“An extraordinary cat.”




procured mortar, sand and hair with every possible precaution, I prepared a plaster which could not be distinguished from the old, and with this I very carefully went over the new brickwork. When I had finished I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly and said to myself, “Here, at least, then, my labor has not been in vain.”

My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much wretchedness, for I had at length firmly resolved to put it to death. Had I been able to meet with it at the moment there could have been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger and forebore to present itself in my present mood. It is impossible to describe or to imagine the deep, the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the night—and thus, for one night at least since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly slept—aye, slept, even with the burden of murder upon my soul!

The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not. Once again I breathed as a free man. The monster, in terror, had fled{25} the premises forever! I should behold it no more! My happiness was supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries had been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a search had been instituted—but, of course, nothing was to be discovered. I looked upon my future felicity as secured.

Upon the fourth day of the assassination a party of the police came very unexpectedly into the house and proceeded again to make a rigorous investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the inscrutability of my place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade me accompany them in their search. They left no nook or corner unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth time, they descended into the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat as calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence. I walked the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom and roamed easily to and fro. The police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared to depart. The glee at my heart was too strong to be restrained. I burned to say but one word, by way of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.

“Gentlemen,” I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, “I delight to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health and a little{26} more courtesy. By the by, gentlemen, this—this is a very well constructed house.” (In the rabid desire to say something easily I scarcely knew what I uttered at all.) “I may say an excellently well constructed house. These walls—are you going, gentlemen?—these walls are solidly put together;” and here, through the mere frenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brickwork behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.

But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch Fiend! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb!—by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman—a howl!—a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation.

Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. For an instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already getting decayed and clotted with gore, stood{27} erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red, extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!

                         THE OLD MANSION.








Down on Long Beach, that narrow strip of sand which stretches along the New Jersey coast from Barnegat Inlet on the north to Little Egg Harbor Inlet on the south, the summer sojourner at some one of the numerous resorts, which of late years have sprung up every few miles, may, in wandering over the sand dunes just across the bay from the village of Manahawkin, stumble over some charred timbers or vestiges of crumbling chimneys, showing that once, years back, a human habitation has stood there. If the find rouses the jaded curiosity of the visitor sufficiently to impel him to question the weatherbeaten old bayman who sails him on his fishing trips he will learn that these relics mark the site of one of the first summer hotels erected on the New Jersey coast.

“That’s where the Old Mansion stood,” he will be informed by Captain Nate or Captain Sam, or whatever particular captain it may chance to be, and if by good fortune it chances to be Captain Jim, he will hear a story that will pleasantly pass away the long wait for a sheepshead bite.{203}

It was my good luck to have secured Captain Jim for a preceptor in the angler’s art during my vacation last summer, and his stories and reminiscences of Long Beach were not the least enjoyable features of the two weeks’ sojourn.

Captain Jim was not garrulous. Few of the baymen are. They are a sturdy, self-reliant and self-controlled people, full of strong common sense, but still with that firm belief in the supernatural which seems inherent in dwellers by the sea.

“The Old Mansion,” said Captain Jim, “or the Mansion of Health, for that was its full name, was built away back in 1822, so I’ve heard my father say. There had been a tavern close by years before that was kept by a man named Cranmer, and people used to come from Philadelphia by stage, sixty miles through the pines, to ‘Hawkin, and then cross here by boat. Some would stop at Cranmer’s and others went on down the beach to Homer’s which was clear down at End by the Inlet. Finally some of the wealthy people concluded that they wanted better accommodations than Cranmer gave, so they formed the Great Swamp Long Beach Company, and built the Mansion of Health. I’ve heard that when it was built it was the biggest hotel on the coast, and was considered a wonder. It was 120 feet long, three stories high, and had a porch running all the way around it, with a balcony on top.{204} It was certainly a big thing for those days. I’ve heard father tell many a time of the stage loads of gay people that used to come rattling into ‘Hawkin, each stage drawn by four horses, and sometimes four or five of them a day in the summer. A good many people, too, used to come in their own carriages, and leave them over on the mainland until they were ready to go home. There were gay times at the Old Mansion then, and it made times good for the people along shore, too.”

“How long did the Old Mansion flourish, Captain?” I asked.

“Well, for twenty-five or thirty years people came there summer after summer. Then they built a railroad to Cape May, and that, with the ghosts, settled the Mansion of Health.”

