The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes - Jamyang Norbu [6]
Of course it is all pure romantic fancy on my part; the whole bally thing is too far away to smell or see, but from my vantage point I managed to spot what I had come all this way to look for.
Through a scattering of dhows with their graceful lantine sails arching in the wind, the S.S. Kohinoor of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company cleaved the blue waters, the twin black funnels of the liner trailing a wispy ribbon of smoke. The ship was late, it should have arrived this morning. Through a pair of sub-efficient binoculars I had purchased at Bhindi Bazaar, I could just make out the name on the port bow. I quickly walked over the road to a waiting ticcaghari. Hauling myself up onto the seat, I signalled to the coachman to proceed.
'Chalo!'
'Where, Babuji?'
'The harbour, jaldi!'
He lashed the thin pony with a length of springy bamboo and the carriage trundled down Ridge Road. I popped a piece of betel-nut into my mouth and chewed it contemplatively while I once again reviewed my plan of action.
Four months had passed since I had arrived at Bombay. I had peacefidly passed the time making ethnological notes on the cult of the local goddess Mumba from whom the city had taken its name. But the Colonel must have felt that whatever potential dangers there had been had receded by now (and that I had received enough salubrious divertissement on departmental half-pay), for just a week ago our neighbourhood postman, a bony old Tamil from Tuticorin, delivered a taar (which is the native term for a telegram) to my temporary quarters behind the Zakariya mosque.
The missive, addressed to 'Hakim Mohendro Lall Dutt' — one of my more usual aliases — was couched in the characteristic innocent circumlocutions prescribed by the Department for ensuring the safety of our correspondence, sub rosa. The gist of the message was that a Norwegian traveller named Sigerson, probably an agent of an unfriendly Northern Power, was arriving at Bombay on the S.S. Kohinoor; that I was to ingratiate myself to him, possibly as a guide or some such, and learn the reason for his coming to India.
In preparation for this, I affiliated myself, in purely supernumerary capacity, to a shipping agency belonging to an old Parsee acquaintance of mine.
'Hai, rukho,' shouted the driver to his nag, pulling up the ticca-ghari before the gates of Ballard Pier. I got off, and despite the rascally Automedon's demand for two anna, paid him the correct fare of one anna, and hurried over to the pier. The harbour was crowded with merchant vessels and British warships, but I spotted the Kohinoor being slowly towed in by some smoky little tug boats.
The dark and dusty office of the harbour master was nearly empty except for a Gujurati clerk, sitting back in idle reverie at his desk, picking paan-stained teeth. A bounteous baksheesh of a rupee procured for me a quick peek at the passenger manifest of the Kohinoor. The Norwegian had Cabin 33, in first class.
When I got out of the office, docking procedures were already commencing and coolies and dockhands were rushing about the vast grey stretch of the pier hauling away on great thick ropes. The white liner towered above everyone and everything like a giant iceberg. Once the gangplanks had gone up, I in my capacity as shipping agent, got aboard the ship, and elbowing my way through the surge of harbour officials, coolies, lascars and what-not wended my way through crowded corridors, dining rooms, a card room, a billiard room and a stately ball-room, to the upper port-side deck and Cabin 33.
The Norwegian was in front of his cabin door, leaning over the railing and sucking on a pipe meditatively as he gazed down at the human maelstrom on the pier below. His person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer. In height he was well over six feet and excessively lean.