Cheating Death

by H. R. F. Keating

  Together they entered the Principal’s office, and, without a word to Mrs Cooper, the Dean’s secretary made a stumbling rush to the chamber door and flung it open.

  Principal Bembalkar was at his desk, tweed jacket buttoned over sturdy stomach, first pipe of the day sending up a cloud of fragrant blue smoke, heavy-rimmed spectacles focussed on a copy – Ghote took in – of the works of William Shakespeare.

  Quickly Ghote explained the situation.

  ‘And, sir,’ he concluded, ‘I understand from this lady that the Dean could have some heart attack if he is too much shocked. So there is a need to act quickly.’

  ‘Yes,’ Principal Bembalkar said in a voice much more remote than Ghote would have liked. ‘Yes, something must be done.’

  His eyes, however, flicked downwards to the book in front of him. Ghote, following his gaze not without impatience, saw that the play it was opened at was Hamlet.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘you must telephone your local police just now, even if I am able to start some investigations myself.’

  ‘But the police,’ Principal Bembalkar said. ‘What will it do to the good name of the college if they come here? What more will it do after what has been done already? And Mrs Rajwani, what will she say?’

  ‘Sir, you are having no alternative. You cannot let your students kidnap a senior on your staff and not take all possible action. Sir, you must do it now.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dr Bembalkar said with a sigh. ‘You are right, of course. Can you … Please, Inspector, will you ask Mrs Cooper to telephone and inform the local police of what has happened.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  ‘And, Inspector …’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Should she also make an announcement that the Founder’s Day holiday is restored?’

  Ghote felt a jolt of water-pure anger.

  Why was the fellow asking for his advice? Why could he not make up his mind one way or another, and act? And how could he contemplate giving in to these people, these students, who had gone so far as to kidnap their own Dean?

  ‘Sir,’ he shot out. ‘That is one hundred percent up to you. But if you are wanting my opinion it would be altogether wrong to give in.’

  ‘Very well. Very well, Inspector. But please do your utmost to find poor Potdar and release him. Before … Before anything too appalling happens.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Ghote said.

  But outside, after he had given Mrs Cooper the Principal’s message, he wondered what there was he could do. He knew scarcely anything of the college, of who was likely among its several hundred students to do anything so outrageous as this.

  Then a thought struck him.

  He did know two students, and one a student leader at that. Was it possible that young Mohinder Singh Mann, full of idealism and energy though he undoubtedly was, could have arranged this business? And Sarita Karatkar, that green swaying creature of spring, was she his accomplice? Was it to find details of the kidnapping plan that someone – But who? And why? – had made that attempt to break in to the Student Union office that Sarita had laughingly spoken about?

  He glanced at his watch. Nearly 8.30. The first classes would be over in a few minutes, and then, if what Krishna Iyer MA Madras had told him held good for every day, Mohinder and Sarita would go to the canteen.

  He hurried down.

  The place was still deserted when he arrived, though the tea-urn was steaming gently and the attendant was already behind the counter. But scarcely had he taken this in when, from behind, he heard the stampeding feet of the first students.

  Mohinder and Sarita were among them.

  He went quickly over, caught hold of the boy by the arm and without a word pushed him back through the hurrying, chattering mass of oncoming students, round to the first quiet spot he could find. Sarita, he realised with mixed feelings, had followed.

  ‘Now,’ he said as soon as he had got the tall young Sikh backed up against the slogan-covered wall behind him. ‘Now, I want no back answers. I want nothing of shilly-shally. Where is Dean Potdar? Come, answer. Answer or you would find yourself in hundred percent troubles.’

  The boy did not understand him.

  Or, he said to himself, has he guessed why he has been marched away out of the canteen? And has he – he is quick enough and clever enough – made up his mind to act the complete innocent?

  But there was someone who, every bit as quick and clever, was incapable, he felt certain, of such dissimulation.

  He put a hand flat on Mohinder’s chest to keep him where he was, jerked round and shot out a question at Sarita.

  ‘Now, what are you knowing about this? Quick, tell me. Or it would be the worse for this young man.’