“What do you mean by the ghosts?” I demanded.“Well, you see,” said Captain Jim, cutting off a mouthful of navy plug, “the story got around that the old house was haunted. Some people said there were queer things seen there, and strange noises were heard that nobody could account for, and pretty soon the place got a bad name and visitors were so few that it didn’t pay to keep it open any more.”

“But how did it get the name of being haunted, Captain Jim?” I persisted.

“Why, it was this way,” continued the mariner.{205} “Maybe you’ve heard of the time early in the fifties when the Powhatan was wrecked on the beach here, and every soul on board was lost. She was an emigrant ship, and there were over 400 people aboard—passengers and crew. She came ashore here during the equinoctial storm in September. There wasn’t any life-saving stations in them days, and everyone was drowned. You can see the long graves now over in the ‘Hawkin churchyard, where the bodies were buried after they came ashore. They put them in three long trenches that were dug from one end of the burying-ground to the other. The only people on the beach that night was the man who took care of the old mansion. He lived there with his family, and his son-in-law lived with him. He was the wreckmaster for this part of the coast, too. It wasn’t till the second day that the people from ‘Hawkin could get over to the beach, and by that time the bodies had all come ashore, and the wreckmaster had them all piled up on the sand. I was a youngster, then, and came over with my father, and, I tell you, it was the awfullest sight I ever saw—them long rows of drowned people, all lying there with their white, still faces turned up to the sky. Some were women, with their dead babies clasped tight in their arms, and some were husbands and wives, whose bodies came ashore locked together in a death embrace. I’ll never forget that sight as long as I live. Well,{206}when the coroner came and took charge he began to inquire whether any money or valuables had been found, but the wreckmaster declared that not a solitary coin had been washed ashore. People thought this was rather singular, as the emigrants were, most of them, well-to-do Germans, and were known to have brought a good deal of money with them, but it was concluded that it had gone down with the ship. Well, the poor emigrants were given pauper burial, and the people had begun to forget their suspicions until three or four months later there came another storm, and the sea broke clear over the beach, just below the Old Mansion, and washed away the sand. Next morning early two men from ‘Hawkin sailed across the bay and landed on the beach. They walked across on the hard bottom where the sea had washed across, and, when about half way from the bay, one of the men saw something curious close up against the stump of an old cedar tree. He called the other man’s attention to it, and they went over to the stump. What they found was a pile of leather money-belts that would have filled a wheelbarrow. Every one was cut open and empty. They had been buried in the sand close by the old stump, and the sea had washed away the covering. The men didn’t go any further.

“They carried the belts to their boats and sailed back to ‘Hawkin as fast as the wind would{207} take them. Of course, it made a big sensation, and everybody was satisfied that the wreckmaster had robbed the bodies, if he hadn’t done anything worse, but there was no way to prove it, and so nothing was done. The wreckmaster didn’t stay around here long after that, though. The people made it too hot for him, and he and his family went away South, where it was said he bought a big plantation and a lot of slaves. Years afterward the story came to ‘Hawkin somehow that he was killed in a barroom brawl, and that his son-in-law was drowned by his boat upsettin’ while he was out fishin’. I don’t furnish any affidavits with that part of the story, though.

“However, after that nobody lived in the Old Mansion for long at a time. People would go there, stay a week or two, and leave—and at last it was given up entirely to beach parties in the day time, and ghosts at night.”

“But, Captain, you don’t really believe the ghost part, do you?” I asked.

Captain Jim looked down the bay, expectorated gravely over the side of the boat, and answered, slowly:

“Well, I don’t know as I would have believed in ’em if I hadn’t seen the ghost.”

“What!” I exclaimed; “you saw it? Tell me about it. I’ve always wanted to see a ghost, or next best thing, a man who has seen one.”

“It was one August, about 1861,” said the captain.{208} “I was a young feller then, and with a half dozen more was over on the beach cutting salt hay. We didn’t go home at nights, but did our own cooking in the Old Mansion kitchen, and at nights slept on piles of hay upstairs. We were a reckless lot of scamps, and reckoned that no ghosts could scare us. There was a big full moon that night, and it was as light as day. The muskeeters was pretty bad, too, and it was easier to stay awake than go to sleep. Along toward midnight me and two other fellers went out on the old balcony, and began to race around the house. We hollered and yelled, and chased each other for half an hour or so, and then we concluded we had better go to sleep, so we started for the window of the room where the rest were. This window was near one end on the ocean side, and as I came around the corner I stopped as if I had been shot, and my hair raised straight up on top of my head. Right there in front of that window stood a woman looking out over the sea, and in her arms she held a little child. I saw her as plain as I see you now. It seemed to me like an hour she stood there, but I don’t suppose it was a second; then she was gone. When I could move I looked around for the other boys, and they were standing there paralyzed. They had seen the woman, too. We didn’t say much, and we didn’t sleep much that night, and the next night we bunked out on the beach. The rest of the crowd{209} made all manner of fun of us, but we had had all the ghost we wanted, and I never set foot inside the old house after that.”

