Go West, Inspector Ghote by H. R. F. Keating

Author:H. R. F. Keating [H. R. F. Keating]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2020-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

TEN

Ghote was, however, not surprised to find Johnananda ready to keep their afternoon appointment in his office in the ashram’s administration block, a room with its walls covered by radiant-coloured designs interspersed with pictures of the Hindu gods, while the floor was occupied by Johnananda’s large functional-looking orange plastic desk, a number of luxurious orange tweed-covered armchairs, a couple of smooth steel tables over which were scattered piles of clean, brilliantly white stationery and no fewer than three sleek electric typewriters and half a dozen calculators.

Ghote thought, with a pang of envy, how useful some of the items would be at his Crawford Market headquarters.

But this was no time for idle covetousness. Before the interview began there was a small, but important, matter to be arranged.

“Sit down, gentlemen, please,” Johnananda said, gesturing vaguely towards the tweed-covered armchairs set at a distance from his orange desk.

This was the moment. Ignoring Johnananda’s gesture, Ghote snatched from against the wall near him a small plastic-seated office chair, tipped the little pile of pamphlets on it to the floor, swung it across and planked it down squarely opposite Johnananda and close up to his desk. To his delight, the quick manoeuvre paid off. Fred Hoskins subsided into one of the more distant armchairs.

Now, with any luck, the fellow would keep his promise not to intervene, extracted with some difficulty on their way back from the motel after a couple of hours’ sleep on the gurgling waterbed.

For a long moment now Ghote looked at the man opposite him before attempting to ask the first of the seemingly innocent questions he hoped would lead him to finding out more about the first of the people who had known that the swami would be in his house at the time he had died.

Yes, the fellow looked pretty well like a proper Indian holy man. His head was shaven, all but a tuft at the back. His eyes were deep-sunk in his almost fleshless face, indicating that the pleasures of the body had long since been abandoned. On his forehead was the spot of sandalwood paste most swamis put there, the spiritual eye as they called it. He was wearing his orange garments with obvious ease and familiarity. And he was sitting with that very upright back which was said to allow Kundalini, the serpent coiled at the spine’s base in the subtle, spiritual body to travel unimpeded to the brain. But, damn it, he was not a holy man, not a yogi. He could not be.

But all the same it might be clever to give him the respectful form of address a holy man was entitled to.

“Johnanandaji.”

Johnananda inclined his shaven head.

“Johnanandaji, I have been sent here, as you know, by the father of one of Swamiji’s disciples, Nirmala Shahani. Mr. Shahani is very, very anxious about her welfare. Am I right, please, to understand that, now that Swamiji is no longer among us, you would be in charge of the ashram?”

Johnananda flapped a long-fingered hand over the scattered papers on his big orange desk.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.