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 very embarrassing position. But it was he who had asked me to find the Ganesh. It just didn’t make sense!’ ‘Nonsense!’ said Lalmohan Babu, gurgling uncontrollably. ‘No sense at all! Ha ha ha!’ Feluda ignored him. ‘It was then that I began to suspect that the Ganesh had not left your house, and that Maganlal was still hopeful of getting it,’ he continued. ‘But if it was not in the chest, where was it? And who was Maganlal in touch with in this house? Surely he couldn’t expect to get the Ganesh unless someone here was going to help him? While I was trying to think things through, I discovered that Vikas Babu had kept back a piece of evidence. When I questioned him closely, he confessed that he had overheard the conversation between Maganlal and Umanath Babu. Concerned about the safety of the Ganesh, he had opened the chest the day Umanath Babu went out with his wife and son. The Ganesh was missing.’ ‘Missing? You mean it had already been stolen?’ asked Mr Ghoshal, frowning. ‘No, not stolen.’ Feluda stood up. ‘It wasn’t stolen. A highly intelligent person had hidden it, simply to keep it out of Maganlal’s grasp.’ ‘Captain Spark!’ said Ruku. All eyes turned on him. He was standing in a corner, clutching at a curtain. ‘Yes, you’re right. It was Captain Spark, alias Rukmini Kumar. Tell me, Captain Spark, that day when your father was talking to that fat man—’ ‘Daku Ganderia! Captain Spark fools him each time!’ ‘All right. But did you hear their conversation from the next room?’ ‘Yes, sure I did. And that’s why I took the Ganesh out immediately and hid it. Or Daku Ganderia would’ve found it, wouldn’t he?’ ‘Yes, you did right,’ Feluda turned to the others. ‘I asked Ruku before if he knew where the Ganesh was. He told me it was with the king of Africa. I didn’t realize then what he meant. It dawned upon me when we went to see the Tarzan film.’ ‘What! Tarzan? Why Tarzan?’ asked a lot of voices, all at once. Feluda did not reply. He turned to Ruku again. ‘Captain Spark, can you tell me how that film begins?’ ‘Yes, of course. It says, “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presents”, and then the lions roars.’ ‘Thank you. Mr Tiwari!’ Inspector Tiwari bent down and brought out an object wrapped with a newspaper. He then removed the newspaper, and several amazed eyes fell on the disfigured and damaged head of a lion. Even a few hours ago, the figure of Durga had been standing on it. ‘This,’ Feluda said, holding the lion’s head, ‘is the king of Africa, and the animal Durga rides. The Ganesh had been hidden inside the parted mouth of this lion. It was Captain Spark’s belief that, after the immersion, it would float all the way to the sea and would be swallowed by a shark. Captain Spark himself would then kill the shark with a harpoon and rescue the little