“When did it burn down, Captain?” I asked, as Jim relapsed into silence.

“Somewhere about twenty-five years ago. A beach party had been roasting clams in the old oven, and in some way the fire got to the woodwork. It was as dry as tinder, and I hope the ghosts were all burnt up with it.”

                                                                       Prologue


The Present



There was still enough time left for dusk. But the sky over the city of Delhi was getting darker with every passing minute. It was the end of May. Summer was at its peak. After breaking the previous year’s record, yet again, the maximum temperature in the city was at an all-time high. To escape the hottest part of the day, in the afternoons, people preferred to stay confined to the shelter of their offices and homes. The air was dry.

But that day was very different.
That day, late in the afternoon, the sun that was usually blazing in the western sky, was untraceable. Dense dark clouds that had flown in from the east had blocked the sunlight. It never got this dark so early in the day in the capital. But that day, Mother Nature too had chosen to wear black before time—perhaps as an act of solidarity; perhaps as a mark of protest.

In no time, the sky appeared visibly angry. Sudden intermittent bright flashes of lightning tore out from behind the dark clouds. A wild sky roared in anger—loud and clear. It threatened to rain.

It certainly wasn’t the arrival of monsoon. That was at least a month away. A spell of rain in the hot summer isn’t uncommon in Delhi. Intense heat for a prolonged period usually led to a shower. But the manner in which the rain was preparing itself to fall over the city of Delhi that day, was not a common occurrence. It was rather scary.

A few thousand feet below the angry black clouds were many thousand angry souls who had come out on the streets of Delhi. Agitated young men and women—college students and office goers. There was rage in their eyes, their young faces, their body language. They were a mass of anger and protest. And they were loud—louder than the loudest thunderclaps. It didn’t matter if they knew the person standing next to them or walking with them. They had all gathered for a cause that was common to each one of them—justice!

That was one word anyone could read on those several hundred banners and posters that the crowd unanimously brandished.

It had all become a phenomenon, which was unseen in Delhi till that evening. Every road that led to India Gate and Jantar Mantar, every train that arrived at Rajiv Chowk metro station, every bus that drove into central Delhi, was packed with youngsters. Delhi was witnessing a first of its kind mass protest. The young India that on weekends would have chosen to chill out in glamorous multiplexes to watch a movie or would have opted to sweat it out on the cricket grounds, had chosen to spend the weekend on the baked roads of Delhi.

On the other side of this young India was an old system that wasn’t yet ready to change itself. It was a system that on one hand had severely failed to maintain law and order in the state, but on the other hand was trying to control the chaotic situation it was faced with. Every single policeman in the city was on alert. Clad in their khaki uniforms and protected by their helmets, the troop brandished their canes from behind the barricades.

The scene was similar at each and every epicentre of protest. The gathering at the vast space in front of Rashtrapati Bhavan was the biggest of all, seeing which the Rapid Action Force (RAF) had been installed next to the state police. From tear gas pistols to water cannons, the law and order machinery had prepared itself to deal with the situation at hand.

A gathering of thousands at this one place was a sight to behold. Every single sound, be it the frequent voices over the hundreds of walkie-talkies in the hands of cops, the centralized loudspeaker installed over the RAF’s Vajr van, or the news journalists reporting live, all of it added to the noisy chaos. But the one sound that dominated and suppressed every other was the thumping hum of the crowd.

It remained undefeated.
Traffic that evening had come to a complete standstill. On a few key roads that led to the epicentres of the protest, the only vehicles allowed to enter were either the media vans or the police patrols. Everything else was in a deadlock.

Then came the moment when the much-anticipated occurrence happened.
It rained. Heavily.
Large drops that were powerful enough to disperse the crowd, to make people run away from the open streets and seek the nearest shelter, fell in sheets. The scene became even bleaker. Yet it wasn’t able to break the newfound will of this nation’s youth standing united for a cause. How could a spell of rain break those who’d already prepared themselves to face the monstrous water cannons?

Besides, they were waiting for the rain anyway.
So quite miraculously, the rain only ended up uniting them. Every boy and girl, every man and woman, held each other’s hands.

They made a human chain.
There was a message in it—that they were all together; that they were not going to leave and that they would brave the rain and the system.