  All the sparkling impudence, the impudence he had so much liked despite himself, had left her face. Yes, he had her well and truly frightened.

  ‘Well?’ he barked out.

  ‘Inspector … Inspector, honestly I don’t know – We don’t know what you are talking about. It is Dean Potdar? You are asking where he is? But he is in his office. Or, if he is not, where should he be?’

  ‘Where this young man and his fellow riff-raffs have hidden him,’ Ghote snarled.

  ‘Hidden – But, no, Inspector, no.’

  Mohinder had brought out the words in a manner so troubled and bewildered that Ghote asked himself once more whether the boy could possibly be play-acting. He could have sworn not. Yet, if Mohinder, student leader, was behind the kidnapping, then would this not be the only card he could play?

  He turned back to Sarita.

  If he was going to break either of them, then she was the one who would snap. However much it hurt him to do it to her.

  ‘Now, you must be knowing also. All right, your friend here was kidnapping the Dean and hoping to get back that Founder’s Day holiday. It was one stupid idea. But forget that. Tell me, now only, where the Dean is being kept, and perhaps your Mohinder would not hear any more about it.’

  But Sarita’s pretty face still retained its look of incomprehension.

  Was she as cunning as the boy?

  ‘Inspector,’ she said, a wonderfully earnest frown appearing on her forehead, ‘are you saying someone has kidnapped Dean Potdar? To force the authorities to restore that holiday? But that is nonsense. Nonsense only.’

  ‘Then why did this young man, or one of his friends, telephone the Dean’s secretary and make just only that demand? Come, you are trying to fool me. One more chance. I am giving one more chance itself.’

  Mohinder, still pinned to the wall, broke in.

  ‘Inspector, what can we say to convince you? Truly, when you were telling us, it was the first we had heard of such an idea. And, I agree, it is damn silly. All right, it was harsh to cancel the holiday when the Day of Mourning had been given with no warning. But to kidnap Old Pot-belly – I mean, Dean Potdar, that is not at all the right way to protest.’

  ‘No,’ Sarita broke in. ‘It is worse than being just only the wrong way to protest, Mohinderji. It is wrong in itself. Everyone is knowing Pot-belly is not in good health. To kidnap him is wrong. Altogether wrong.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mohinder said. ‘The most we were thinking of was a dharna. And that would have been at Princi’s door not Potdar’s.’

  ‘A dharna,’ Ghote pounced in. ‘You were making protest plans then? You were going to crowd Principal Bembalkar’s door, stop each and every coming and going until he was giving in? Now, kindly do not try to tell me you did not in the end decide to go further and hold the Dean to ransom.’

  ‘But we did not,’ Mohinder answered, his beardless face beneath his neat turban breaking into a sweat of hot denial. ‘We did not, Inspector.’

  ‘Inspector,’ Sarita came in from the other side. ‘Even if Mohinder had had such a bad idea, I would not have let him do it. We knew Old Pot-belly could collapse at any moment. One heart attack he had had already. I could not have let anyone do that to him.’

  And that convinced Ghote.

/>   The passion the girl had put into every syllable of her denial was too simple, too innocent to be anything other than an outpouring of truth.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I am believing you. You were not responsible for the kidnapping. But then who is? That you must be able to guess.’

  In the quick glance exchanged between the two of them, as quickly hidden, Ghote realised that once they had begun to think about it they each of them knew who must be responsible for what had been done to his plump, twinkling-eyed, malicious Dr Watson.

  He fixed Mohinder with an unblinking gaze.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘now you will tell me who those irresponsible boys are.’

  ‘Inspector, I cannot.’

  ‘Will not. Will not is what you are meaning. And I will not put up with that. I can charge you as accessory to the crime, and unless I get those names now, ek dum I would do it.’

  ‘No, Inspector. I refuse to answer.’

  ‘No!’

  It was Sarita, explosively breaking in.

  ‘No, Mohinder,’ she went on, a little more calmly. ‘It is all very well to be loyal. But this is serious. Dean Potdar could die. You know that. Tell the inspector who it is.’

