The Complete Adventures of Feluda: Volume I (87 page)

All of us returned to Kailash. With Arun Babu’s permission, Feluda rang someone, though I couldn’t tell who it was. Then he joined us in the drawing room. Neelima Devi sent us tea. Pritin Babu was taking her and Bibi back to Calcutta the very next day, we were told. On hearing about Sultan’s capture, Akhil Chakravarty said, ‘Oh, I wish I had gone with you!’

‘I think tomorrow I’ll go back, too,’ said Arun Babu, ‘unless you need me here for your investigation.’

‘No, that won’t be necessary. I’ve finished my investigation and even arranged to fulfil your father’s last wish.’

Arun Babu gave Feluda a startled look over the rim of his cup. ‘You mean you know where Biren is?’ he asked, very surprised. ‘Yes. Your father was right.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Biren is here.’

‘In Hazaribagh?’

‘In Hazaribagh.’

‘I find that . . . amazing!’ Arun Babu said, his tone implying that he also found it impossible to believe.

‘Yes, that’s understandable,’ Feluda said. ‘But isn’t that something you yourself had started to believe?’

Arun Babu put his cup down on the table and stared directly at Feluda.

‘Not only that,’ Feluda went on calmly, ‘you were afraid that your father might make a new will and leave you out of it, giving your share to Biren.’

No one spoke for a few seconds. The atmosphere in the room suddenly became charged. Lalmohan Babu, who was sitting next to me, grabbed a cushion and clutched it tightly. Pritin Babu sat in a chair, supporting his head with one hand. Arun Chowdhury slowly rose to his feet. His eyes had turned red and a vein throbbed at his temple.

‘Listen, Mr Mitter,’ he roared, ‘you may be a famous detective, but I am not going to let you sit there and throw totally baseless accusations at me. Jagat Singh!

His bearer slipped into the room through an open door.

‘Stop! If you take another step, I will shoot you,’ Feluda threatened coldly, holding his revolver. ‘Jagat Singh, it was you who
stole into our room, wasn’t it? I managed to take off a fair amount of your hair. And I know who sent you there, with what purpose.’

Jagat Singh froze. Arun Babu sat down again, his whole body shaking with rage.

‘Wh-what are you trying to say?’ he demanded.

‘Listen very carefully. You knew your father was thinking of changing his will. You didn’t want him to find and destroy the old one. So you hid his key. Bibi saw him looking for it, and he even told her what he was looking for: “a pier . . . that which opens and that which shuts”. By a “pier” he meant a “quay”. Bearing in mind that he liked to play with the sound of words, I realized that the “quay” was really a “key”, something which could be used to open and shut an object. Presumably, the will was kept in a locked drawer. But even after stealing the key, you weren’t satisfied, were you? So, that day in Rajrappa, you seized your chance and played your trump card. You knew it would come as an enormous shock to your father, which might well be enough to kill him. If that happened, you would no longer have anything to worry about.’

‘You are mad. You’re just raving. You don’t know what you’re saying, Mr Mitter.’

‘I do, I can assure you; and I can produce witnesses. There are three of them, although none of them might wish to admit what they have seen and heard. Your own brother, Akhil Chakravarty and Shankarlal . . . they all know.’

‘Well then, Mr Mitter, if your witnesses won’t talk, I think you are wasting your time, don’t you? How are you going to prove your case?’

‘Very simply. There is a fourth witness who will not hesitate at all in revealing the truth.’

Suddenly, the room was filled with strange noises. Where were they coming from? There were birds calling from somewhere, and a waterfall gushed in the background.

Feluda quietly placed a small black object on a table. It was Pritin Chowdhury’s tape recorder.

‘What your brother accidentally saw and heard that day made him drop his recorder near a bush. His wife saw it and picked it up. There is much more on that tape besides the chirping of birds.’

Arun Babu swallowed. His heightened colour had started to recede. In just a few minutes, he turned quite pale. Feluda kept his revolver raised and pointed at him. The tape recorder continued to
run. Now there were voices, rising over the sound of the water.

‘Baba, what makes you think Biren has come back?’ asked Arun Babu’s voice.

‘If an old man likes to believe his missing son has returned, why should that bother you?’ Mahesh Chowdhury asked.

‘You must forget Biren. He will never come back. I know that. It simply isn’t possible.’

‘How can you say that? Who are you to tell me what to believe? You have no right—’

‘I have every right. I don’t want you to do something wrong and unfair, just because of your stupid belief.’

‘What is wrong and unfair?’

‘I will not let you deprive me of what is rightfully mine!’

‘What are you taking about?’

‘You know very well. You changed your will once, thinking Biren was not going to come back. Now you’re planning to . . .’

