Above all he did not wish the gun to be found on him. Possession of a gun is a most serious offense in Ceylon. And an American gun which had been stolen. He would probably spend the rest of his life in the darkness of a prison.
He sat up trying to think of a plan until he could think no more. Then he went to sleep and dreamed of a gun that slowly grew until he could no longer conceal it. He woke up beaded with cold sweat and then dropped off again.
By noon the next day he was no nearer a solution. He decided that he must take the gun apart somehow, and bury it in the dirt floor in holes which he could dig with the tool. He took the tool out and made a few stabs at the floor. He picked up a chunk of dirt and crushed it between his fingers. It felt like the clay of his native village, clay that the women had used to fashion crude pots and set them out in the sun to bake hard. Then he noticed that the floor was as hard as concrete in the center of the cell where the beams of the late afternoon sun struck it. The germ of an idea began to grow in his mind.
He selected what looked to be the dampest corner of the cell, and began to dig rapidly with the edged tool. When he had extracted sufficient dirt from the hole, he began to moisten the pile with saliva, and knead it with his hands like dough. After half an hour of moistening and kneading, he estimated that the consistency was right. Then, after waiting silently to see if he could hear footsteps approaching, he quickly placed the gun and the edged tool on the pile of clay and formed the clay around the two objects. He shaped and patted until he had a shapeless mass, roughly oval in shape.
He next tore the hem from the bottom of his sarong and with racing fingers unraveled about an inch of it. This gave him a pile of thread on the floor which he rapidly wound into strands of heavy string. He then tied the pieces of string together into a crude sling. He placed the damp mass of clay in the sling, fitted it between the heavy bars of the cell window and lowered it so that it hung against the outside wall, suspended by one of the strands which he tied firmly around one of the bars. He then scraped loose dirt together and filled the hole he had made. The entire operation had taken less than an hour and a half. With a smug smile of satisfaction he again squatted against the wall and began to formulate the last half of his plan. As the late afternoon sun beat through the window he would occasionally walk over and twist the strand supporting his sling so that the clay would revolve in the hot sun like meat in front of a fire.
The following morning Captain Booter took a strange rickshaw to the compound from his bungalow, puzzled by the continued absence of Jayasata. His Malay friend had reported the theft of the pistol and had stated that the thief had escaped. He had practically decided that the greater value of the gun had influenced Jayasata to give up the opportunity of claiming his hundred rupee reward. He was glad that the gun had been stolen, but he felt uneasy over his misplaced trust in his rickshaw man.
Although his work often led him into strange situations, Captain Booter will never forget his interview with his first visitor that morning.
The visitor, a tall swarthy individual with a small beard, dressed in civilian clothes, was sitting in the outer office when the captain entered. In a few minutes the girl brought in his card — Fernando Perez — Deputy Supervisor of Police.
When Perez walked into the captain’s office he was carrying a hard lump of baked clay which he deposited gingerly on the captain’s desk. He smiled and bowed.
“Regretting the intruding, sir, it is necessary to be asking questions to you.” The man acted embarrassed.
“Certainly. Please sit down. And you may speak Singhalese. I understand and speak it quite well.” Booter’s smile was cordial while underneath his mind raced trying to guess the cause of the visit. The lump of baked clay baffled him.
The man sat down with an obvious sigh of relief at being able to attack this delicate subject in his own language. “Is it true, Captain Booter, that your hobby is to experiment with the causes of diseases?”
“And what if that is true?” Booter had been in service long enough to avoid any positive answers to peculiar questions. He always attempted to hedge until he had found out why the question was being asked.
“Do you know a clumsy man who pulls a rickshaw whose name is Jayasata?”
“Yes, I do. Up to the day before yesterday he brought me to work each morning and took me home each night. I cannot understand his sudden absence.”
“Did you entrust Jayasata with the delivery of this... ah... this object?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Is not the carrying of such an object through the streets in a rickshaw a danger to the entire city? And this man Jayasata forgot the address to which he was to deliver it and was returning to your bungalow to have you tell it to him again. Does that not show he is a careless man? He had an accident while returning to your bungalow. Suppose the... ah... bundle here had broken in that accident. The germs of black plague would have been at large in this city.”
“I admit it was careless of me. I shall entrust such items to more capable messengers in the future.”
“I am glad to know that Jayasata was not lying when he told us of the contents of the clay. We would have cracked it open, but he fell into such a hysteria of fear that it was not done. I should have felt foolish in bringing it to you if it contained some other object.”
“I am glad you had the intelligence to bring it to me. It is most dangerous. Do you wish to see me open it — I will probably be able to keep the germs under control.” He picked it up and handled it carelessly.
Perez licked his dry lips with the tip of a nervous tongue. “It is not at all necessary, sir. I must hurry back. Jayasata informs you he will be detained about a month, at the end of which time he will resume his practice of taking you to and from your bungalow, should you be willing.”
“Please tell Jayasata that I am pleased that he did not permit the contents of the clay object to escape and that I will be pleased to rehire him at the end of his period as a guest of the city. Good day.”
The tall figure of the deputy supervisor retrieved his soiled calling card from the corner of the captain’s desk and hurried out.
After he was gone, Booter tested his guess by cracking open the clay. Inside, still coated with moist dirt were the gun and the tool.
He did some rapid juggling of the official budget and decided that one month hence he could well afford two hundred rupees. One hundred for the theft, and one hundred for the method of delivery.
Jayasata became known as one of the happiest and most cheerful prisoners that had ever been locked into Bambalipitya prison.