Ghote’s eyes zoomed to the entrance doors.
There, enormous, towering, stood the huge, belly-jutting figure of Fred Hoskins. Between his two out-thrust hands, menacingly held, was his piece. His gun.
FIVE
It was as if a fanning-out jet of fiercely rushing water had spewed from the doors. Disciple after disciple, a moment earlier sitting cross-legged and straight-backed, wholly turned in loving bemusement towards Swami up on the platform, had toppled over to lie on the floor like so many plastic traffic bollards swept down by some fireman’s hose.
There was no sound other than the thump-thump-thump of bodies, young and old, skinny and fat, hitting the floor with unaccustomed force.
What to do, Ghote asked himself. Call over to Fred Hoskins and say that back-up—was that the word?—was not needed? Or keep quiet and not give away that he himself was here with the fellow?
His dilemma was solved for him in a way he had not at all expected.
From among the bodies on the floor a voice spoke. A girl’s voice with a husky full-throatedness that Ghote at once recognised as being the English of a well-off Indian.
“Oh, it is Mr. Hoskins. Mr. Hoskins, what are you doing here again? And what for have you got that gun?”
Lithely to her feet there rose from the welter of disciples not the chubby, vacant-faced girl Ghote had settled on as being Nirmala Shahani, but the girl he had first noted as a possible, the one with the big dark eyes and small soft nose. With quiet confidence she set out towards the jutting-bellied, jackal-haired private eye, standing with his gun still thrust aggressively forward in his two clasped hands.
Ghote decided he could no longer pose as a mere chance visitor. He must get hold of Nirmala Shahani as quickly as he could.
He ran, dodging his way between the stranded seal-like forms of the still crouching disciples, and before she had reached Fred Hoskins he succeeded in getting to her.
“Excuse me, please,” he said, catching her by the elbow. “I must speak with you. My name is Ghote. I have been sent by your father.”
Would these few words alone do the trick? Would the sudden knowledge thrust on the girl that her father had sent someone all the way to California for her be enough to break the spell she was held in?
She turned.
His first thought, seeing her close-to, was how pretty she was. She was all that an Indian girl ought to be. Big brown eyes, sparkling darkly with instant interest in everything around her. Meltingly soft flesh, vulnerably in need of being protected. And that little, soft nose, like that of some new-born animal, a baby deer or floppy-legged puppy, at once absurdly inqusitive and appallingly at the mercy of the brutal facts of the world. If I had a daughter myself, he thought before he could stop himself, this is the girl I would like her to be.
But it was no submissive Hindu daughter who answered his shock-treatment introduction.
“My father? What for is he wanting to interfere? Was he told what I had said to Mr. Hoskins? Yes, if he sent you he must have been. So why is he sending you at all?”
Ghote saw that her sharp questions were attracting the attention of the disciples near them, beginning now cautiously to get to their feet as Fred Hoskins slowly lowered his gun. For all their allegiance to things spiritual, plain curiosity seemed to be dominant in a good many of them.
“Can we go outside to talk?” he said to Nirmala.
“What is there to talk?”
But he put a hand firmly on to her elbow and a slight pressure was enough to propel her towards the double doors and out into the shoe-crowded lobby with Fred Hoskins going ahead of them stuffing the gun back into the broad leather belt over which his grain-sack belly protruded.
“Mr. Hosk–Fred,” Ghote said. “Please will you return to your car wherever you have put it? We may need to make a very, very rapid getaway.”
He felt pleased at the ruse he had hit on, and particularly with that word getaway. That was really American. And the ruse worked, too.
“Inspector, since you are a DV, which is the term we use for Distinguished Visitor,” Fred Hoskins said, “I am happy to place my vehicle at your disposal.”
He brought a big hand up to his short jackal-fur crown of hair, turned and crashed through the double doors out of the building.
Ghote faced Nirmala Shahani once more.
“Miss Shahani,” he said, “I would very much like to make certain that you understand exactly what it is that your father is wanting.”
“He is wanting me to leave the ashram,” the girl shot back in answer. “And I am not going to go. Not, not, not. Swami will never say that I must go.”
“But it is not Swami who should say,” Ghote replied, upset by this fierceness shown by someone who ought, he felt, to be gentle and willing. “Miss Shahani, you depend on your father. And your father is requesting you to return to Bombay.”
Nirmala Shahani straightened her back.
“I do not depend on Daddyji,” she said. “I do not depend on him anymore. I am depending on Swami only.”
“But what are you going to live on? Your father told me that you have no money left in your joint account at the State Bank of India, at Wilshire—”
“Yes, yes. There is none, none. I have given it all to Swami. What for am I needing money? I have Swami’s love. Swami’s love will look after me always.”
“You have given him all your money? Every rupee? Every dollar?”
“Yes. Yes, yes. And I would have given more if there had been more in the account. I would give anything to Swami.”
For a moment Ghote was at a loss for words. What could he say that would penetrate the layer of innocence that Nirmala had wrapped round herself? That protective fluff of down?
But there was one possible thing. He tried it.
“You are not the only one who gives to Swami, Miss Shahani.”
