Inspector Ghote Plays a Joker

by H. R. F. Keating

  Ghote’s head jerked forward in surprise.

  “Yes? You did have a right to be there?”

  “Yes,” said Lai Dass with unshakeable composure. “I did have right. It was you who gave me the right.”

  For a quick moment Ghote thought. What on earth had he said that Lai Dass could have construed as giving him a right to enter that bungalow? He could think of nothing, and was reduced to asking.

  “How did I give you that right ?”

  “You told the bungalow was empty. If the Rajah had no more use for it, it was there.”

  Oh no, Ghote thought, you could not go about things in such a way.

  Only you could. Human beings were capable of anything, any irresponsibility, any fantastic process of self- delusion.

  “It was there empty," he said, “so you thought you would just stroll along and make yourself perfectly at home? Is that it? Have I got it quite right?”

  “I was having difficulties," Lal Dass said, in a tone that indicated this was a complete and satisfactory explanation.

  “Difficulties? What sort of difficulties?”

  It was no use doing anything other than just asking.

  “I have my difficulties," Lal Dass replied.

  For once his air of bland composure seemed to have deserted him. He was no longer looking limpid-eyed at Ghote.

  Ghote smelt the faintest hint of a trail “What were the nature of these difficulties?” he snapped. “What you have told is not sufficient answer.”

  Slowly Lal Dass’s head sank till he was looking hard at the stained concrete floor of the celL

  “It was those boys,” he said in a whisper.

  Ghote felt an inclination to burst into tears.

  “What boys? What is this, for heaven's sake?”

  Still Lal Dass regarded the brown floor.

  “They were preventing me from perfecting myself.” he said. “I was unable to fix my concentration. They were the boy's I told about, the ones who would pull down my shade and they would throw stones also.”

  Now Ghote did at least see what the odd logic of the situation was.

  “Some boys stopped you meditating,” he said, allowing himself a little amusement. “You, the famous hathayogi.”

  Lal Dass seemed to react to the mockery. His head came swiftly up and he looked straight at Ghote standing in front of him.

  “That is what I have told,” he said. “That is what I told you before. I am far away from subduing my thoughts.”

  He looked away. His simple shamefacedness made Ghote in his turn ashamed that he had, even if only a little, laughed at him.

  “And that is not the whole,” Lai Dass added in a whisper again.

  “There is more?” Ghote asked.

  He squatted on his hunkers till he was more nearly at the hathayogi’s level.

  “I felt," Lai Dass said, evidently encouraged, “I felt that if I could have peace I would subdue not my thoughts only but my body also. I felt that then I could walk on the water."

  The words fell like hammer strokes for Ghote.

  “You mean you still believe you can do that?” he asked. “You intend to try once more?"

  “Once more. Perhaps many times more. But when I know I am ready only."

  It was spoken with total assurance.

  Ghote replied with scarcely any assurance at all.

  “Then—then you do not regard your life as finished after that hoax?" he said.

  “It was a small mistake," Lai Dass replied. “It was perhaps a good thing. After something like that I will not

  have people all round me. Before they did take away from the concentration. I know that.”

  “Yes,” said Ghote. “You will certainly hardly be surrounded by admirers now. And nor will you receive those admirers’ food, and cash, and comforts.”

  “No,” said Lai Dass.

  He looked at Ghote once more, and in his limpid eyes there was the hint of spiritual shrewdness that Ghote had seen before on the beach.

  “No,” Lal Dass said. “But, if I had been talking of walking on water for food and cash only, I would not have been sitting there on the beach where you found me afterwards, would I?”

  He gave Ghote a fleeting smile.

  “You are a man of experience, Inspector,” he said. “You must know that India is full of rogues who pretend to be religious. They are most of them too clever to be found out. But when they are, they do one thing quickly: they go just as fast as they can to somewhere where they are not known and they set up in business once more. India is a big country, Inspector.”

  Ghote admitted defeat. He said nothing but rose, a little stiffly, from his crouching position.

