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murder by poison, murder by sympathetic magic, eating beef, selling death certificates to murderers,
wearing his shoes in the precincts of the pagoda and making homosexual attempts on the Military
Police drummer-boy. To hear what was said of him, anyone would have imagined the doctor a
compound of Machiavelli, Sweeney Todd and the Marquis de Sade. Mr Macgregor had not paid much
attention at first. He was too accustomed to this kind of thing. But with the last of the anonymous
letters U Po Kyin had brought off a stroke that was brilliant even for him.
It concerned the escape of Nga Shwe O, the dacoit, from Kyauktada jail. Nga Shwe O, who was in
the middle of a well-earned seven years, had been preparing his escape for several months past, and
as a start his friends outside had bribed one of the Indian warders. The warder received his hundred
rupees in advance, applied for leave to visit the death-bed of a relative and spent several busy days
in the Mandalay brothels. Time passed, and the day of the escape was postponed several times–the
warder, meanwhile, growing more and more homesick for the brothels. Finally he decided to earn a
further reward by betraying the plot to U Po Kyin. But U Po Kyin, as usual, saw his chance. He told
the warder on dire penalties to hold his tongue, and then, on the very night of the escape, when it was
too late to do anything, sent another anonymous letter to Mr Macgregor, warning him that an escape
was being attempted. The letter added, needless to say, that Dr Veraswami, the superintendent of the
jail, had been bribed for his connivance.
In the morning there was a hullabaloo and a rushing to and fro of warders and policemen at the jail,
for Nga Shwe O had escaped. (He was a long way down the river, in a sampan provided by U Po
Kyin.) This time Mr Macgregor was taken aback. Whoever had written the letter must have been
privy to the plot, and was probably telling the truth about the doctor’s connivance. It was a very
serious matter. A jail superintendent who will take bribes to let a prisoner escape is capable of
anything. And therefore–perhaps the logical sequence was not quite clear, but it was clear enough to
Mr Macgregor–therefore the charge of sedition, which was the main charge against the doctor,
became much more credible.
U Po Kyin had attacked the other Europeans at the same time. Flory, who was the doctor’s friend
and his chief source of prestige, had been scared easily enough into deserting him. With Westfield it
was a little harder. West-field, as a policeman, knew a great deal about U Po Kyin and might
conceivably upset his plans. Policemen and magistrates are natural enemies. But U Po Kyin had
known how to turn even this fact to advantage. He had accused the doctor, anonymously of course, of
being in league with the notorious scoundrel and bribe-taker U Po Kyin. That settled Westfield. As for
Ellis, no anonymous letters were needed in his case; nothing could possibly make him think worse of
the doctor than he did already.
U Po Kyin had even sent one of his anonymous letters to Mrs Lackersteen, for he knew the power
of European women. Dr Veraswami, the letter said, was inciting the natives to abduct and rape the
European women–no details were given, nor were they needed. U Po Kyin had touched Mrs
Lackersteen’s weak spot. To her mind the words ‘sedition’, ‘Nationalism’, ‘rebellion’, ‘Home Rule’,
conveyed one thing and one only, and that was a picture of herself being raped by a procession of jetblack
coolies with rolling white eyeballs. It was a thought that kept her awake at night sometimes.
Whatever good regard the Europeans might once have had for the doctor was crumbling rapidly.