“No. All give. All long to give. We love Swami.”
“But some give very, very much more than others,” Ghote said. “And Swami makes those people his special favourites.”
“What special favourites? Swami loves us all. If somebody is needing his special attention, then they are getting. That is all.”
“They get Swami’s special attention,” Ghote echoed. “They? Is it a he who gets it, or a she?”
“He or she. What does it matter? Do you think Swami notices whether he is loving a boy or a girl only?”
“Perhaps he does not. But perhaps he does notice whether he is giving his special favour to a girl who has no more to give him or to a rich, rich American lady who can give and give and give again. Give a wristwatch with a special alarm that plays a tune one week and next week give a motor car.”
“Mrs. Russell Walters?” Nirmala asked, and there was a hint of alarm in her voice.
So that fluff of innocence can be penetrated perhaps, Ghote thought.
“Mrs. Russell Walters is going to give Swami a motor car,” he stated flatly.
“Why such a hungama over that?” Nirmala answered, with a quick, proud upward tilt of her soft little nose. “What does Swami care if he has a thousand motor cars or none? She is just giving so that he can go from place to place more quickly telling everybody what a wonderful future is waiting for them.”
“But perhaps Swami does care about cars,” Ghote replied, suddenly acutely conscious of how he was treading on a thin mud-crust over a deep-sucking, unknown swamp. “Perhaps Swami cares very much about just what sort of a car Mrs. Russell Walters would give.”
Nirmala laughed.
“Swamiji does not know one car from another,” she said. “He is far above all motor cars.”
For an instant Ghote held back. Then he plunged.
“What if I could prove to you that Swami does know just that?” he said. “What if I could prove that he knew already that Mrs. Russell Walters wants to give him a car and that he has spent many hours thinking about just which great big American model would be best? If I could do that, would you still think he
cared nothing for money?”
“You would not prove,” Nirmala answered.
“But if I did …?”
Nirmala gave a scornful toss of her head.
“If you can prove—prove to me that Swami knows even one car from another,” she said, “then I will take the next flight back to Bombay.”
“Very good,” Ghote said, trying to hide his inner dismay at what he had pledged himself to do. “Where shall I be able to find you when I am ready?”
“I stay in the hut they are calling Shanti Sadan. Ask anybody.”
“Then I will see you before very long.”
He turned away.
What had he done? Was there something in the air of California that made everybody behave as if they were twice as large as life? Had whatever it was that made people here do things like buy cars that were more like battleships already entered into him?
To tell Nirmala he could prove Swami knew about the different models of cars in America: it was nothing more than a gigantic bluff. What had he had to go on? Just the fellow’s curled-up toes. Even if it had been a direct lie assuring Mrs. Russell Walters he knew nothing about cars, how was that to be proved?
And if he failed in that, then Nirmala was going to be more determined than ever to stay here. To stay in the clutches of a man who was nothing but a trickster.
Except that he himself had no headache.
And, if Swami was not a trickster but a true yogi, what then? If Swami was like a yogi back in Bombay years ago whom they had arrested, wrongly as it turned out, and who had been found each morning sitting calmly outside the cell he had been locked up in the previous night, then surely he would be after all a very good person to have charge of a young girl.
But to go back to Bombay and to tell Ranjee Shahani that: there would be fireworks then all right. The Minister would get to hear in no time at all. And then there would be a posting for him. To some little town far out in the mofussil where nothing ever happened, to waste out the rest of his days.
Still, there was one thing he could do. One tiny chance open to him.
He pushed wide the doors and went back into the hall.
There had been two points he had noticed while Mrs. Russell Walters had been trying to persuade Swami to have a big, new car. There had been Swami’s curling toes. But there had also been the look on the face of the tennis-player girl. The look of deeply hurt dismay that had drained the bursting-with-health radiance out of her.
He had promised himself the moment before Fred Hoskins had come crashing in at the doors with his piece that he would have a quiet word with that girl at some time. Now he could not wait.
He saw that the disturbance caused by the private eye’s unexpected entrance had apparently brought the meeting to an end sooner than intended. The swami had left, and disciples in flowing garments of every shade of orange, in T-shirts, in blue jeans, a good many carrying babies, others linked arm in arm, were already beginning to make their way towards the doors.
He pushed through them with a determination that he knew was out of keeping with the general atmosphere of hazy benevolence. And which gave him an inward jab of sharp pleasure.
The Western sitar-player, Johnananda, seemed to be making an announcement standing up on the platform, his voice rising desperately above the buzz of talk as the disciples swirled towards the doors. To Ghote’s surprise his accent was not darkly American but British. A screechy British bray.
“Before you go … before you go … chaps … girls … before you go, one thing. Remember tonight is special. Very, very special. It’s tonight that Swamiji is going to meditate in here all night. In the morning he’s going to have a very special announcement to make to everybody. Chaps … girls …”
Despite his urgency nobody was paying much attention. Ghote’s opinion of the fellow fell yet further. An Englishman, but not even a born-to-rule one such as he had known from a distance in his boyhood. No, no amount of sitar-playing and head-shaving could disguise his being a fake.
