Nor was Sub-Inspector Jadhav more likely to impress the British professor, Ghote thought. He was a stocky, cocky fellow, who at once attempted to take charge of the whole operation.
“I am bringing four-five constables, Inspector,” he said. “You were not requisitioning, but for a job like this you would be needing some fellows who know how to get a suspect ready to talk.”
“No, I was not requisitioning,” Ghote snapped out, “and let me remind you I am in charge of this operation, S.I.”
He turned to the little group of tough-looking uniformed men at the sub-inspector’s heels. “Report back to your station ek dum,” he barked. “At the double, at the double.”
Turning, he bundled the two panches and the sub-inspector into the back of the jeep he had waiting, opened its front door for the British professor, scrambled in himself, and told the driver to go as fast as he could under the professor’s directions to the Hrishikesh Agnihotri Museum.
The place proved to be a large dilapidated-looking house, heavy with ornate wooden carving in the style of Gujarati mansions of some hundred years earlier.
They mounted the impressive steps and Ghote knocked thunderously on the solid wide door.
No answer came.
“What did I tell you, Inspector?” the professor snorted. “Flown the coop, both of them.”
Ghote, fighting off a sinking feeling that the culprits had indeed made off, hammered on the door once more.
“Better I should go round the back, Inspector,” S.I. Jadhav said. “You often catch fellows who are absconding that way. Pity we were not bringing some more men.”
Keeping half an eye on Jadhav to make sure he did not start to act on his own initiative, Ghote raised his hand to knock yet again. But as he did so, he heard beyond the thick door the slap-slap-slap of someone approaching with feet in loose-fitting chappals.
A moment later the door was opened a cautious inch or two.
The man who peered out at them was plainly the Museum’s Founder and Chairman of Trustees. Learning and respectability were written on him from head to foot, from his wizened agedness, from the gold-rimmed spectacles halfway along his thin and inquisitive nose, right down to his mismatched chappals, one pale-brown leather, the other black.
“Public admitted at a fee of rupees three per person,” he said.
“I am not at all public,” Ghote returned sharply. “It is police. I am wishing to examine your premises for the purpose of ascertaining whether there is to be found upon same one idol of Goddess Parvati, together with various other — er — er — artefacts.”
Whether it was the production of this last impressive word or the explicit mention of a statue of Parvati, Ghote’s statement appeared to stun the museum’s Founder and Chairman. His mouth opened. And shut. He fell back a pace.
Swiftly Ghote pushed the heavy front door wide and stepped into a narrow entrance hall lined with a series of tall glass-fronted cupboards. He turned to Professor Prunella, close at his heels.
“Kindly lead at once to wheresoever the idol of Parvati is to be found,” he said.
Unhesitatingly, the professor marched off. Following, Ghote took in that the tall cupboards to either side were crammed and jammed with an extraordinary variety of objects. One contained vases of all shapes and sizes — china, brass, enameled. Another was a jumble of clocks, elegant old European ones, cranky alarms, even a plastic kitchen-timer. A third was apparently filled with measuring devices, ancient sticks marked with notches, lengths of cord regularly knotted, rulers in bundles, even some round metal spring-loaded tapes.
On they went through an archway and into a series of tiny, floor-to-ceiling-filled rooms, each devoted, it seemed, to one or other of the many — ologies and — ancies the museum served the nation by preserving. The Founder and Chairman came clacking after them on his mismatched chappals, uttering from time to time little squeaks of protest or dismay.
S.I. Jadhav, swaggering along with his two disreputable panches, showed, whenever Ghote chanced to look back for a moment, a hair-raising tendency to swipe at any object that looked as if it might be easy to topple — a display of china European farm animals, a pile of inkwells of all sorts heaped one on the other, even a chair made entirely out of glass in a room devoted wholly to such furniture. The aged first panch broke out every now and again into a wild cackle of laughter and his younger companion, the pinjari, apparently felt that the higgledy-piggledy dignity of his surroundings obliged him to pause at the entrance to each successive little room and emit from his fluffing instrument one loud resounding twang.
Ghote thanked his stars that the British professor was too intent on her onward rush to the possibly stolen Parvati to pay attention to the rest of his party.
At last they came to a narrow downward-leading flight of stairs, each step used to display some other object from the museum’s collection — four or five different hookahs, a framed picture of an English cottage turned sideways, a small board hung with various patterns of padlock.
At the stairs’ foot they plunged once more into another series of little rooms. Professor Mrs. or Miss Prunella seemed to know her way, unerring as a bloodhound on the scent.
In the gloom here, the Founder and Chairman regained his voice and began to shoot out explanations of the riches under his control. “Opal water,” he said, gesturing abruptly to a tall glass jar half full of some cloudy liquid. “Where there is poison, there is also nectar, that is a mathematical truth.” Then in the next little chamber, “Alchemy Department. We are doing many experiments to turn copper into gold. Gold into copper also.” And in a room containing coins and banknotes of every conceivable kind — Ghote had to stop and prevent the pinjari secreting a heap of little silver pieces — “Kindly notice the Arab currency notes, all misprinted, very, very rare.” And in yet another room, its walls lined with narrow shelves on which rested, dustily, stones of every color and shape, “One thousand different, full of scientific importance, magical point-of-view, astrological point-of-view.”
This last utterance was too much even for relentlessly forward-marching Professor Prunella. She turned briefly and barked out over her shoulder, “Charlatan. Poppycock.”
Ghote, alternating during the whole of their clattering progress between being impressed by the sheer quantity of learned objects and feeling darts of doubt over the Founder’s claims about them, felt grateful that the professor made no further assertions of her uncompromising beliefs until they came, at last, to a faded loop of red rope barring their way.
Professor Prunella unhesitatingly thrust it aside, as doubtless she had done on her earlier visit. She strode forward a pace or two into the denser gloom of an ill-lit short corridor, reached up, and clicked on a light switch.
“There,” she said.
Behind, the pinjari gave not one but a whole succession of reverberant twangs on his instrument.