‘What I am planning is my business. I was going to change my will, in any case,’ Mahesh Chowdhury had raised his voice, sounding angry, as though his old violent temper was about to burst through. ‘How can you expect to be mentioned in my will at all?’ he went on. ‘You are dishonest, you are a gambler, you are a thief! You took Dorabjee’s stamp album from my safe—’

Arun Babu’s voice cut him short, ‘And what about you? If I am a thief, what are you? You think I don’t know about Deendayal? Your screaming and shouting woke me that night. I saw everything through a chink in the curtain. I’ve kept my mouth shut for thirty-five years, but I know exactly what happened. You hit Deendayal on the head with a heavy brass statue of Buddha. Can you deny that? Deendayal died. Then you got Noor Muhammad and your driver to take his body . . .’

He broke off. Something heavy fell with a thud, and then there was nothing except the birds and the waterfall. Feluda switched the recorder off and returned it to Pritin Babu.

There was absolute silence in the room. Everyone was looking tense, with the only exception of Feluda. He put his revolver back in his pocket. ‘What your father did was utterly wrong,’ he said. ‘There can be no doubt about that. But he realized it, and for thirty-five years he suffered in silence, trying to make amends in whatever way he could. Still he didn’t find any peace. From the day Deendayal died, Mahesh Chowdhury began to think he was cursed and one day
he would be punished for his sins. What he did not know was that the final blow would come from his own son.’

Arun Babu sat very still staring at the floor. When he spoke his voice sounded faint, as though he was speaking from a long way away.

‘There was a dog,’ he said slowly. ‘An Irish setter. Baba was very fond of it. For some reason, the dog did not like Deendayal. One day, it tried to bite him, so Deendayal got very cross and hit it with a heavy stick. The dog was injured. That night, Baba returned quite late from a party and found that his dog was not waiting for him in his room, as it did every day. Noor Mohammad had to tell him what had happened. Baba called Deendayal, and in a fit of rage . . . when he lost his temper, you see, Baba used to become a different man altogether.’

We rose with Feluda to take our leave. Akhil Chakravarty also got to his feet.

‘Could you come with us for a minute?’ Feluda asked him. ‘There’s something I’d like you to do. It won’t take long.’

‘Very well,’ Akhil Chakravarty replied. ‘With Mahesh gone, there’s nothing left for me to do here, anyway. I have all the time in the world.’

Akhil Chakravarty began talking to us in the car. ‘I did go off in a different direction,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t go far. In fact, I could hear every word from where I stood near the rock with my initials on it. I used to ask Mahesh why he grew preoccupied at times and sank into silence. He used to laugh and tell me to look at his horoscope to find out. It is amazing, isn’t it, that such an important event in his life remained a secret, even from me? Perhaps it’s my own fault, I failed to study his stars properly.’

As our car drew up outside our gate, I realized who Feluda had called from Kailash. Shankarlal Misra was waiting for us.

‘Mission successful?’ Feluda asked him, getting out of the car. ‘Yes,’ Mr Misra replied. ‘Biren has come to meet you.’

We walked into the living room to find the same sadhu from
Rajrappa sitting on a sofa. He rose as he saw us and said, ‘Namaskar.’ Clad in long saffron robes, he was tall and well built, his thick matted hair almost reaching his waist. An equally thick beard covered most of his face.

‘He agreed to come only when I told him about his father’s last wish,’ Mr Misra said. ‘He has got nothing against his father.’

‘No,’ agreed Biren, ‘but then, I don’t feel any love or attachment for him, either. Shankar tried very hard to bring me back. He thought if I saw my father and other members of my family, even from a distance, I might wish to come back. That is the reason why I was in Rajrappa that day. But I realized after seeing my family that that was not going to make any difference at all. I had ceased to care for them. My father was a complex man, but he was the only one who seemed to have understood me. So, in the beginning, I used to write to him. But later . . .’

‘But those letters were not sent from abroad, were they? I don’t think you ever left the country!’ Feluda said coolly.

We gasped, but Biren Chowdhury simply stared at Feluda with an expressionless face. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled. ‘Shankar had told me how clever you were. I was only testing you,’ he laughed.

‘Very well. Now you may take off your disguise,’ Feluda suggested. ‘It may be enough to fool the whole town of Hazaribagh, but you don’t fool me.’

Biren Chowdhury continued to laugh as he took off his wig and his false beard. I gave another gasp as his face was revealed. Lalmohan Babu clutched at my sleeve and whispered, ‘Kan-kan-kan—’ He had got the name wrong again, but I was too astounded to correct him. Mr Karandikar looked at us and nodded.

Akhil Chakravarty broke the silence. ‘What do you mean, Mr Mitter? Biren never went abroad? Well then, his letters—?’

‘It is possible to send letters from abroad, Mr Chakravarty, if one has a friend like your son.’

‘My son? What’s he got to do with anything?’

‘Mr Mitter’s right,’ Biren Chowdhury—or should I call him Mr Karandikar?—replied, ‘Adheer was in Dusseldorf, wasn’t he? I wrote to him and got him to send me several European postcards. Then I used to write Baba’s name and address on them, sometimes adding a line or two, put them in envelopes and send them back to Adheer. He would then arrange to have them posted from various parts of Europe. He travelled a lot himself. But when he returned to
India, naturally I had to stop.’

