TWO

      Embarrassments and complications seemed to pile up from the very start of Inspector Ghote’s tour of Bombay’s most notorious area as guide to Douglas Kerr, known to countless former small boys the world over as the Swashbuckler — and to former small boys in India as the Svashbuckler. Yet all were to pale into ridiculous insignificance before what came as the climax to the evening.

      First there was the fact that in the Oberoi-Sheraton lobby, under its great lines of hugely elaborate twelve-foot-tall chandeliers, Ghote entirely failed to recognize the famous film star, his teenage idol. The Britisher who stepped out of one of the smoothly whirring lifts and stood looking round him among the lengthy rows of aligned black leather sofas had longish grey hair in place of the dazzlingly fair short-back-and-sides that had singled out the Svashbuckler in his days of glory. His sagging, heavily flushed cheeks and thickened neck were related only remotely to the clean-cut good looks that had been the model and envy of all those boys of — was it? — twenty years before. And the nose, though straight and Greek god-like as ever, was red. Even purple.

      At last, however, Ghote had been driven to realize that the semi-wreck standing there looking about him must be his once-upon-a-time hero and had successfully introduced himself and led his charge out to the police vehicle and its patiently waiting driver. But conversation as they made their way through the still thick late-evening traffic towards the Kamatipura area was mined with unexpected difficulties.

      ‘Is it you are pleased to be back once more in India, Mr Douglas Kerr?’

      ‘Prefer to be called Carr, if you don’t mind, old boy.’

      ‘But, please, your name is being spelt K-E-R-R, isn’t it?’

      ‘Pronounced Carr. Surprised you don’t know that, if you’re as much of a fan of my work as you said you were.’

      ‘Oh yes, indeed, Mr Douglas Ker- Mr Carr. I was always a very, very great admirer of your many feats.’

      ‘Only two, old boy.’

      ‘Only two feats? But I am thinking —’

      ‘Feet. Feet, old boy. Things you have on the end of your legs, don’t you know.’

      In a moment, or a little longer, Ghote had got the joke. He laughed.

      ‘Oh, jolly good.’

      A silence fell. Their driver honked viciously on the car’s horn and squeezed up beside a long red double-decker bus and trailer. As they drew level a blast of searing fumes from its diesel exhaust came through the open window beside the Svashbuckler.

      He flung himself half over Ghote on the rear seat beside him.

      ‘Christ, what was that?’

      ‘It is some exhaust fumes only. But, you see, if we are putting up the glasses next to us it would become altogether too hot inside.’

      The Svashbuckler resumed his upright, though slumped, position.

      ‘I knew India wouldn’t be exactly cool,’ he muttered. ‘But they told me this was the best time of year.’

      ‘Well, so it is, Mr Douglas — Mr Douglas Carr. November is the finest month in Bombay. But surely you must be remembering that?’

      ‘Remembering? Why should I, old boy?’

      ‘From your films. There were three of them picturized in India I am recalling, The Svashbuckler Meets the Evil Kali, The Svashbuckler’s Jungle Adventure and The Svashbuckler Meets the Evil Kali Again.’

      ‘Made in England, old boy. You don’t think we’d come all the way out here just to shoot a few location sequences, do you?’

      ‘But the tiger? When you went after the wounded tiger, single-handed only?’

      ‘Few pots of plants in the old Denham studios, so far as I remember. Plus a bit of stock of some snarling brute or other. Magic of the movies, old son.’

      ‘Yes. Yes, I am seeing.’

      Ghote leant forward and rasped into the driver’s ear.

      ‘For God’s sake, get a move on. Do you think we are in a funeral procession only?’

      But complications were not over for him even when they reached Falkland Road and abandoned the car to make their way on foot through the thickly drifting crowds of prospective customers eyeing the girls who lounged against door-posts or, garishly dressed and thickly made-up, were looking out of the thin blue-painted protecting bars of the full-length, street-level windows, origin of the much-vaunted name of Cages. As they pushed past the gawpers and the vendors of food, balloons, pictures of the gods and a score of other things, suddenly above the tumult of the calls of the rowdier would-be customers and the insults flung back from the balconies of the battered wooden, slogan-daubed, advertisement-pocked old houses, above the blare of filmi music from the narrow little restaurants, above the squeaking of the vendors’ bleating balloons, there came a shriller screaming cutting its way above everything. It drew Ghote’s attention, and the Svashbuckler’s.

      There, outside one of the houses, was a Western woman of some considerable age, her short stringy body nondescriptly clothed in a cotton blouse and bleached-looking flowered skirt. She was holding open in front of her a large reporter’s notebook, and from the balcony above, accompanied by that extra loud shriek of abuse, one of the girls had flung at her a bucket of water. Of water, or worse.

      Ghote looked round, hoping that a patrolling constable might be there to sort out the trouble. There was not one anywhere in sight. He decided it was his duty to go to the rescue, little guessing that this chance encounter and the advice he was about to give would lead before very many days had passed almost