Musa's Theft and Departure is the rupture that ends the old bearer’s service at Buckingham Villa: the valuables taken from the household are found among his possessions, but the discovery exposes more than a crime. Musa admits what he did and accuses the family of having taken his life and humiliated him in old age. Amina refuses to press charges, yet he leaves with a curse, and the household’s attempt at reconciliation cannot undo the separation.

Background and Discovery

The episode emerges from a household already divided by resentment. Musa and Mary Pereira are described as perpetually at daggers drawn, while Ahmed Sinai has insulted Musa. Amina’s efforts to calm matters may have failed. The old bearer has also come to believe that age has made his dismissal imminent: he fears he will be put out without warning. The narration offers these circumstances without settling on a single explanation for his action; injury, fear, and the accumulated history between servant and employers coexist.

One August morning, Amina discovers that the house has been burgled. She reports the losses to the police: the silver spittoon encrusted with lapis lazuli, gold coins, jewelled samovars, silver tea-services, and the contents of a green tin trunk. The missing property is specific and precious, but the immediate response makes the household’s social hierarchy just as visible as its valuables. Servants are lined up in the hall while Inspector Johnny Vakeel threatens them with punishment and describes methods of police coercion. Amina objects that the questioning has gone too far and insists that Mary is innocent; her defense of Mary does not prevent the search of the servants’ belongings.

The Search and Musa’s Oath

The search locates the stolen objects in Musa’s quarters. A silver spittoon is in his bedroll; gold coins and a silver samovar are wrapped in his small bundle of clothes; a missing tea-service is hidden under his charpoy bed. These discoveries establish his guilt materially, item by item, rather than through suspicion alone.

Before the search reveals the evidence, Musa has denied the theft and sworn that, if he robbed the family, his skin should run with sores and he should become a leper. Once confronted with the recovered objects, he throws himself at Ahmed’s feet and begs forgiveness. He says that he was mad and thought Ahmed was going to throw him into the street. Ahmed, already overtaken by what the narration calls the freeze, refuses to hear him; saying that he feels weak, he leaves the room. Amina, horrified, asks Musa why he made such a terrible oath. His denial and his plea belong to the same scene: fear drives the false oath, while the discovery forces a confession that cannot restore trust.

Musa’s Accusation and Departure

Musa answers Amina by distinguishing the possessions he stole from what, in his view, the family had taken from him. He says that he took their precious things, but that Amina, Ahmed, and Ahmed’s father had taken his whole life. He also names what he sees as a specific humiliation: in his old age, the household has humiliated him with Christian ayahs. His outburst does not erase his theft, but it changes the scene from a simple recovery of property into an accusation about dependence, dignity, and the treatment of an aging servant.

Amina refuses to press charges. That decision prevents the episode from ending with a formal prosecution, but it does not keep Musa in the household. He leaves with his bedroll on his back, descending Buckingham Villa’s spiral iron staircase and walking down the hillock. As he goes, he curses the house. The staircase supplies the scene with a physical reversal: a structure associated with ascent also leads downward, marking departure rather than return. His exit is both an act of leaving and a refusal to accept the household’s account of the incident as only a matter of stolen goods.

Narrative Framing and Significance

The account weighs possible causes before drawing back from certainty. It considers Mary’s inability to go to church and the bitterness that might have grown from it, the possibility of fate or the snakes-and-ladders pattern, and Ahmed’s insults and Musa’s injured pride. It then narrows its claim to what can be stated as fact: the antagonism between Musa and Mary, Ahmed’s insult, Musa’s fear of dismissal, the theft, and the departure. The event’s uncertainty is therefore part of its design. The reader sees the crime clearly, but not a single motive that explains it completely.

Musa’s curse also carries the episode beyond the household’s immediate attempt to settle the matter. The narrative links his departure to the image of the explosive ghost and the figure of Bomb-in-Bombay, while withholding certainty about whether the curse itself has power. The old bearer leaves as a wrongdoer who has been caught, but also as a man who believes his employers have already robbed him of a life. That unresolved double judgment gives his departure its force: the stolen objects are recovered, whereas the breach between master and servant remains.