It took him a long time to find the entrance to his cell. He finally felt it over in a comer, a wooden door which set flush with the masonry and was only two feet square. He knelt and pressed his nose to the crack between the door and the masonry. He could feel a faint stir of air on his lips, and that reassured him because the air was so foul in the cell that he felt weak and was forced to breathe rapidly. Having learned all that he could from his surroundings, he sat on the floor and leaned against the wall beside the door. He gave up trying to loosen his wrists after a very few tries.
Several times he slept. He had no idea of how much time passed. He utilized his waking hours in trying to make some sense out of his confinement. But all he could develop were theories. He had insufficient facts for his scientific mind to grasp and produce a positive answer. It made no sense.
He was asleep when the low door swung open. It made a grating noise that awakened him instantly. A flickering light shone through the door.
“Crawl out, Sahib.” The words sounded as though his jailor had little English. Gregory had great difficulty crawling with his hands lashed together. But he managed to wriggle through the doorway. He rose to his feet and saw, facing him, an Indian of the lowest caste. He had black hair growing from under the knot of soiled rags on his head. His eyes glinted in the light of a small dish of oil in which a lighted wick was floating. He held the lamp in his left hand and a short heavy club in his right. He pointed the club out to one side, and said, “Go!” Gregory looked and saw a long black corridor. The flickering light did not throw enough of a beam to show the far end of the corridor. Gregory walked slowly and apprehensively into the gloom, the Indian close on his heels. After about twenty feet he came to a narrow stairway leading up. He looked inquiringly back over his shoulder, but the Indian merely jabbed him with the club. He climbed up a flight, and heard the roar of street noises. He paused, was jabbed again, and continued up the second flight. It ended abruptly at a closed door. He stopped and the Indian reached around him and tapped on the door lightly with the club.
A loud call of “Idar ao!” came from beyond the door. A sudden wave of weakness swept over Gregory, and for a second he thought he would faint. The Indian shoved the door open.
For a moment Gregory thought he was in delirium. The door opened into a luxurious modern office with discreet indirect lighting reflecting soft beams from the highly polished desk and comfortable chairs. The rugs were a thick softness from paneled wall to paneled wall. To his right was what appeared to be the main door. The desk was directly in front of him. But as soon as his eyes were adjusted to the light and he obtained his first distinct impression of the man behind the desk, all details of the office faded from his conscious mind.
An Indian of the upper classes sat behind the desk, smiling with disdain at the naked dirty figure of his unwilling guest. He wore a jeweled turban in a dusty pink shade which set off the coffee cream color of his face. It was there that his resemblance to high caste Indians stopped. Instead of the delicate facial bone structure so common among his class, this Indian had a heavy protruding jaw, thick solid looking cheek bones and a massive ridge of bone across his brows. His arms, folded on the desk top, looked unnaturally long and heavy.
After leaving Gregory standing uncomfortably for many long seconds, the man spoke in a gentle voice with a distinct Oxford inflection, “Won’t you please sit down, Dr. Hewson. Over here, please, opposite me. That is excellent. Now we will have a nice talk.” He reached in the drawer of the desk, drew out Gregory’s revolver and laid it on the desk top, and motioned to the guard to leave.
As soon as the guard closed the door gently behind himself, Gregory cleared his throat and said, “You must excuse me if I seem speechless. The guest room you gave me and now all this...” He gestured at the room with his bound hands. “It has me puzzled.”
“And you, Dr. Hewson, have us puzzled. You have injected into a very simple and effective plan an element of doubt. My people are worried. So it becomes necessary to find out what your plans are, and who devised this foolish trick to confuse us. Your papers indicate that you are an American, about to return to your own country.” The man’s tone was pleasant, and in spite of himself, Gregory found it hard to keep from relaxing in the comfort of the chair. But he knew that he would have to keep thinking and planning in order to continue to live. There was an undercurrent of menace in the office of his host.
“Correct. I am about to return to my own country, and I fail to understand why I have become so important to you. I have no idea what you’re talking about. All I want to do is to get out of here.”
“I am speaking, Dr. Hewson, of your notched ear. It has caused us much trouble. We have discovered that you are not one of those we seek. Therefore the notched ear must be a trick. Once we have discovered, either in pleasant conversation or in a manner more harsh, what induced you to attempt this trick, you will most certainly not return to your country. You will take a quiet trip down the Hoogly River, without benefit of boat. Of that I can assure you.”
Gregory forced his expression into a picture of bewilderment. “My ear? The notch in it? I got that at a very rough party.”
“Nonsense, my good fellow. That ear has been examined by a very good surgeon while you were... ah... sleeping, shall we say? He tells me that it is a surgical matter, that notch. That it was done very recently. It was no accident. We have looked into that.”
“I can tell you nothing.” Gregory looked down at the clean bandages on his own upper arms. For long minutes there was silence in the office.
“Let me present your predicament to you in this fashion, Dr. Hewson. You are going to die. No matter what you tell me, you will die. It is ordained. Your only chance of finding out why you are here is to speak frankly to me. Then at least you can die without bewilderment and confusion. I will tell you anything you wish to know. That is the one small favor I can perform for you. Come now. We will exchange our thoughts on this matter.”
Gregory moistened his dry lips. He was frightened. He could think of no way out of his dilemma. Obviously, the fact that he was an American citizen made no difference to the intelligent, persuasive man behind the desk. He could not feel that the threats were bluff. He knew in his innermost mind that he was to die. So he decided to find out as much as he could about the last problem that he would ever have an opportunity to solve.
“You win, then. No one is in on this foolish plan of mine except myself. A man on the Calcutta Police told me of the problem of the mutilations. I thought I could find out something this way. I went too far. I have certain ideas regarding the plan. That is all. I had this notch made in order to be able to dig deeper into the mystery by making a decoy of myself. May I tell you what I have guessed?”
“Most certainly. And I shall correct your guesses. It is my honor to satisfy the curiosity of a man of science such as yourself.”
“Okay, then. My first impression of these mutilations was wrong. I thought in terms of revenge for something these people had done. Then it occurred to me that the pattern of the mutilations indicated that someone was trying to find something hidden in the limbs, in the tissues of these unfortunate people. Is that right?”