Under a Monsoon Cloud [antikvár]

1 Inspector Ghote had been awaiting the memo from the Commissioner for a week or more. He knew, too, what it would say almost to the exact words. Yet when the stiff white envelope was put in front of him he felt such a thud of plummeting dismay that it might have been entirely unexpected. Bombay's tingling pre-monsoon heat, hardly relieved by the fan squeaking away in the corner of his office, struck at him suddenly, as if until this moment it had not existed. Automatically he reached down to the bottom drawer of his desk for the towel he kept there and mopped at the heavy bulbs of perspiration that had sprung up all over his face and neck. It needed a strong effort of will to pick up the envelope, sweatily stained from the fingers of the peon who had brought it, and tear it open. The words he read were as heavily ominous as he had anticipated. And all arising, he thought, from one foul prank fate has played on me.