  “Well, Lal Dass,” he said, “will spending a little time in prison stop your programme for subjugating your body?” Lal Dass did look up at him with a hint of query in his mild eyes.

  “Because that is almost certainly where you are going to go,” Ghote said. “On a breaking and entering conviction. Inspector Gadgil will see to that.”

  : : : :

  Inspector Gadgil did not take it kindly. But there was nothing he could do about it.

  He came out with Ghote to the entrance to the station, darting a look of pettish ferocity at the unfortunate man at the cluttered desk.

  “Get those things put away, Constable,” he snapped, turning aside from Ghote. “How often have I told you a police station is not a section of the pavement for you to lay out your wares on?”

  “No, sir. Yes, sir.”

  Books and papers were hurriedly shoved out of sight beneath the counter. Inspector Gadgil turned back to Ghote.

  “Sorry about that, Inspector. Vital to keep men up to the mark. And now, tell me, you are going to continue your inquiries elsewhere?”

  Ghote reflected with bitterness that in a way Gadgil was entitled to be put in the picture. And he had had the shrewdness to ask his question where he would have to be snubbed in front of a subordinate if he was not to get a reply. Only what reply was there to give? That he was going to see “a certain racehorse owner”? But he had no particular new evidence to put to Anil Bedekar. That he was going to put some questions to “a well-known figure in the scientific field”? He had hardly left Sir Rustomjee as it was.

  “Oh, yes, yes, Inspector,” he said to Gadgil. “Plainly this development here warranted immediate attention. But on the other hand, my inquiries are taking-”

  And then, mercifully, the most hideous row abruptly broke out on the steps leading into the building. Without appearing to dodge the issue in any way, he could reasonably break off and look to see what the matter was. Gadgil, in any case, was frowning like a little thundercloud and tapping his swagger-stick ominously against his calf.

  He trotted off towards the pair of double swing doors.

  But, before he had reached them, they both swung back with a pair of sharp clacks and two constables staggered through, each hanging on to one arm of an extremely drunken European.

  Ghote saw, with decided alarm, that this was none other than Jack Cooper. The tubby little racehorse trainer was in a state of wildly noisy jollity. He stood in the entrance, forcing the two hefty constables who had hold of him to stay where they were, and he shouted.

  “That’s right, lads, lead me in. Lead on, Macduff. To gaol or victory. Jack Cooper won’t mind which. Jack Cooper’s got a real winner, and Jack’s going to tell the world.”

  Inspector Gadgil’s mouth hardened like a little steel trap under the black brush of his moustache.

  “Get that man down to the cells,” he barked.

  “Yes, sir. Right away, Inspector.”

  But Jack Cooper, with the perverse obstinacy of the very drunk, promptly took it into his head to continue his stand in the entrance way. He stopped shouting to bring his whole wavering concentration to bear on the problem of preventing the constables hauling him past the counter and down the short flight of stone steps to the police station’s battery of eight cells.

  And
he happened to be in an excellent position to do so. The entrance way was a little too narrow for three people to go through it abreast and so neither of the constables could bring full pressure to bear. But Jack, by spreading his short arms as wide as possible and firmly planting his two tubby legs on the ground, was able to exert considerable force on both of them.

  “Come on, come on.”

  Inspector Gadgil’s swagger-stick was beating a tattoo of frenzied impatience on his calf.

  “The chap was creating a disturbance in the Sun 'n Sand Hotel, Inspector," one of the hefty constables gasped out in intervals of the struggle, perhaps hoping that a little information would serve as a sop to his superior.

  “I do not care where he was creating a disturbance,” Gadgil snapped. “I will not have him making a nuisance of himself in my station.”

  Jack Cooper, beetroot-faced and perspiring, evidently heard the words, for all the intensity of his struggle at the door. Because he promptly abandoned that stage in his fighting career and shot along the length of the counter till he was almost in front of Gadgil.

  The two constables came slipping and sliding along willy-nilly behind him, still clutching hard at his podgy arms. Jack looked up at Gadgil, his intensely blue eyes alive with mischief.