“So no one—please. Please. No one is to come in here after six o’clock tonight. Swamiji will come out at six tomorrow morning, and I want you all … It would be very nice if everyone was outside to greet him.”
The hall was fast emptying. But up on the platform the girl with the note-pad was standing, looking as if she was waiting for everyone else to go. As if she could not wait to be alone.
Ghote went up on to the platform and crossed over to her.
“Good afternoon, madam,” he said. “I am thinking that you can be of very, very much assistance to me.”
The oral-hygiene smile appeared on the girl’s face. But, Ghote thought, it had been a hard struggle to put it there.
“What can I do for you, friend?”
“Well, I was seeing you just now with your note-pad sitting close to Swami, and I thought that you were perhaps his personal assistant also.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Only Swami doesn’t think of me as—”
For an instant she hesitated.
“Well,” she went on almost at once, “I was about to say that Swami doesn’t believe in any of that personal-assistant, power-structure stuff. I’m his plain secretary, if anything. I mean, he just found out one day I had pretty good shorthand, and he asked if I would sit by him and take notes of everything he said. He’s writing a book, you know.”
“Oh, yes? That is very good. What is it to be about, please?”
“About? Why, about him, of course. It’ll be his thoughts and his sayings and all. He says one day it’ll be read all over the world, and it’ll tell millions of people the way they ought to live.”
The longer she went on about it, Ghote thought, the less she seemed to believe what she was saying.
“Please,” he asked, “I would be very glad to be knowing your name, madam.”
“It’s Emily.”
“Emily. I see.” He allowed a small barb of irritation to surface. “It is Emily only?”
“No. No, I guess. Emily Kanin, if you want to know. But we don’t go for all that formality at the ashram. Just call me Emily.”
“Very good. Emily. Yes. Well, please, Emily, I was wanting to know if I could have an interview with Swami. There is a very, very important matter I am wishing to put to him.”
He hoped, violently, that Emily would not say that, yes, he could see Swami straight away. The thought of trying to wrest Nirmala Shahani from him in a direct confrontation was almost too much for him. But he had to keep Emily talking about Swami, and asking for an interview had been the best way to do so that he could think of.
“I guess Swami hasn’t got a free minute before six o’clock,” Emily answered, to his relief. “And, you may not know, but he’s going into an all-night meditation then. He’s got a terrific problem he wants to solve.”
“Oh, I see. I see. And he is always solving his problems by meditating only?”
“He certainly is. But you’re Indian, aren’t you? You ought to know what can be done by meditating.”
“Well, not every Indian is very, very spiritual, you know.”
Ghote thought briefly of Nirmala Shahani’s father in his huge luxurious office.
“But, please,” he added quickly, “what is this problem that Swami is facing?”
“I’m afraid I just can’t tell you. I don’t even have an idea myself, as a matter of fact. All kinds of things could be worrying him. His book. Or maybe the way some of the guys and girls here are behaving. Finances. Anything. The ashram costs a heck of a lot to run, you know.”
“Oh, yes, I suppose that must be so. Who owns all the magnificent land it is on, please? Does the ashram go all the way down to the gate at the road?”
“Yeah.”
She gave a sudden little frown.
“It’s all in Swami’s name actually,” she said, speaking slowly, her mind plainly elsewhere. “He was given most of it. He needed somewhere to start the ashram. So he meditated, and someone came up with an unexpected gift.”
Ghote did his best to look extremely impressed.
“Then Swami must be a very, very rich man?” he asked.
“Yeah. Well, technically, I suppose. But technically only, you understand. The ashram really belongs to God. Or—”
For the second time Emily, the radiantly healthy, the tennis player, hesitated. Then she went on in a rush.
“Yeah, the ashram belongs to God. But of course it has to be in someone’s name. For tax purposes, you know. The I.R.S.—that’s our Internal Revenue Service—just need a name on their tax forms. So Swami said it might as well be his name as anybody else’s. That’s what Swami said.”
Ghote thought he could detect a note of defiance in these last words. Of defiance against certain inner thoughts the girl must have.
He decided to press forward.
“And all these gifts Swami is getting?” he asked. “Like—like that wristwatch he was showing. Are they in his name also while they belong truly to God, or are they for him himself?”
Emily looked even more uneasy.
“That’s hard to say,” she answered eventually. “I mean, well, something like a watch … well, that’s something that’s only useful to the person who wears it, isn’t it? It’d only make sense for it to be his alone.”
“And a car also?”
Had he gone too far? Was it a mistake to have let this girl, who for all the doubts he suspected she had must be close indeed to Swami, learn that he had overheard that quiet conversation up on the platform?
But at once the look on Emily’s face told him that he need not fear her giving him away. The single word car had hit her like a blow on the bridge of the nose.
“I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “I thought—I used to think …”
“Swami very much wants a big, big car, isn’t it?” Ghote jumped in. “When he was saying to that lady, to Mrs. Russell Walters, that he was knowing nothing about cars at all, that was not true, was it? Swami does know about cars. He has been finding out which is the best of them all after Mrs. Russell Walters was saying she would get him one. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
Go West, Inspector Ghote Page 7