It was now nearly 10 p.m. We were sitting in Mr Ghoshal’s living room. Besides ourselves and Inspector Tiwari, in the room were Ambika Ghoshal, Umanath Ghoshal and his wife, Ruku, Vikas Sinha, and visiting guests. Occasionally peering through the curtain were Trilochan and Bharadwaj. We had just finished demolishing a great mountain of sweets. Usually, people feel depressed after the immersion. Today, however, in the Ghoshal household, all sadness had been wiped out by the prospect of the return of the Ganesh. Perhaps I should mention here that we didn’t yet know where the Ganesh was. What had been revealed was the story of Machchli Baba. An hour before his devotees arrived, at 4 p.m., the police got in through the back door of Abhay Chakravarty’s house and arrested him. His real name, it turned out, was Purinder Raut, and he was indeed the same man who had escaped from prison. Purinder Raut had started his career with little magic shows near the Monument in Calcutta. Over a period of time, he moved to serious fraud and deception. At some point, he came in contact with Maganlal Meghraj. To have him promoted as Machchli Baba was, apparently, Maganlal’s idea. The police managed to get the whole story from Purinder, including every detail of the drama Maganlal had planned at the ghat this evening. Feluda had just finished explaining all this. Every eye was fixed on him. Only Lalmohan Babu kept breaking into fits of laughter without any apparent reason. Perhaps someone had given him a glass of bhang to celebrate Bijaya Dashami. I had heard that bhang often made people laugh. Feluda had paused to have a drink of water. Now he replaced the glass carefully on a Kashmiri table and continued, ‘Maganlal, for reasons of his own, wanted to spread the story about Machchli Baba’s so-called supernatural powers. It wasn’t difficult for a man like him to get a few details about the lives of Abhay Chakravarty and Lokenath. The rest was easy, partly because of Abhay Babu’s gullibility, and the faith of the people of Kashi.’ Feluda stopped. Lalmohan Babu threw his head back and opened his mouth to laugh once more. I had to prod him sharply with my elbow to make him stop. ‘I spoke to Maganlal recently. He told me he had the Ganesh, and that Umanath Babu had sold it to him,’ said Feluda. ‘What!’ Umanath Ghoshal jumped to his feet, outraged. ‘Did you believe him?’ ‘At first it simply struck me as a new angle to the case. I did not reject the idea straightaway, I have to admit. But when Maganlal offered me money to stop the investigation, I began to have doubts. He did give me a reason, of course, but I couldn’t quite believe it. If what he said was true, it would have made better sense for Mr Ghoshal to stop all enquiries. After all, if the truth came to be known, he

would have been in a