‘How extraordinary! Why did you have to be so secretive?’

‘There was a reason,’ Feluda said. ‘I would like Mr Karandikar to confirm if my guess is correct.’

‘Yes?’

‘You were much impressed and inspired by the life of Colonel Suresh Biswas, and you wanted to be like him. I knew Colonel Biswas had left home as a young man and made his way to England and Brazil, but what I didn’t know was that he was the first Bengali who had learnt to train tigers to perform in a circus. I read about this last night in a book called
The Circus in Bengal.
One of the items for which he became famous was parting the tiger’s mouth and placing his head in it.’

Lalmohan Babu opened his mouth to speak once more. ‘Sh-sh-sh-sh—’ he began.

‘What is it, Lalmohan Babu? Would you like us to be quiet?’

‘N-n-no. Sh-shame on me, Felu Babu, shame on me! I read that book before you, and yet I failed to pick that up. I must be crazy, I must be blind, I must be . . .’

‘All right, all right, you can blame yourself later. Now please let me finish.’

Lalmohan Babu simmered down. Feluda went on, ‘Biren Chowdhury wanted to work with wild animals, like his hero. But an educated young man from a well-known family is not expected to join a circus as a trainer of tigers, is he? Mahesh Chowdhury might have been different from most men, but even he would not have approved. Biren knew that, and so he decided to indulge in a little deception. Am I right?’

‘Absolutely,’ Biren Chowdhury replied.

‘What is most astonishing is that Mahesh Chowdhury could recognize his son even after so many years when he went to the circus on the first day. Arun Babu failed to do that, although he saw you from only a few feet away. You had to have plastic surgery done on your nose, didn’t you, when you were attacked by a tiger? That’s why you even look different from the old photo in your father’s house.’

‘Ah, that explains it!’ Akhil Chakravarty exclaimed. ‘I did wonder why everyone was calling him Biren, and yet I could not recognize him at all.’

‘Anyway,’ Feluda said, ‘I must now tell you why I really wanted you to come here.’

He took out the photo of Muktananda from his pocket. Then he turned to Biren Chowdhury again. ‘You are probably unaware that your father made a new will when he became convinced that you would never return. He left your name out of it. However, he didn’t want you to be deprived altogether. So he left you this photograph.’

Feluda turned the photo over and took it out of its frame. A small folded cellophane envelope slipped out. There were a few tiny square, colourful pieces of paper in it.

‘There are nine rare and valuable stamps here, which come from three different continents,’ Feluda explained. ‘Mr Chowdhury was afraid his album might be stolen, so he removed the most precious stamps and hid them here. According to the prices mentioned in the Gibbons catalogue twenty-five years ago, the total value of these was two thousand pounds.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘There was a message in your father’s diary. He referred to these nine stamps as the “nine jewels”, and Gibbons as “monkeys”. Then he said they were worth “two thousand Shylock’s demands”. Tapesh reminded me that Shylock had demanded a pound of flesh. That’s how I got the word “pounds”. But now, I think, these jewels would fetch a lot more.’

Biren Chowdhury took the envelope from Feluda and stared at it. Then he said, ‘I am only a ringmaster, Mr Mitter. I spend my life like a nomad, travelling all the time. What shall I do with something like this? Where shall I keep it? It will be such a liability! Mr Mitter, what am I going to do?’

‘I can understand your problem,’ Feluda replied. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you leave them with me? I know a few stamp dealers in Calcutta. I will speak to them and see that you get the best possible price. Then I will send you the money. Is that all right? Could you trust me, do you think?’

‘Oh, absolutely.’

‘Very well. But I shall need to have your address.’

‘The Great Majestic Circus,’ Biren Chowdhury replied. ‘Kutti has realized he cannot do without me. I am going to be with them for some time. In fact, Sultan and I will be performing tonight. Please do come and watch us, all of you.’

We went to find Biren Karandikar after the show that evening to
thank him and to say goodbye. He and his tiger had enthralled the audience by working together with perfect understanding and coordination. The idea of seeing him backstage was Lalmohan Babu’s. It soon became clear why he was so keen.

‘I am going to write a new novel,’ he told him. ‘The main action will take place in a circus and the ringmaster will have a very important role. May I please use the name “Karandikar” in my novel? I quite like it.’

‘Of course,’ Biren Chowdhury laughed. ‘It is not my real name, so you may use it wherever you want!’

We thanked him and came away.

‘So you changed your mind about the injection?’ Feluda asked Lalmohan Babu as we emerged out of the big tent.

‘Certainly not. The tiger will now be given an injection. Its second trainer is going to be the villain. He’ll give the injection to make the tiger drowsy, so it doesn’t perform well and the ringmaster gets the blame.’

‘I see. What about the trapeze?’

‘The trapeze?’ Lalmohan Babu gave a derisive snort. ‘The trapeze is nothing. Who wants it now?’