JUST PROVE YOUR POWERS IN A LOCATION
SPECIFIED BY RATIONALIST AND ‘GURU BUSTER’
DR. SURESH JHA.
APPLY WITHIN.
IT MAY BE NOTED: THE TWO-CRORE-RUPEES AWARD
IS NOT KEPT IN OUR OFFICE.
As he had anticipated, Puri found the front door padlocked. It was still only nine o’clock and Dr. Jha’s secretary would not be along for at least an hour, if indeed she was coming to work at all, which he doubted. According to Mrs. Jha, with whom Puri had spoken briefly after her husband’s cremation yesterday, the future of DIRE was uncertain. The old Guru Buster had run it more or less single-handedly and had not appointed a successor.
The detective made his way down the side of the building to the kitchen door and found it already open. The lock looked as if it had been forced, probably with a strong, metal implement like a knife.
He could hear activity inside the bungalow – drawers being opened and closed; the rustle of papers; a cough.
Puri stepped inside but had to proceed slowly on account of the squeaky rubber soles of the orthopedic shoes he wore to account for his short left leg.
He crossed the stone kitchen floor on tiptoe without making a sound and entered the reception-cum- administrative office. It was a large room, dark and musty and simply furnished with a couple of desks and chairs, and an old Gestet-ner stencil printer with fresh blue ink on the roller.
The door to Dr. Jha’s office was on the right-hand side of the room. It was closed, but someone was moving around inside.
The detective continued on tiptoe. But as he reached the door, he felt a painful cramp shoot through his left leg. This forced him to stop, and in shifting his weight onto his right foot and almost losing his balance, his shoe squeaked like a child’s bathtime rubber duck.
Puri froze, his heart beating wildly. He waited for the cramp to ease off, not moving a muscle. It was almost a minute before the pain passed. Then slowly he pushed the door to Dr. Jha’s office open.
It was empty. To the right of the room stood another door that was ajar. Puri approached it cautiously. He pushed it gently open.
Just then he was hit on the back of the head with a hard object. He heard someone say, “Oh, bugger!” before he fell to the floor, unconscious.
When Puri came around, it was to a throbbing head and the sound of a woman’s voice asking him if he could hear her.
Gradually, his vision came into focus. The first thing he saw was a wavering, large red dot. When his sight cleared, he recognized the face of Dr. Jha’s secretary, Ms. Ruchi, who had been at the cremation yesterday. She was wearing a big red bindi.
“Mr. Vish Puri, sir, are you OK?” she asked, staring down at him.
The detective tried to respond, but his words came out slurred.
“Better take rest, sir,” she said. “You’ve had a nasty bash. Fortunately there’s no blood.”
The detective felt the back of his head; a large lump had already formed.
“Whoever it was got you with this, sir,” said Ms. Ruchi, holding up a cricket bat. “Knocked you for six, looks like.”
Another five minutes passed before Puri was able to sit up. The floor around him was scattered with papers, the contents of Dr. Jha’s desk drawers and the drawers themselves. Someone had evidently turned the place over.
“Last thing I remember…” said Puri, who was suffering from mild amnesia, “I was… crossing the reception… I heard… something inside. But after… it’s all… there’s nothing. It’s a blank, only.”
“You saw who hit you, sir?” asked Ms. Ruchi, regarding him with a caring, sympathetic expression.
He hesitated before answering. “I don’t believe so… but…” he answered.
Puri had a nagging feeling, as if there was something he had forgotten to do, but he couldn’t remember what it was. “Could be it will come back to me,” he added. “How long I’ve been here?”
“I’m not sure, sir. I came five minutes back. The time is half past nine.”
Ms. Ruchi helped the detective up into a chair and then went to fetch him a glass of water. Puri sat surveying the office. Pinned to a board on the wall hung a collection of photographs of Dr. Jha and a group of young volunteers working in rural India during a recent DIRE ‘awareness’ campaign. They could be seen taking turns walking across red-hot coals, a feat performed by many traveling sanyasis to demonstrate their ‘supernatural powers’. Watching was a group of villagers. The idea was to impress upon these illiterate peasants that India’s holy men were con artists.
Could some of the volunteers or perhaps a rival rationalist have carried out the murder? the detective wondered hazily. Such types studied the tricks and illusions of Godmen, after all. Perhaps one of them had wanted Dr. Jha out of the way?
“Sir, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what are you doing here?” asked Ms. Ruchi, breaking into his thought processes when she returned with a glass of water.
“Just I was passing by and found the door open. The lock had been forced. So naturally it was my duty to do investigation.”
“I suppose it must have been one of Maharaj Swami’s people,” said Ms. Ruchi.
“You saw him, is it?” asked Puri as he sipped the water and his head began to clear.
“I’m afraid I caught only a glimpse of his back as he climbed over the wall behind the building. He had a car waiting. I heard it drive away.”
“What all he was after?” asked Puri.
“Doctor-sahib’s file on the Godman, most probably.”
“He found it – the file, that is?”
“Fortunately not. Doctor-sahib keeps it hidden away. I mean…” Ms. Ruchi dropped her gaze to the floor; she looked suddenly overcome with sadness. “I mean… he
“I’m most sincerely sorry for your loss,” said Puri, who had not had the opportunity to offer her his condolences at the cremation yesterday. “Dr. Jha will be sorely missed. An upstanding fellow he was in every respect.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said as the tears began to trickle down her face. She dabbed them with her handkerchief, quickly regaining her composure. “Is it true you’re investigating his murder?” She added quickly: “Mrs. Jha told me.”
“Most certainly,” he answered. “And let me assure you, my dear Ms. Ruchi, I will be most definitely getting to the bottom of it by hook or crook. Vish Puri always gets his man – or in this case I should say ‘his deity’, isn’t it?”
“I’m pleased to hear it, sir,” she said. “I’d be happy to help in any way I can. As much as anyone, I want Maharaj Swami to face justice.”
“You’re certain it was he who committed the act, is it?”
“Who else could it have been?” she exclaimed, wide-eyed, as if Puri had blasphemed. “Dr. Jha was Maharaj Swami’s enemy number one. He had been campaigning against him tirelessly. And recently he had been investigating a suspicious suicide of a young woman at the Godman’s ashram, the Abode of Eternal Love. Her name was Manika Gill. Dr. Jha believed she was murdered.
“And there’s another thing,” continued Ms. Ruchi. “Yesterday Dr. Jha received a death threat. I’ll fetch it for you.”
She disappeared into the reception and soon returned with the piece of paper pasted with letters cut from a Hindi newspaper. Puri read it out loud: “‘Whenever there is a withering of the law and an uprising of lawlessness on all sides, then I manifest myself. For the salvation of the righteous and the destruction of such as do evil, for the firm establishing of the Law, I come to birth, age after age.”
“That is from Bhagavad Gita – book four, I believe,” said the detective. “Some believe it means Lord Vishnu
