Then he put his plan into operation. Gently he shifted his weight until he was lying on one hip on the ledge with his feet braced against the vertical ledge at one side of the window. He grasped one of the slim bars with both hands at a point which he estimated was about in the middle of the bars. Then he began to straighten out his stringy legs against the edge of the window. Those legs were full of power. For years he had been jogging along the hard streets of Colombo. Now he called on all of their power, and as he straightened them and as his arms felt as if they were being pulled from their sockets, he felt the bar slowly bend. When he estimated that he had bent it far enough, he reversed his position, and bent the bar next to it in the opposite direction. He gingerly fitted his head into the space between the bars and found that it was possibly wide enough to admit his body. He dropped silently onto the ground, found the grease and climbed back onto the ledge. Then he put a thick smear of grease along each of the two bars he had bent. He placed the grease on the outside ledge and swung his feet through the opening. He let himself into the dark room by inches, feeling cautiously downward with his feet until they touched a hard surface. The bars were tight around his shoulders. For one horrible second he thought he was stuck. Then he got additional leverage with his hands and suddenly popped through so quickly that the tool in his teeth hit one of the bars. He clung to the bars while the sharp clink seemed to resound through the silent rooms. After two minutes of silence he assumed that he hadn’t been heard, and climbed down from the desk onto the floor.
He felt the desk over carefully, locating the top drawer and the lock on the front of it. With infinite care he inserted the chisel edge of the tool near the lock and then began to exert pressure steadily upward on the handle of the tool. It was at this point that he realized how frightened he was. He, Jayasata, an honest man and the owner of a rickshaw with yellow wheels, skulking here in the dark like a criminal. But his luck had been so good and he was so far advanced on his job that he ignored his sudden desire to get out quickly.
Captain Booter had been right. The desk was frail. It was made of crisp old wood. Suddenly under the increasing pressure the entire front of the drawer came off with a rending crash and clattered onto the floor. Jayasata made no further attempt to be quiet. He fumbled into the drawer in the dark, found the chill bulk of the gun, climbed back onto the desk and squeezed himself through the bars feet first. As he was halfway through he heard loud shouts from the back of the house and saw a light flickering in the next room. Terror gave him such strength that he plunged wildly out, gouging his thigh on the ledge as he tumbled to the ground. Without taking the tool from his teeth, he grabbed the paper of grease, his sarong and belt with his free hand and ran back down the cave toward the lighter darkness of the street. Fortunately no one was nearby as he plunged out naked onto the sidewalk, falling in his anxiety to get away. He bounded back onto his feet and ran furiously up the sidewalk. About half a block from the house he plunged into some thick bushes. In haste he swabbed the grease from his face and arms and chest, then climbed back into the sarong. He buckled the silver belt tightly around him, and then placed the gun and tool into one of the top folds that overlapped the tight belt. He spent a moment arranging the cloth so as to best conceal the shape of the gun before hurling the grease into the bushes. Then he stepped quietly out onto the sidewalk. As he walked away toward his chained rickshaw he tried to control the thumping of his heart by breathing slowly and deeply. He looked back. All of the lights were on in the Anazhan bungalow. A man stood in the middle of the road looking quickly in both directions, but the friendly darkness concealed Jayasata. In half an hour he was back in the little room with the gun safely in his tin box. He lay for a time listening to the faint snores of the two men who shared the room with him. When he finally dropped off to sleep there was a smile on his lips and in his head was the melodious chiming of the new rickshaw bell.
At eight o’clock the next morning Jayasata was padding happily up the Galle Road to pick up Captain Booter at his bungalow. In a high whining tone he was singing one of the old songs of his village. Safely tucked away under the seat cushion of the rickshaw was the ugly bulk of the automatic. Maybe he was too absorbed in his song, maybe he was planning one of the feasts he was going to have with the hundred rupees. Maybe he was wondering if the captain would let him keep the pretty tool which even now was tucked away in the top fold of his sarong. At any rate he made a foolish mistake for a rickshaw man of long experience. When he turned into Captain Booter’s street, he turned directly into the path of an oncoming rickshaw.
The other driver shouted and Jayasata saw his danger too late. In spite of his sharp turn away from the path of the other, and in spite of the other man’s frantic attempts to slow his rickshaw down, the weight of the passenger in the other rickshaw carried them together. Both vehicles overturned, and the passenger was thrown out onto the pavement. Jayasata wasn’t knocked off his feet, but when he saw the gun glittering in the morning sun, he fell heavily onto it. He scooped it up, tucked it into his sarong and stood up. He looked guiltily at the other driver and at the passenger. But the other man, a brutal looking fellow, was too busy righting his vehicle and examining it for damage to have seen what Jayasata had done. The passenger, a pretty Burgher girl, was too busy examining the tears in her stockings and the dirt on her dress to have noticed. Soon a crowd gathered around them.
Just as Jayasata righted his undamaged rickshaw, the other driver grasped his arm. He held his face close to Jayasata, and looked down at him.
“Clumsy black son of a pig! For this there will be police.” He turned to his passenger. “Do you wish to inform the police of the stupidity of this unwashed one?”
A torrent of Singhalese came from the girl, “Call them now. Call them at once. The man is obviously unfit to be on the street. He is a danger. My clothes are ruined. It was not your fault. This black jungle man must see the inside of a jail.”
She started to weep, and Jayasata looked at her with the contempt of all natives for their half-breed cousins. At that moment a tall native policeman elbowed his way through the grinning crowd.
One hour later Jayasata squatted on the dirt floor of a cell in the Bambalipitya Police Station. He held one hand to his throbbing cheek where the policeman had struck him when he tried to run away in sudden panic. He had been told that his trial would not take place until three days had passed. But for one thing he was grateful. He had not been searched. Of necessity, that would take place before his trial. He thanked Buddha for clouding the brain of the man who had forgotten to search him, and for misting the eye of the man who might have seen the obvious lump of the gun in the fold of his sarong.
All day he squatted tirelessly trying to think of some way out of his trouble. He moved only to eat hungrily of the gritty rice and tea which was shoved into his cell at noon and again in the early evening. He hoped that no one would be brought in to share the cell.
After dark he tested the bars of the tiny window. He exerted all of his strength until the sweat popped out on his forehead without budging the bars a fraction of an inch. He did not really want to escape. If he did, his rickshaw, now chained in the police yard would be forfeit. But he felt a sense of obligation to Captain Booter and thought that maybe if he could make good his escape, deliver the gun and then give himself up again, his absence would be forgiven.