“Is there any remote chance of this mutilation having anything to do with religious fanatics or political matters?”
“About politics, I cannot say. About religion I can say definitely no. It has been my affair for many years to know all aspects of religious conflict here in Bengal Province. This trouble does not fit with the facts I have accumulated.”
“Well, Kahn, I’m stopped cold. It doesn’t make sense.” Gregory shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in bewilderment.
“You know as much as I do, and your guesses will be as good as mine until we get more facts. But understand, Gregory, that you must not talk of this, only to me. Now we must wait for something more to develop.”
“Waiting will get you nowhere, only more hospital cases and deaths. Why not figure out a plan to trap those who are doing the mutilations?” Gregory’s voice was eager.
“A plan! But how?”
“Get a good idea of what those original notches looked like, and notch up a couple of your huskier policemen. Send them out armed to wander the streets out of uniform.”
“Oh, no! I would not have the authority. That is a wild plan. That sounds American. We could never do that sort of thing here in Calcutta.” Incredulity and alarm showed in Kahn’s face.
“Okay, okay. Skip it. Maybe it wouldn’t have worked.”
Soon the talk shifted to other matters, and as soon as they finished their meal they left the table as others were waiting. As Kahn walked back to his office the last words Gregory had spoken kept repeating in his mind, “I’ve got two more weeks to waste, and I am not going to get on that boat without knowing the answer to this.” Kahn shook his head sadly at the insatiable curiosity of his American friend.
Gregory went back and sat in the lobby of the Great Eastern Hotel. As he listlessly watched the colorful crowd moving through the ornate corridor his mind was busy with the problem of the notched ears. He called on all of his experience in the East to help his thinking, but to no advantage. Two weeks to spend. Two weeks to sit in the heat of Calcutta, city of strong stench and rotting beggars, city of violence, city of overhead fans, fried prawns and gin gimlets. Gregory Hewson was a man whose mind ranged like a hungry beast, searching for problems and leaping on them to suck dry the mystery. He depended on problems and complications to keep his mind alive, for he was a man who could sink into an apathy of boredom that was bottomless. He imagined hell to be a place where all of the problems were already solved.
As he sat his hand crept up and he began to finger the tip of his left ear. He realized that the idea he was getting was foolish, but he couldn’t resist it. Then he pulled out a notebook and began to hunt for the address of a British doctor he had met up in Simla.
Three hours later Gregory was again seated in the lobby with a small white bandage on the upper half of his left ear. His tension was gone. He sat completely relaxed, and ordered a gin and water from one of the turbaned waiters who roved the lobby. Gregory decided to spent the next five or six days in relaxation and the pursuit of coolness and comfort. By then his ear would be healed sufficiently to take off the bandage. He sipped his drink and smiled as he remembered the expression on the face of his doctor friend as he had outlined his request.
Six days later Gregory removed the bandage and inspected his ear in the mirror in his bathroom at the hotel. Only a pinkness around the notch showed that it was recent. But the pinkness was only noticeable under close inspection. Then he sat down and scribbled a note to A. Kahn Haidari and placed it on his bedside cabinet where it would be found if he didn’t return. He hoped that the notch was the right size and shape, but Kahn’s description had been very specific, so it didn’t worry him. He then dug out his most comfortable shoes and put them on. His last preparation was to strap on a snub nose thirty-two caliber revolver in a spring clip shoulder holster. The weapon was so small that no bulge was noticeable under his loose-fitting seersucker suit coat. Throughout all of this preparation he wore the satisfied expression of an ardent bridge fan laying out a problem hand to be solved.
Gregory never tired of walking the streets of Calcutta. Here were millions of people who lived so close to the edge of starvation that any scarcity of the basic foodstuffs or change in the prices could cause mass deaths. Here was teeming fertility that contributed to India’s population increase of nine million persons each year. The great famine of forty-three had killed four million persons, most of them in Bengal Province. Gregory smiled a bitter smile as he remembered the newspaper editorial he had read which stated that the great famine had been a failure as it had only killed four million, thus leaving a net increase of five million in population for that year. Five million more to be so poorly fed, poorly housed and poorly educated that by comparison the most poverty ridden hamlets in the states are miracles of plenty.
He watched the naked children begging, the expensive saris of the women, the lumbering ox carts, the bicycle rickshaws, the dilapidated taxis and all the thronging color of the second largest city in the British Empire.
But always he directed his footsteps toward the meaner sections of the city. Around him the scenes of poverty and degradation grew worse as he walked further from the hotel section. As dusk approached he noticed a nearly naked man lying in the gutter. He could have been drunk or drugged or sick or dead. The people who walked past him did not even glance at him. If he was still there at dawn one of the city disposal trucks would investigate.
As it grew dark Gregory checked off the day as a failure. He was certain that no one would notice the tiny notch at night. Since he didn’t want to become a victim of bandits, he hailed a rickshaw to take him back the long miles to his hotel. As he sat in the vehicle listening to the pad pad of the naked feet of the rickshaw coolie on the quiet pavement he began to mentally lay out his route for the next day. He noticed the sound of another pair of coolie’s feet coming along the road behind him at a faster pace. He saw the second coolie then, out of the corner of his eye, jogging along even with him and then slowly pulling ahead. As he started to turn in idle curiosity and look at the passenger in the second rickshaw the entire world exploded. His last conscious impression was of a blinding flash and pain in the back of his head, and the feeling of falling forward into soft, complete blackness.
Consciousness returned slowly to Gregory. His splitting head and feeling of nausea seemed strangely familiar. He opened his eyes and saw nothing. He thought at first that it was night, then as he stared into the darkness and saw no single glimmer of light, a sudden overpowering fear of blindness shook him. The fear speeded up his return to complete awareness of his surroundings. His cheek was pressed against a cool damp surface. The air smelled like a cellar, and he assumed that he was lying face down on dirt. He could move his legs freely, but his arms were lashed together in front of him. They were cramped and numb. He rolled over on his back and felt the tingle of circulation returning to his arms. Then he noticed that he was wearing only what felt to be his underwear shorts and his shoes and socks. He tried to stretch his numb arms and stopped as he felt sharp pain in his upper arms. He reached down with his chin and pulled his arms up to one side. His heart leaped as he felt the adhesive of a bandage under his chin.
Then it hadn’t been bandits that knocked him out in the rickshaw. But why were only the arms cut? Why not the legs? Why was he bandaged? Why had he not been left in the street? Then he suddenly realized why the nausea seemed familiar. It was the same feeling that he had had after an operation. He had been anaesthetized. But the fear about his eyes worried him more than his immediate personal danger.
He climbed cautiously to his feet with much difficulty and tried to stand erect. When he was still in a very stooped position, his head hit a rough ceiling. With his bound hands outstretched in front of him he felt his way around and discovered that he was in a cell about eight feet long and five feet wide with a ceiling only about five feet high. He found no windows. So his fear for his eyes began to disappear. To make certain, he backed to the wall, bent his head down and hacked at the masonry wall with his heel until the metal reinforcement on his heel struck a very visible and very satisfying spark.