Indeed it was an unbelievable spectacle, which looked more like a film shoot. But then our films and our society reflect each other. What often happens in society goes onto the celluloid and vice versa.

Like needles, the raindrops pierced the skin of all those present. The rain drummed over their heads. Gallons of water streamed down their faces. Eyes shrank and nostrils widened to engulf as much air as possible. Some breathed through their mouth. In no time their wet clothes clung to their wet bodies. Every gust of wind now began to appear cold.

By then, every other sound had died down. The only sound that prevailed was that of the rain. All this while the youth of Delhi stood still holding each other’s hands. Many of them had been shivering. So they tightened their grip. It felt as if they were passing strength and energy to each other through their hands. It was a different Delhi that day—never heard of and certainly never seen earlier.

In that much-awaited rain of May that brought the temperature down, young India was boiling.

It was waking up from its long uninterrupted sleep. Scores of media people and camerapersons captured it all and broadcast it live to the rest of the nation, which participated in the same emotion and aggression through this coverage.

But far away from this, where the battle between the citizens and the system was going on, there was another place—a place where a battle between life and death was in progress.

It had all begun from here—the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, well known as
AIIMS.
The deathly silence in the ICU of this government hospital that evening was loud enough

to wake up the entire nation. It was on every news channel. The camerapersons covered every movement of the bureaucratic and political cavalcades that arrived at the gate. The reporters captured every minute detail that the team of doctors had shared with them.
This state of affairs persisted for a long while. The world outside AIIMS continued to wait in anticipation. The sky above Delhi continued to cry.



AYEARAGO. . .

One




That day marked the arrival of a new batch of students in Delhi University (DU). Just like the thousands of students in DU about to step into a brand new beginning, a whole new life was ready to welcome Rupali. And she was ready to embrace this life.

Rupali Sinha, an eighteen-year-old, confident, merit-list student from Patna, had made her parents proud. She had received an admission call from a top-ranked DU institute which was also her dream college. Even before she had taken her Class XII board exams, she had always dreamt of walking down the corridors of this college. She had been a bright student throughout her school life, but she knew that given the competition at the national level, it was going to be very difficult for her to make it to this institute. However, she had also believed that it was only difficult, not impossible. And with her sincerity and hard work, one day she would be there.

And so she was.
To pursue commerce from this college had been her biggest short-term goal. Except that now that she had achieved her goal, she couldn’t help but feel nervous and excited at the same time. After an overnight journey and spending a good part of the day on the train, she had arrived at the college hostel in the evening. It was not too dark yet. She was soon allocated a room and given the keys and direction to the room by the warden’s assistant.

It was room no. 107 on the ground floor. Rupali was relieved that she didn’t have to carry her bags upstairs. She walked through the slightly dark, quiet corridor and opened the door to her room. She placed her bags on the floor and looked around the room in the faint light that entered from behind the curtains.

She smiled. It was a sweet room. Large, spacious, an iron bed each against two facing walls, two almirahs and two study tables. She had been told that she would have to share the room. But since her soon-to-be roommate hadn’t arrived yet, she chose her side of the room. She then switched on the light and opened her suitcase to unpack. She took out that day’s newspaper from one of her bags and laid out the sheets on the shelves of the almirah. She only arranged the few things that she would need immediately. The rest of it she planned to arrange the next evening. She slowly pulled out a bedsheet and pillowcase that her mother had so lovingly packed from the pile of clothes in her suitcase. Next came a nightie, a towel, a couple of everyday clothes, and her toiletries which she began arranging in the almirah.

Intermittently, Rupali heard voices in the corridor. She stepped out of her room to check. She saw girls who, just like her, had just moved into the hostel with their luggage. If they happened to notice Rupali, she greeted them with a smile. And they smiled back and moved on to discover their respective rooms. Rupali stepped back into her room to resume her unpacking.

She ate the leftover fruits from her journey and didn’t feel hungry enough to go to the mess to eat. She left the exercise of stepping into the hostel mess to check out the place for the next day.

After arranging her room, Rupali thought about freshening up before going to bed and headed for the hostel washrooms.

As she washed her face and brushed her teeth she caught her reflection in the mirror and

saw a tired-looking face with faint shadows under her eyes. She realized she had barely slept the night before leaving for the hostel. The emotional atmosphere at home and the excitement had kept her awake all night. She decided to get a good long sleep. After all, she wanted to wake up fresh for her first day at college. But when she lay on the bed, the thrill of going to college the next day kept her from dozing off. She kept tossing and turning.