  “Ooh, dear, ooh dear, ooh dear," he said in a comical high-pitched voice. “Spoiling the quiet of your little station, are we? Tut, tut, tut, tut. Mustn’t do that, must we?” Ghote, who had noticed Jack’s change of tactics the moment he had shifted his stance in the doorway, edged quietly to one side.

  Whatever happened, he did not want the little English racehorse trainer to notice him. If he chose to get drunk like this, then a night in the cells was the least he deserved.

  Quietly he began edging along the far wall from the counter in the direction of the now clear doorway.

  He had almost reached it and was taking a quiet look back, from a position comfortably behind the bouncy Jack Cooper, who was now engaged in singing a version of a lullaby to Inspector Gadgil, when the doors were flung wide open again and a dishevelled figure appeared at them shouting “Inspector Ghote, Inspector Ghote.”

  It was Sgt. Desai. Of course. And the impact of his sudden dramatic arrival was enough to silence even Jack Cooper.

  “Inspector Ghote. Where is Inspector Ghote?” Desai shouted.

  “Here I am,” Ghote said, trying simultaneously to keep his voice down and yet to speak with enough force to attract Desai’s attention.

  And all he succeeded in doing, as he knew he would, was to attract Jack Cooper’s attention.

  “Why, it’s me old pal, Inspector Ghote. Ganesh Ghote to his friends. What a piece of luck. What a very, very lucky meeting.”

  Still dragging the two bewildered constables, Jack Cooper progressed back towards the entrance and stopped in front of Ghote.

  “Now, my dear old pal,” he said, “there’s a little something you can do for me.”

  Ghote pretended to ignore him. He stepped smartly past the little white-haired, stocky aggressive figure and went up to Desai.

  “Well, Sergeant,” he said sharply. “What is it?” “Inspector,” Desai answered, a radiant grin spreading itself all over his face. “Inspector, I fell asleep in the truck and when I woke up you were gone. I thought you’d left without me.”

  Ghote grinned, without mirth.

  “Splendid,” he said. “You are sitting in the truck which I use as transport. You wake up, and you wonder where I have gone. Where do you think I would have gone without my truck, you idiot!”

  To avoid witnessing the whole of the long look of dawning comprehension that began to work its way to the surface of Desai’s visage, he turned away.

  Only to come face to face with Jack Cooper again.

  “My dear friend, my very, very dear friend. There is a little something you can do.”

  Ghote could not avoid looking at him. The shock of white hair, so unbecoming on such an irresponsibly gay figure, the puce complexion assisted by years of alcoholic consumption, the bright, bright blue eyes, at times so disconcerting with their direct appraisal of other men’s motives.

  “Mr. Cooper, good evening,” he said. “But I am afraid I am in a great hurry. Police work, you know.”

  He turned to move away.

  “My dear friend, I know you don’t want to have anything to do with an old reprobate like me. But these people are going to bung me in one of their filthy cells, you know. You can’t let that happen to an old pal.”

  Ghote turned back to him.

  “Mr. Cooper, I am not an old pal,” he said with controlled reasonableness. “We have met twice only. And, to tell the truth, you are most disgracefully drunk. You should be put in a cell.”

  The bright blue eyes in the beetroot face blinked once, sharply.

  “I know I should, old pal. I am most disgracefully drunk. That gee-gee that was worrying me so got an absolutely clear bill of health from the old vet to-day. I had to celebrate.”

  He shook his head mournfully, the pure white shock of hair moving.

  “But all the same, old boy—not pal, no—all the same, old boy, won’t you do something for me?”

  “But you know it is my duty to see that the law is upheld,” Ghote said.

  Yet he realised that already he was weakening.

  Jack Cooper must have seen it too, in spite of the efforts he made to keep his face unexpressive.

  “My dear old pa- No.”

  With immense solemnity he began again.

  “My dear Inspector Ganesh Ghote. Sahib. I knew you would do it. I thank you. From the bottom of my heart.”

  Resignedly Ghote turned to Inspector Gadgil.

  “Inspector, as you have gathered, this is an acquaintance of mine. I would think you would be pleased not to have to deal with him?”