  Mohinder’s answer hung in the balance. But not for long. Ghote could see that Sarita’s arrow-straight glance was too full of passionate fire for the boy to be able to resist.

  He turned back to Ghote.

  ‘There must be six-seven of them,’ he said. ‘They are trouble-makers always. Rich boys. We were thinking of necking them out of the union.’

  ‘And the names?’ Ghote persisted.

  ‘It is one Shantaram Antrolikar who is the leader,’ Mohinder answered promptly. ‘The others, toughs though they are also, are nothing to him.’

  ‘Very well. Now, where can I find this fellow?’

  Mohinder thought for a moment.

  ‘That is more difficult,’ he said. ‘If he has kidnapped the Dean, he must be wherever he is hiding him. And that would not be anywhere easy to find.’

  A thought came to Ghote.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘was it this Shantaram Antrolikar who was attempting to break into your Union office? Could that be linked somehow to his plan to hide the Dean?’

  ‘No, no,’ Mohinder answered at once. ‘We have found out who that was.’

  Sarita unexpectedly burst into a fit of giggles, biting her under-lip in an attempt to check them.

  ‘Someone actually saw him,’ she spluttered. ‘It was so funny. He couldn’t force the window. Not however much he puffed and panted.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mohinder, grinning himself. ‘Just yesterday they were telling us.’

  ‘But who was it?’ Ghote asked with mounting fury, still feeling obscurely that the attempted break-in and the kidnapping must somehow be connected.

  ‘It was the great Professor, so-called, Kapur,’ Sarita answered, overcoming the last of her giggles. ‘We think he wanted to find some evidence to get Mohinder rusticated. Mohinder used to go to his lectures and was asking some very disrespectful questions.’

  Professor Kapur, Ghote thought. So he had been doing that at the time the question-paper was taken. No wonder he had refused to say where he had been. Then was he no longer a suspect?

  But no time to consider the implications of that now.

  ‘Listen,’ Sarita had said with a sudden sharp bounce of discovery, ‘Shantaram is accountancy student, yes?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Mohinder almost shouted in reply.

  He turned to Ghote.

  ‘There is an exam in accountancy today,’ he said. ‘This morning itself, postponed from earlier. Some of our friends are writing it. One hundred percent important.’

  ‘So Shantaram will be in there now,’ Sarita concluded in triumph.

  ‘Right,’ Ghote said. ‘Are you knowing where this is taking place?’

  ‘Yes, here itself,’ Sarita answered. ‘There was some administrative mess, and they are having to hold it here instead of at the exam centre allocated.’

  Ghote felt that luck was suddenly running his way. Twisty thorn-length after twisty thorn-length of the adage whipping away.

  ‘Quick then,’ he said. ‘Take me there. Take me there, and then we would see some result.’

  Led by the two youngsters, at breakneck speed, they hurried along the college’s tall corridors, the slogans and crude drawings on the walls flashing by. In less than a minute the two of them pointed to a closed door. On it hung a notice.

  Exam in Progress No Entry Pin-drop Silence Please Have Respect.

  TWENTY

  Ghote had intended, bursting into the hall where Shantaram Antrolikar ought to be, to go straight up to the invigilator, careless of what disturbance he might be creating, and demand which of the examinees on his list of seat numbers was the boy he wanted. Then he would hustle Antrolikar out as rapidly as he could and deal with him at whatever nearest place was convenient.

  His entrance, however, caused no disturbance whatever. A yet greater commotion was already in progress. Victor Furtado, who apparently was the invigilator, must in the course of patrolling the aisles between the rows of tables have come upon some irregularity. But, instead of dealing with it by a whispered word and a stern finger pointing to the door, he had got caught up in a ferocious slanging match.

  ‘No,’ the student he confronted was shouting at the moment Ghote had flung the door open. ‘No, no, no. I was not at all cheating. I would not. I am not one of those who has paid you Rupees 20 to look all the time at a guide book.’

  ‘How dare you,’ Victor Furtado shouted back. ‘That is one damn lie. Who has said I have taken money for that?’

  All over the hall the other examinees were looking across at the scene with excited interest. Only four or five of the girls made loudly pious shushing sounds and ostentatiously went back to filling up their answer-books.