When dreams take shape, sleep runs away.
The hostel bed added to Rupali’s anxiety. It felt different to her body and made her uncomfortable. In that sleepless state, she began to think of home and realized how far away she was from Patna; her hostel was going to be her new home in Delhi. Minutes later, when sleep had still not come to her, she recalled all that had happened in her life in the past forty-eight hours—how her proud father, who served as a travelling ticket inspector (TTI) in North Eastern Railways, had taken a day’s leave to perform a puja at home. It was to seek blessings from the Almighty, before Rupali left Patna to start college. How her caring mother, a homemaker, had made sattu and laddoos especially for her. As Rupali thought of her mother, she peered in the dark at the tiffin boxes which her mother had packed for her and which were now sitting on the table next to her bed. She reached out and ran her hand lovingly over them. She realized how in making them her mother had poured in all her love and care into them. She also thought of her younger brother, Tanmay, who had secretly cried all night before she was to leave for Delhi. She remembered how he had, wordlessly, given her a tight hug, probably for the first time in her life, at the Patna railway station, where her entire family had come to see her off.

This was the first time that Rupali was on her own, away from home. But she hadn’t yet started missing her family or her house. There was still some time for that to happen. Instead she was happy thinking about her parents, who, unlike many other parents in Patna, or for that matter, the whole of Bihar, had given their daughter the much-needed freedom. They had allowed her to go out all by herself, to a different city, to learn how to stand on her own feet. The night passed with many such thoughts interspersed with a feeling of anticipation for what the next day would bring. It was only in the early hours of dawn that sleep finally took over her tired body.

When the morning arrived, the phone alarm broke Rupali’s sleep. Through the thin curtains on the window on her right, sunlight made its way into her room. Even before she’d fully opened her eyes, Rupali slid her hand underneath the pillow and turned off the alarm. She took a moment before she got up. And when she did, she sat on her bed with her legs crossed, and folded her hands in prayer.

‘Shanti! Shanti! Shanti!’ she quickly whispered after which she opened her eyes again. ‘Finally, the day has arrived!’ she thought to herself in delight. She jumped out of bed and

pulled apart the curtains. A broad smile took birth on her lips as the sun streamed through the window, flooding her room in abundant light.

The morning view outside her window was beautiful. Situated in the extreme west, her hostel offered her a view of the entire campus that spread in the east. Over the rally of trees, at a distance, she could see the giant clock on the terrace tower of the red-brick college block. And just outside her window, at the entrance of her hostel, there was a huge lawn. She could see the shrubs marking the periphery of it. In every corner of the lawn, there were more than a dozen plants with multicoloured flowers blossoming on them. Butterflies fluttered from one flower to another. A female gardener was busy watering the plants.

Rupali was happy she’d got a room with a view. She loved the greenery and nature. She started humming a few lines from her favourite Hindi song as she picked up her things to go to the common bathrooms to get dressed.

‘Hi! Are you from first year too?’ Rupali excitedly asked the girls at the common washbasin bay, most of whom were busy brushing their teeth. Unlike the previous evening, there were many girls in the hostel that day. Some of them reciprocated Rupali’s enthusiasm as they nodded vigorously with toothpaste frothing in their mouths.

Interestingly, Rupali’s simple ‘Hi’ had broken the ice with quite a few girls who were too shy to initiate a conversation with the others till then. Soon the ‘Hi’ grew into a series of conversations as well as a few cross-conversations. This instantly put Rupali at the centre of every discussion that was taking place around her to the background noises of toilets flushing on the left and tap water running in the bathrooms on their right.

From introducing each other to becoming acquaintances and, from that, to discover new friends, things quickly changed into a happy chatter at various washbasins on various floors of that hostel that morning.

Unlike others, Rupali was very quick with her morning chores. She wasn’t confused about what she was going to wear on her first day to college. As a matter of fact, she had already kept aside all that she was to wear—a white churidar, a pink kameez along with a white dupatta. She matched her attire with the white sandals that she had chosen for herself when her father had taken her out for shopping. She put on her pink earrings and the bangles that her brother, Tanmay, had bought for her with his pocket money. A dainty watch on her left wrist and a touch of her favourite light-pink lipstick completed her look.

Just as she was about to step out, a rhythmic tick-tack of high heels from the far end of the corridor came to a dead stop outside her room. Then there was a knock at the door.

Rupali opened the door.
There stood a girl in skin-tight blue denims and black stilettos. She was wearing a loose off-shoulder light grey T-shirt that showed off the straps of the black tank top she was wearing un