'Oh, G.o.d, no!' prayed Tossa silently in the back seat, tugging at the handle of the door. Little girls vanished, little girls reappeared, horribly changed. Everybody knew it happened. But not here! With all its violence and despair and hunger, somehow India had felt morally clean and safe to her, she would have walked through Old Delhi at night, alone, and never felt a qualm, something she couldn't have said for Paddington. Yet unmistakably this had the look of a crowd round the police van, the ambulance, the sorry panoply of murder or rape.

They clambered out of the car, clumsy with haste.

'Oh, dear! Oh, dear! ' Vasudev keened, his voice soaring with agitation. 'Something has happened! Something is wrong here! Miss Barber, you should please stay in the car...'

But she was already ahead of them, boring into the small b.u.t.terfly crowd about the gate, and thrusting her way through without ceremony. They followed her perforce, clinging to her arm, urging her to go back. Tossa hardly noticed. It was bad enough for them, but it was she who had taken on the job, so lightly so selfishly, coveting India and hardly thinking, at first, about the child who was being posted about the world like a parcel...

She extricated herself frantically from the gold-embroidered end of a lilac and white sari, and fell out into the open s.p.a.ce of the compound, and Dominic flung his arm round her and held her upright. The door of Satyavan's house stood wide open, and on the white paving before it Kishan Singh, his guileless eyes round and golden with fright, sobbed and protested and argued in loud Hindi, alternately buffeted and shaken between two vociferous Punjabis in khaki shorts and tunics. Another man in khaki, obviously their superior, stood straddle-legged before the trio, barking abrupt questions at the terrified boy, and swinging a short rattan cane of office in one hand. He was a handsome turbaned Sikh, his beard cradled in a fine black net, his moustache waxed fiercely erect at the ends. Whatever had happened, the Delhi police were in possession here.

Kishan Singh, turning his bullet head wildly from one persecutor to the other, caught a fleeting glimpse of the new arrivals, and uttered a shrill cry of relief and joy. Crises in India are chaotic, voluble and exceedingly noisy, and he had been adding his share to this one, but only out of panic. With someone to speak for him, he regained his st.u.r.dy mountain calm.

'Sahib, memsahib, please, there is very bad thing happened. You tell these men, I am honest, I have done nothing wrong... Why should I call police here, if I did this thing?'

Dominic looked squarely at the Sikh officer, who was plainly the man to be reckoned with here. 'Kishan Singh is the caretaker of this house, and has been a good servant to Shrimati Purnima k.u.mar and to her son. If Shrimati Purnima were still alive, I know she would speak for her boy, and I feel sure Mr k.u.mar here, her nephew, will tell you the same. I don't know what has happened here, but I know that Kishan Singh is to be trusted.' Did he really know that, after one short encounter? Yes, he did, and he wasn't going to apologise for the brevity of the acquaintance to this man or to anyone. With some people, you know where you stand, with some you don't. Kishan Singh belonged among the former group. There is an innocence which is absolute, and there's no mistaking it when you do meet it.

'I understand,' said the Sikh officer, eyeing them narrowly, 'that this boy is the only resident here. Is that the case?' His English was all the better because his voice was a sombre ba.s.s-baritone.

'Yes, I understand that is true. Apart from the old man who lives in the compound here, as a kind of pensioner of the family.'

'Ah... yes,' said the police officer gently. 'That is the point. We are, unfortunately, debarred from referring to this elderly gentleman as a witness.'

'I know he is blind. You mean there has been a crime on these premises?'

'A very serious crime.' He made a brief gesture with the cane in his hand, and deflected all attention into the distant corner of the compound, partially cut off from view by the jut of the house wall. Tossa wanted to close her eyes, but did not; what right had she to refrain from seeing what was there to be seen? The poor little girl, shuttlec.o.c.k to this marital pair who didn't care a toss about her, and now fallen victim to some incomprehensible perversion that was an offence against India as well as against youth and girlhood...

'Come, you should look more closely,' said the Sikh, and led the way, turning once to say with authority: 'The lady must stay here.'

The lady stayed; she could not very well do anything else. But her eyes, which had excellent vision, followed them remorselessly across the sparkling white paving, across the beaten, rust-coloured earth, under the lightly-dancing clothes-line, to the shed and the lean-to roof in the corner, where Anjli...

No! There was no honeyed rose of Anjli's skin there, and no midnight-black of her hair, and no silvery angora pink of her best jersey suit. There were two policemen and one dried-up little medical civilian sitting on their heels around something on the ground; and when the Sikh brought his accidental witnesses over to view the find, these three rose and drew apart, leaving the focus of all attention full in view.

He could not have been found there, any chance pa.s.serby in the side street might have looked over the wall and seen him; they must have brought him out into the light after measuring and recording his position on discovery, somewhere there in the corner shed, fast hidden from sight.

The dull brown blanket was gone. Only a thin, skinny little shape, hardly larger than a monkey, lay contorted on the darker brown earth of Satyavan's yard, bony arms curled together as if holding a secret, bony legs drawn up to his chin, streaky grey hair spread abroad like scattered ash. There was so little blood in him that his face was scarcely congested at all; but there were swollen bruises on the long, skinny, misshapen throat to show that he had died by strangulation.

The eyes were open; blank, rounded and white as pearls.

Arjun Baba, that very, very old man, had quitted the world in the night, and left no message behind him.