After returning from Jharkhand and leaving Mary and her father with Rumpi, Puri drove to his office.
Sitting behind his desk and feeling especially pleased with himself, he sent Door Stop, the office boy, to fetch him a couple of mutton kathi rolls with extra chutney. These he devoured in a matter of minutes, ever vigilant about getting incriminating grease spots on his safari suit, and then got back to work.
His first call was to Tubelight, whom he informed about his success in Jharkhand-"A master stroke" was how he described his triumph. He also shared his plan, which did not involve breaking the good news to the Kasliwals just yet.
"I've something else in mind," he said. "What's Bobby been up to?"
"Doing timepass," said Tubelight. "He's hardly come out of his room. Facecream says he's depressed. Had a big argument with his mother."
"What about?"
"She couldn't tell, but there was a good deal of shouting. That apart, he's gone to the Central Jail to visit his Papa every day."
Next, Puri talked to Brigadier Kapoor to assure him that that the investigation was "very much ongoing." He promptly received a harangue on how he wasn't doing enough and should try harder.
Finally, Puri turned his attention to the small matter of the attempt on his life and put in a few more calls to some of the informers and contacts to find out if they'd heard anything useful.
One, a senior officer at the CBI whom the detective had helped on a couple of cases in the past, ruled out Puri's top suspect, Swami Nag. There had been a confirmed sighting of the fraudster at a Dubai racetrack on the very day of the shooting, so he had not been in Delhi as previously thought.
"Unless of course His Holiness can bilocate and be in two places at once," joked the officer.
No one else had any leads.
Exhausted from the overnight train journey from Ranchi, Puri tilted back in his comfortable executive chair, put his feet up on the desk and closed his eyes.
In seconds, he was fast asleep and dreaming.
He found himself standing before the legendary walls of Patliputra, the ancient capital of the Maurya Empire, with its 64 gates and 570 towers. Nearby, under an ancient peepul tree sat a sagely figure with a shaven head, ponytail and an earring in one ear. Across his forehead were drawn three parallel white lines denoting his detachment from the material world.
Puri recognized him as his guru, Chanakya, and went and knelt before him.
"Guru-ji," he said, touching his feet. "Such an honor it is. Please give me your blessings."
"Who are you?" asked Chanakya, busy writing his great treatise.
"I'm Vish Puri, founder and director of Most Private Investigators Ltd. and the best detective in India," he answered, a little hurt that the sage had never heard of him.
"How do you know you are the best?" asked Chanakya.
"Guru-ji, I am the winner of the Super Sleuth World Federation of Detectives award for 1999. Also, I was on the cover of India Today magazine. It's a distinction no other Indian detective has achieved to date."
"I see," said Chanakya with an enigmatic smile. "So why have you come to me for help? What can I, a simple man, do for you?"
"Guru-ji, someone tried to kill me and I need help in finding whoever it was," explained Puri.
Chanakya closed his eyes and gave the detective's request some thought. It seemed like an age before he opened them again and said, "Do not fear, Vish Puri. You will receive the help you need. But you must accept you don't have power over all things. All of us require a helping hand from time to time."
"Thank you, Guru-ji! Thank you! I'm most grateful to you. But please, tell me, how will I be helped?"
Before Chanakya could answer, Elizabeth Rani's voice broke in. She was calling him over the intercom. Puri woke with a start.
"Sir, I've the test back from the laboratory. Should I bring it?"
The detective looked at his watch; he'd been asleep for more than half an hour.
"Yes, by all means," he said drowsily, buzzing in his secretary.
The test Elizabeth Rani was referring to was the analysis of the mystery liquid Mrs. Duggal had retrieved from Mahinder Gupta's bathroom.
After looking over the results, and drinking a cup of chai, Puri called Flush on his mobile phone to tell him the news.
"It's testosterone," he said.
"Is that all, Boss?"
"You sound disappointed."
"It's very common for guys to take that stuff these days, Boss," Flush explained. "Everyone who goes to gyms is taking it. They all want Salman Khan muscles, so they're pumping themselves full of dope. It's readily available on the black market. Most chemists will sell it to you."
"I don't doubt Gupta wants big muscles," said Puri. "But from everything we've learned about this man and his habits, I have a feeling his motives are different."
"HIV, Boss? Maybe that's why so much of his hair is falling out."
"No, something else. Find out his doctor's name. Has he seen him lately?"
Puri had given Rumpi and the servants strict instructions to make Mary feel welcome and asked them to put away the Hindu idols for a few days (he had to keep up the pretense that he was Jonathan Abraham, after all). He'd also sent Sweetu to his cousin's house for a few days because he couldn't be trusted not to blurt out the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Mary's father only stayed at the house for a couple of hours and then headed back to the train station. His wife and younger daughter needed him at home, he explained to Rumpi.
A tearful Mary saw him off and then joined Monica and Malika in the kitchen, where she helped them prepare lunch.
When asked where she had worked before, she told them that this was her first job.
After lunch, Monica and Malika showed Mary the laundry room and taught her how to use the top-loading washing machine, which had to be filled with buckets of water because there was rarely any in the taps after eight o'clock in the morning.
Rumpi then took her shopping at a nearby market for new clothes. Mary picked out a few bright new kurtas, salwars and chunnis, some underwear and two pairs of chappals. Puri's wife also bought the new maidservant a hairbrush and various bathroom necessities.
The next stop was a small private health clinic run by Dr. (Mrs.) Chitrangada Suri, MD, who gave Mary an examination. The doctor found that she was suffering from dehydration, malnourishment, worms and lice, and immediately wrote out prescriptions for a couple of different medicines, vitamins, minerals and oral rehydration salts.
Talking in English so Mary would not understand, Dr. Suri also told Rumpi that the girl had tried cutting her wrists within the past few months and although the blood loss had probably been significant, she was young and seemed to have bounced back.
That evening, after Malika returned home to her family, Mary and Monica made the evening meal, did the washing up, took down the laundry from the roof, ate their dinner and then went for a walk in the neighborhood.
They passed many other servants working for other households out enjoying the cool evening. Monica stopped to chat and gossip and bought them both ice creams from a vendor with money that Rumpi had given them specifically for the purpose.
At 8:30, they sat down with Madam in the sitting room to watch Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki , one of India's most popular soaps. Set in the home of a respectable industrialist family, the serial nonetheless featured shocking twists and turns with extramarital affairs, murders, conspiracies and kidnappings.
In the latest development, the main daughter-in-law had had a face-change operation and turned up as the wife of another man. But Monica said this was because the actress playing her had been fired after demanding a salary increase.
At nine o'clock, Rumpi said that Sahib was expected home and that it was time to sleep. A second mattress had been arranged on the floor in Monica's small room and lying on it was a new Bagha-Chall set. Mary's eyes lit up at the sight of the pitted wooden board and the bagful of pretty, polished stones, and she eagerly accepted Monica's challenge to a game.
Mary proved a demon player, easily beating her opponent.
"I'm village champion!" she said. "I could beat all the men if they would play me!"
The two of them then settled down for the night and Mary was soon fast asleep. But Monica lay awake for a while, wondering why her new roommate was so sad and why she wore her bangles to bed.
Around midnight, she awoke in a fright. Mary was sitting up, screaming.
Monica jumped up and turned on the light and then put her arms around her new roommate, telling her that it had only been a bad dream. Now awake, Mary fell back on her pillow and started crying.
"I lost him!" she sobbed. "I lost him!"
"Lost who?" asked Monica.
But she didn't answer and cried herself back to sleep.