Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg by H. R. F. Keating & H. R. F. Keating

Author:H. R. F. Keating & H. R. F. Keating [Keating, H. R. F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141962887
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2011-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

11

Ghote stood stock still looking at the boy, so surprised that he could not think what to do or say.

He had somehow imagined that the offspring of the Savarkar union was still very young, and to find that he was this adolescent, and one with whom he had had such an intimate conversation, was altogether disrupting.

And what thoughts must be tumbling through young Vasant’s head? Here was the mysterious, anonymous stranger in whom he had confided his innermost secrets revealed not merely as a real person actually present in his own home, but as the very inspector of police sent to harass his own father, a sworn enemy.

In his own young days, he knew, he would have wanted the ground to open and swallow him up. And, in default of this ideal solution, he would have at least turned and fled and have hidden away for as long as he possibly could.

He must say something. It was up to him to make the situation tolerable.

‘Good morning,’ he grated out, his voice sounding to his ears impossibly strained. ‘I am most pleased to make your acquaintance.’

That should do it, he thought. At least it makes it clear that the incident of the night before is blotted out.

Vasant, staring at him as if he had lost the power of movement, made no reply. And he was struggling to concoct another remark of his own when he was saved from further effort by a sudden sharp shout somewhere outside.

‘Where is he? Where is that man?’

He recognized the voice at once. It was the Municipal Chairman. He knew too without having to be told who ‘that man’ was. It was himself.

‘Inspector Ghote,’ he shouted. ‘They are telling me you are here. And straightaway I am coming.’

Ghote felt trapped. He had no strict right to be here at all.

All he could find to say were the same words with which he had greeted the Chairman’s son.

‘Good morning.’

‘For you,’ the Chairman replied, with a crocodile flash of his white teeth above the boat-shaped birthmark, ‘it is not a good morning. You have come to my house without authority. You are trying to question my servants when you have no right. You are in trouble, Inspector.’

‘If necessary I will obtain search warrant,’ Ghote replied, all the more hotly for knowing how weak his case was.

‘Apply, Inspector, apply,’ the Chairman answered. ‘But in this town you will not find it so easy to get. And now, since you have not warrant, you will leave.’

And all Ghote could do, knowing he had been utterly defeated, was to go. He went down the steps outside the front door of the big house and along the beautifully-kept driveway. He took his bicycle from the chaprassi, who was contriving to hold it upright while touching it with only one finger. Then he wheeled the desperately heavy machine out of the tall carved gates of the compound, all the while conscious of the eyes of the Chairman, his wife, his son and his servants upon him.

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