  It was an appeal. Gadgil did not exactly respond well. He pursed his lips under the little black brush of a moustache and tapped at the palm of his left hand with the tip of his swagger-stick.

  “Very well, Inspector,” he said. “I put him in your care. But against my better judgment, mind. Against my better judgment.”

  “Thank you,” Ghote said.

  He took Jack Cooper firmly by the elbow and steered him out of the double doors, giving Sgt. Desai a vicious glare out of the comer of his eye as he did so. To his infinite relief Jack made no trouble as they went over to the truck and got in. Indeed, no sooner had Ghote started the engine than Jack, with a last “Dear old pal,” closed his bright blue eyes and appeared to go straight off to sleep.

  Ghote waited till they were on the road and then shook his shoulder.

  “Do we take you back to the stables?” he said.

  Jack Cooper hiccupped.

  “Not at all,” he said. “Little hotel. In Morton Road. The Lucky Welcome.”

  He relapsed into silence. But evidently he was not asleep, because a moment later he added something.

  “Little hotel," he said. “Beastly South Indian food. And you know where the boss man stays when we come to Bombay together like this? The Taj. No less. The jolly old Taj Mahal Hotel, built all bloody well back to front."

  Again silence except for groany breathing, audible even above the noise of the engine. And then again another unsolicited remark.

  “That's where they all stay, my friends. My jolly old friends. That’s where they're all pals together. The jolly old Taj. My old boss man, your young Rajah. Pals."

  Abruptly Ghote felt a waft of whisky breath all over him. Jack Cooper had suddenly hauled himself upright.

  “But that doesn't stop friendly old boss man putting nasty little private detective on to trailing friendly young Rajah, member of the House of Princes, God bless ’em all."

  And after that total silence and the merciful withdrawal of the whisky breath.

  In the darkness of the driving cab, with the slumped figure of the English trainer a vague whitish blur beside him and with Desai in the back humming another of his interminable
film tunes, Ghote was able to sit quietly and savour the piece of information that had been so oddly thrown into his lap.

  So Anil Bedekar had hired a private detective to follow the Rajah of Bhedwar, had he? To follow the man he in no way suspected of being the joker who had played that notorious trick on him on the day of the last Indian Derby? Now he knew whom he was going to see next.

  CHAPTER XV

  Ghote left Desai outside the Lucky Welcome Hotel in Morton Road, a tattered building in a tattered street, with Jack Cooper’s arm round his shoulders. Jack was still half-asleep and it was a question whether he thought he was being supported by Ghote himself. He lolled forward, with his pot-belly looming out in a wide curve of blotchy whiteness in the shadowed darkness of the street.

  Ghote left them there, heartlessly.

  And then he drove himself quietly and quickly to the huge minaretted block of the Taj Mahal Hotel, a great rectangle of shining pinpoint lights beside the dark waters of the harbour at the Gateway of India. He felt, with the abandonment of the two burdensome figures that he had been saddled with—one as the result of D.S.P. Naik’s altogether uncharacteristic irresponsibility, the other as a pure visitation from the wanton spirit of chance—a new sense of calm confidentness. He had just come into possession, never mind how, of a simple, solid piece of information in a case which, thanks to the Rajah’s utter detachment from everything, had up till now almost completely lacked anything to get the teeth into.

  But now he had caught out Anil Bedekar in a plain piece of lying about his relations with the murdered man. Now had come the moment of plain truth.

  He entered the big, grand-looking, marble-floored foyer of the luxurious hotel, with its little brightly-lit, glossy boutiques all round, its chattering ticker-tape machine— plaything of the rich—and its constantly coming and going well-clad people, a changing pattern of richly coloured silky saris, frosty white suits, the occasional discreet black of a dinner jacket. His mouth set in a grim line.

  The enormously tall Pathan hall porter advanced towards him.

  “C.I.D.,” Ghote said sharply, deliberately speaking just loudly enough to give the man the heebie-jeebies that such an unspeakable word in these surroundings might just have been caught by casual ears.