He brought his eyes up to look straight at the crorepati. Framed by his tall, leather-backed chair, Mr. Shahani sat unmoving, a well-fleshed bullfrog pensive over which ignorant fly next to snap up.
“Sir?” Ghote said firmly.
“Ah, yes. Yes. Well, I have spoken to my very good friend the Minister for Police Affairs and Cultural Activities, and he told me that if I am wanting a C.I.D. wallah with three-four weeks’ leave due, then it was Inspector Ghote I must ask for.”
Yes, Ghote acknowledged with an inward foreboding, it was true that he had accumulated at least four weeks’ time off-duty—overdue annual leave, casual leave and leave in lieu of extra days worked. Next week he was due to begin using up a good deal of it. To go with Protima and little Ved, before school began again, to Banares, most ancient and most holy of all the cities of India.
And now it looked as though that long-awaited trip was about to be cancelled. Influential Mr. Ranjee Shahani had asked for a C.I.D. man with plenty of free time at his disposal.
Into Ghote’s head there flashed contradictory emotions. To be chosen for whatever task it was that this most important person wanted performed: It was a mark of trust, of high trust. To have to perform whatever task it was: It could well prove beyond his powers, beyond anyone’s powers, and then …
And, another thing, and worse. Banares. It was not where he himself would have chosen to go to shrug off for a little the burden of combating crime in swarming, heat-oppressed Bombay. Banares was Protima’s choice of place, and she had made it one on which there rested the whole state of their life together. If he was going to reject her long-cherished yearning to step into the waters of Holy Ganges at their holiest point, then, she had declared, she would know finally that their marriage was no longer the union of two souls it had so clearly been in its first months when they had come to love each other. If she did not get to Banares this time, she had said—well, shouted actually—she would know they were linked only in a dust-dry contract, for him to provide a roof, food and clothes and for her to cook that food, mend and get washed those clothes, order what lay beneath that roof.
Inspector Ghote licked his dry lips.
“Sir—sir, what is it that I can do for you?” he asked.
The crorepati did not reply immediately. And when he did it was in a slow, thoughtful tone.
“Inspector, what I would say to you is altogether most confidential. Nothing of it is to be spoken to any other person whatsoever. I would not want to have to mention you after to my very, very good friend, the Minister for Police Affairs. Not one word beyond these walls. Ever.”
Ghote let his eyes flick swiftly away to the areas of glass shaded by their smart, slatted blinds and lush green plants. He felt a hot, harsh wind of anger rise up within him at the crudeness of the crorepati’s threat. He would have liked to let it sear out.
“Not a word, of course, Shahani, sahib,” he made himself murmur discreetly.
“Inspector, I am a poor man.”
Ghote fixed his eyes firmly on the unblemished white paper in the huge leather-tooled blotter at the desk’s centre rather than let them stray for even the shortest betraying instant to the gold-plated telephone or the solid gold paan-box.
He waited.
“Inspector,” Ranjee Shahani went on with a long sigh, “some of the world’s goods I have. I have earned and earned them with the labours of my head. But in one thing, Inspector, I am altogether lacking.”
Ghote knew that he was not expected to ask what this one thing was. When Ranjee Shahani was ready to disclose it he would do so.
Abruptly, the crorepati put his two pudgy little hands down flat on the unsullied blotting-paper in front of him.
“Inspector, I am a man without sons. Almost I am a man without children. I have one daughter only. One daughter only.”
We are two: we have two. The old family-planning slogan came into Ghote’s head. Well, if children were wealth, then Ranjee Shahani was half way there at least. As he himself was with his one son. But why was he being told this tear-jerking film-story tale?
“Two years ago, Inspector,” the crorepati went on, placing every word down as if it were a weighty coin, “I sent that one daughter of mine, Nirmala by name, to America. For her education, you understand.”
“Yes, sahib.”
Of course anybody of Ranjee Shahani’s wealth and influence would want to send their only child to the U.S.A., or at worst to the U.K., for final education.
“Inspector, until three-four weeks ago we were receiving aerogramme letters from Nirmala written each Sunday informing us of the great, great progress she was making at her college. Her college in California, Inspector.”
Ghote realised that he was expected to bring an expression of admiration on to his features at this. California was plainly a particularly special part of America. But where was it? Where? Yes. Yes, that was it. In the far west, as far west as you could go. California.
“And then, suddenly, Inspector, nothing. Nothing, nothing. One week missed, two. Three. We are telephoning, telephoning. She has left the college they are saying. Whereabouts unknown.”
Ghote felt a lurch of unstoppable dismay. The crorepati’s only daughter missing in America, in California. And he himself must have been summoned here then to be sent to that unknown, distant territory to find her.
“Mr. Shahani—” he began.
The crorepati ignored his half-uttered objection.
“What to do, Inspector?” he said. “What to do? But well I am knowing what to do. Jaldi, jaldi a private eye I am hiring. Two hundred and fifty dollars a day plus expenses. That is rupees two thousand per day, Inspector. Rupees two thousand.”
Ghote, suddenly freed of the prospect of having to conduct an investigation in distant, strange, complicated, unknown California felt a sense of awe invade him. Two thousand rupees a day. In a single day to earn nearly twice as much as he himself brought down in a month. What a marvel of a man, of a detective, such a person must be. And, of course, such a man must have succeeded in locating Ranjee Shahani’s missing daughter, though if so why—
“In two days my private eye had found.”
Ghote let a broad smile come on to his face.
But no matching smile showed on Ranjee Shahani’s round, well-fleshed features. Instead, plain to see, a look of smouldering rage was gathering there.
A pudgy fist rose up and beat the unsmirched white blotting-paper.
“She will not come back, Inspector. That man says she is happy-happy where she is. He is a damn fool only.”
A damn fool. On two thousand rupees a day, plus expenses. It could hardly be. But what wealth must Ranjee Shahani have to be able to say that, to be able to think it.
“Do you know where that stupid girl has put herself, Inspector?”
And this time, it was clear, the crorepati did want an answer. But where—where in America? In California could the girl have gone?
“She has taken job, sir?” he tried. “Some job paying rupees 60,000 p.m.?”
“Inspector, if Nirmala was wanting that much money per month, do you not think I could give and give?”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Easily you could give.”
Ranjee Shahani blew fiercely out between puffed cheeks.
“No,” he said, “Nirmala has entered an ashram.”