  ‘Yes, I am daring,’ the boy Victor Furtado had challenged yelled back, his face darkening with rage. ‘Almost each and every one here has paid you. It is all well known. And those who have not paid are passing notes back and forth as if they were love letters only.’

  ‘Where? Where?’ Victor Furtado demanded. ‘Show me one boy or girl who has passed a single note.’

  Ghote, in fact, could have shown him one then and there, since his eye had fallen on two girls who had taken advantage of the disturbance to exchange information.

  ‘Why should I do your work for you?’ the enraged student shot back now. ‘And I, I have not paid you. I despise to do it. All I was asking was why this paper I am meant to be answering is containing three-four ridiculous misprints?’

  ‘It is not,’ Victor Furtado shouted back, though how he could have known was something that defeated Ghote.

  ‘It is not, it is not, it is not,’ Victor Furtado banged on, his nerves plainly altogether breaking down.

  But now a student in the next row suddenly came to the Goan lecturer’s rescue. He had leapt to his feet, sending his tubing-and-canvas chair sprawling.

  ‘Yes, you are right, Furtadoji,’ he shouted. ‘That fellow Chauhan is a black-faced cheat. Under his table there are chits containing material relating to subject of examination.’

  ‘That is one damn lie,’ the boy Chauhan shouted back.

  Even Victor Furtado looked surprised at the accusation. But he bent quickly to look and see whether there were information sheets pinned or pasted under the table.

  This was too much for the accused boy, whom Ghote had begun to believe was one of the few in the hall who would not need to pay to be allowed to cheat. Approaching the storm centre, he had noticed how the answer-book on the boy’s table was already almost full.

  Seeing the lecturer’s presented rump now, Chauhan, exasperated, aimed at it a kick with his knee. It cannot, constricted as it was, have hurt and it did not even send Victor Furtado flying. But it did have the effect of overturning Chauhan’s own table. Plus setting up opposing choruses of shouts in favour or again
st.

  How long the fracas would have gone on and whether it would have ended in full-out fighting was never to be known. From the dais at the end of the hall there came now a sudden thunderclap of sound that in an instant stilled all the shouts.

  Looking round, Ghote saw, standing there holding a spare, folded-up table that had just been battered down on to the invigilator’s desk with a single booming reverberation, none other than Professor Kapur, bullet-headed and ferocious.

  ‘That is enough,’ the astrologer thundered now. ‘Sit down each and every one of you. I will report this, and it will be up to the authorities whether the whole exam is cancelled.’

  In half a minute pens and ballpoints were scratching and scribbling once more over the blank pages of the answer-books. Chauhan, giving Victor Furtado one last glare, righted his table, recovered his answerbook and the question-paper with the ‘ridiculous misprints’ in it and set to again writing furiously.

  ‘Mr Furtado,’ Professor Kapur said in ominously quiet tones, ‘kindly resume your seat.’

  He said no more, but turned and strode from the hall.

  Ghote could not prevent a feeling of admiration seeping into his mind. Teacher of astrology Professor Kapur might be, but he was a man of stunning determination too.

  However, he had a more pressing matter on his hands.

  Quickly he followed Victor Furtado up to the dais. As soon as the Goan had seated himself, he asked him sharply for the number of Shantaram Antrolikar’s place.

  Victor Furtado, doubtless bemused from the events that had erupted all around him, did not question this sudden demand.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he whispered hurriedly.

  It took him, however, several minutes of shuffling back and forth among the lists of nearly a hundred examinees before he looked up at Ghote and whispered ‘Seat 73’.

  Ghote walked rapidly back through the lines of now assiduously writing students, counting seats as he went.

  It did not take him long to reach Seat 73.

  He bent down to the boy writing there, only surprised that he did not look particularly big or tough. He had expected, from what Mohinder had said, that Shantaram Antrolikar would be some sort of hulking bully. However, he seemed to be no more than average height and was also wearing a pair of studious-looking spectacles. He was, too, perhaps even more subdued than the examinees around him, some of whom were already once more abandoning their answer-books to take in this new interruption.