The Pearl of Bengal (5 page)

Rudyard Mistery shrugged. “They’re mostly fishermen and rice farmers, except for the priests in the Temple of Kali, the pilgrims who worship there, and a few ecotourists who come for the wildlife,” he replied. “The villagers live simple lives, but they’re crazy about movies, cell phones, and the Internet! Don’t you find that an odd contradiction?”

The children nodded. Uncle Rudyard had a way of putting everyone at ease. Suddenly he jumped up from the hammock and shouted, “Doing all right there, big man? You can begin the descent. We’re almost there!”

Dash and Agatha grinned.

“Look out the window,” said Rudyard, pointing to the enormous green delta of the Ganges River. “They call the Sundarbans ‘land of tides,’ where land and water mingle together in little islands that are continually being born and disappearing.”

The scenery was breathtakingly beautiful. Even Dash gazed down at it, speechless.

“Fortunately, the monsoon season’s over. We wouldn’t have been able to land my plane in those storms,” said their uncle. “And the village streets would be soaked.”

Leaving both cousins to stare at the view, he rejoined Chandler in the cockpit. “Hand her over
to me,” he announced happily. “Prepare for a landing!”

As Chandler got up to sit in the passenger seat, he felt something rubbery, like a bicycle tire. Then it moved. Whipping off his goggles, he stared at the control panel as a large, coppery snake slithered underneath it.

Chandler jumped up so fast he hit his head on the ceiling. “I fear we have a big problem!” he shouted, maintaining his sense of formality. “There’s a snake on the plane!”

As Rudyard angled in for a landing, pandemonium broke out on the Canadair. A terrified Dash dived headfirst into the hammock, while Agatha tried to grab Watson, whose bristling tail made it clear he did not like big snakes.

The Canadair lurched and rocked, slamming onto the surface of the Ganges with a great spray of wake. It bobbed up and down like an oversize
tub toy, finally stopping in front of the rickety dock at Chotoka. Villagers clustered around to see what was happening and stare at the strangers who’d made such a clamorous entrance.

Without even cutting the engines, Rudyard Mistery shot out of his seat like a lightning bolt. He spotted the snake coiled under an oxygen tank and started moving his fingers like a magician. Then he made a sudden swift lunge, grabbing the snake right behind its big head.

“Well, hello there, big guy!” he said, gently stroking it between the eyes. The snake, more than a yard long, writhed in his arms. “What made you stow away on my plane, little python? If you wanted to take a vacation, you just had to ask!”

Terrified, Dash clung to Chandler. At the same moment, they asked, “Is it poisonous?”

“Not in the least!” Rudyard said with a smile. “He’ll just crush you to death.”

Dash brandished a barbecue fork. “It’s us or him!” he cried.

“Calm down, calm down. He’s just a young fellow. They can get to be twenty feet long.” Uncle Rudyard opened the plane’s rear door and carefully placed the squirming reptile into the water. “There you go. Swim home to Mama.”

Chuckling, he looked at his passengers. “The situation is under control.”

Dash put down the fork, and Chandler
exhaled with relief. Agatha looked out the open door, realizing the muddy bank was a good thirty yards away.

“Ready for a nice swim?” she squeaked.

“Not with that snake and his twenty-foot mama!” Dash shuddered.

“No worries!” said Rudyard. “We’ll use my inflatable raft.”

Agatha smiled. Uncle Rudyard might be a little bit crazy, but he had an answer for everything!

T
he villagers craned their necks to watch as Rudyard helped the two kids clamber onto the inflatable raft. Chandler’s bulk nearly sank it. By the time he’d rowed the small group to the muddy bank, the villagers had begun to disperse, their faces disappointed. Soon the bend in the river was empty, the humid silence broken only by the chirping of waterbirds.

“Uncle, what were those people muttering about?” asked Dash, who could not speak a word of Bengali.

“When they saw us arrive in the plane, they thought we had found the missing man.”

“You mean Amitav Chandra, the temple’s custodian?” Agatha clarified.

Rudyard nodded. “Sounds like they’re still holding out hope of finding him.” He shook his head, tying the raft to the dock. “Between you and me, I think it’ll be like finding a needle in a haystack.” He sighed. “Sundarbans National Park is vast. Plenty of places to hide a body. And plenty of pythons and crocodiles to finish the job if he isn’t already dead.”

“Why don’t you do an aerial search in your seaplane?” suggested Agatha. “Something tells me he’s safe and sound somewhere!”

Dash frowned, suspicious. “But what if he’s guilty? What if Chandra stole the Pearl of Bengal himself and faked everything so he could run off with it?”

Agatha picked up Watson, who was watching a shorebird with interest. “Dash, your hypothesis doesn’t hold up,” she said firmly. “If Mr. Chandra
wanted to disappear with the loot, why would he notify Eye International?”

