C.I.D.

Criminal Investigation Department agent Chullunder Ghose sniffs out an elaborate plot to depose the local ruler – a plot that leads him to infiltrate a secret Hindu cult that illegally worships Kali – with human sacrifice.

Chullunder Ghose, a native confidence man and catalyst for bringing together the various lit fuses that run at large in this story. Upon his first appearance, the reader may dismiss him as mere humorous foil, as he is introduced by his rollicking verbal slapstick that leaves verbal vocabularist par excellance Leo Gorcey rolling in the dust. Or, as Leo might say it, “roiling in the dusk.” That Ghose ends up playing the court jester — the wise man in the guise of the idiot — is Mundy's own literary trick.