The Messenger Arrow (continued)

After he finished the affair of the tea, a refreshed Sundarbabu said, “Hmm! Shall I begin my affair now?”

“Of course!” said Jayanta.

Sundarbabu took refuge in an easy chair, lit a Burma cheroot and said, “I’m in a devilishly difficult spot, bhai. A ghastly incident took place at my station yesterday in the afternoon. I was extremely busy investigating a case. Right then a police station guard called Ramlal entered the room with a package – the package was addressed to me. It was tightly bound with twine. As I didn’t have a pair of scissors or a knife with me, I asked Ramlal to unwrap the package in the adjoining room and bring it to me. He went away, and I refocused on my work.

A few minutes later, the entire thana reverberated with a tremendous noise – and along with that, a heartrending scream! I rushed out to see Ramlal’s bloodied body writhing on the floor of the next room, which was clouded in smoke and smelt strongly of an explosive of some kind. A colleague of mine was in another room which was in front of this one. I heard from him that Ramlal was bending over near the edge of the table trying to open a package of some kind, when this horrible thing happened.

I immediately sent Ramlal off to the hospital, but the poor fellow died soon after he reached. It is my firm belief that that package was the cause of his death. If that is the case, then it is not a big leap to surmise that the package, which was addressed to me, was sent to kill me.”

Jayanta said, “What did the package look like?”

“I can’t answer accurately. I was so engrossed in my work that I didn’t get a chance to look at the package properly – you might even say that I barely glanced at it.”

Jayanta said, “This sort of thing has happened on several occasions in Europe and America. People have opened these life-threatening packages filled with Gelignite and died there as well.”

“Gelignite?”

“Yes. One of those horrific explosives. It contains 65 parts nitroglycerine, 27 parts potassium nitrate, 7 parts wood-meal and miscellaneous other things. Of course, I cannot say for certain what kind of explosive your particular package contained.”

“A policeman’s work is with villains; no villain is ever a friend of the police. Still, which enemy of mine would want to kill me in this fashion?”

“Don’t you suspect anyone?”

"No, no one.”

“Which cases are you working on right now?”

“None of them are particularly complicated. No, no, there’s that one case worth mentioning.”

“What is the case about?”

Sundarbabu was about to reply, when suddenly something flew in through the window and hit the floor in the middle of the room with a crack.

Startled, Sundarbabu said, “What was that?”

Manik said, “A sliver of a bamboo cane. Someone fired it from a bow like an arrow. The cane has a piece of paper tied to the other end.”

Jayanta got up, and having untied the paper from the cane, read aloud, “Jayantababu, I have no bone to pick with you. But if you assist the Police on a particular case, then please be aware : your life will no longer have any value.”

Manik said, “A warning even before we touch the case. Here’s a bunch of bananas even before we climb the tree! ”

Sundarbabu ran to the window, peered around and said, “No one on the road seems suspicious to me.”

Jayanta went up to the window as well and said, “No one from the road shot that cane.”

“How can you tell?”

“We are on the first floor. Had someone from the road below fired that arrow, it would have entered through the window and hit the ceiling. But I noticed that the arrow flew in straight through the window and fell in the middle of the room.”

“Did it now? Hmm! I can see there’s just the one house opposite us on the other side of the road. Was the arrow shot from one of its rooms on the first floor?”

“I believe so.”

“Then let us go to that house right away.”

“Let’s.”

(to be continued)

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