The conversation was cut short by Chandler, who pointed toward the embankment. “We’ve got company, Miss Agatha.”

They turned to see a burly man with a large mustache waiting for them on the steps to the village gate. He was wearing a camouflage
uniform and cap, and leaned on a bamboo cane that looked too thin to support him.

“Good afternoon, Captain Deshpande!” Uncle Rudyard waved across the distance.

“Professor Mistery, what brings you back to Chotoka? I thought you were offshore taking pictures of dolphins!”

Agatha noted a curious tone in the captain’s voice, as if he was displeased to have visitors.

A split second later, he added, “Come to my office and show me your permits. I don’t want anyone wasting my time.” He turned and limped away.

Rudyard reached into his camera bag, handing authorized permits to Dash and Agatha. “Deshpande is a sharp, stubborn man,” he said grimly. “He’ll subject you to an interrogation to find out exactly why you’re here.”

Agatha stroked her nose, grinning. “Well, then, we’ll tell him the truth!”

“Wh-what?” stammered Dash.

“Does that bother you, cousin?”

“But—but…you want to share everything Eye International gave us?”

“Of course, the whole truth.” The girl’s eyes shone with cleverness. “Minus one particular detail,” she added.

“What?” the young detective asked her, excited. “Which detail?”

Even Chandler raised an eyebrow.

Agatha dropped her voice. “We can’t mention Mr. Chandra’s phone call,” she explained. “It’s the one thing nobody in the village knows about, not even the thief. It will be the ace up our sleeve!”

And so it was.

They told Captain Deshpande that they were investigating on orders from a reputable international agency and would like his full cooperation. They wanted to know all the details from the current investigation: suspects,
evidence, and whatever clues the forest guard had obtained.

The captain filed their permits in the cabinet behind his desk, gazing at them with a smirk. “So you’re my reinforcements?” he asked Agatha and Dash. “Aren’t you two a bit young to be detectives?”

“They’re extremely bright kids, Captain,” Uncle Rudyard interjected. Until then, he had remained silent with his fingers linked behind his head.

“They’re your niece and nephew, so of course you’d speak well of them, Professor Mistery,” he replied curtly. “But I’m not convinced. I want to see their credentials.”

Dash was ready for this. Punching a secret code into his EyeNet, he handed the device to the captain.

“Use the cursor to scroll down the screen. You’ll find all the credentials you need regarding
me and the agency I represent,” he said firmly.

The onscreen résumé was a detailed list of Dash’s solved cases, designed to impress anyone at first glance.

Too bad it was a fake!

Quite a brilliant one…but would it bear up under the scrutiny of the captain Uncle Rudyard had called “stubborn” and “sharp”?

The anxious silence in the small office was disturbed only by the whir of a creaky, slow fan and the buzzing of gnats. As Deshpande read, a single drop of sweat formed on his forehead and slowly made its way down his cheek, coming to rest in his mustache.

“Very hot today, isn’t it?” he said, unbuttoning his collar. He pushed the EyeNet back to Dash and leaned forward. “Right, then, you have my permission to investigate,” he said. “What do my young colleagues wish to know?”

The hoax had worked to perfection!

While her cousin shoved the EyeNet back into its case with a private sigh of relief, Agatha started to hammer Deshpande with questions. “Let’s start with your suspects. Who are they?”

“I’ve lived in this village for over thirty years and know all of the villagers well,” the captain replied. “Therefore I have excluded everyone who was friendly with old Mr. Chandra, including myself.”

“Who’s left, then?” Agatha pressed him, opening her notebook to a blank page.

Deshpande paused. Starting with the thumb on his right hand, he started to count them off. “Brahman Sangali, who never agreed with Chandra about how the temple should be run.” He raised his index finger. “The pair of Spanish tourists staying at the Tiger Hotel. They have a record of thefts in other parts of the world.”

When he came to his third finger, he stopped.

“Well?” Dash blurted. “Who else?”

“You promised full cooperation, Captain,” Agatha reminded him.

Deshpande sighed deeply. “You must understand, this isn’t easy for me…Do you know Naveen Chandra, the famous Bollywood actor?”

“Don’t you mean Hollywood, sir?” Dash corrected him.

Agatha cleared her throat. “Dash, my dear, Bollywood is the biggest movie industry in the world. It’s the Indian equivalent of Hollywood,” she explained.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize…” Dash blushed.

“The answer is no,” Agatha interrupted. “We haven’t heard of Naveen Chandra. Who is he, Captain?”

“Our prime suspect in the theft of the pearl,” the official said with a heavy sigh. “Naveen Chandra is Amitav Chandra’s son!”

Everyone was astonished. For the first time,
Agatha pulled her pen from the page.