Feluda went looking for a post office soon after checking in. I offered to go with him, but he said someone should stay behind to guard the new attaché case; so Lalmohan Babu and I remained at the hotel. Feluda hadn’t made a single remark on the snow or the beautiful town. Lalmohan Babu, on the other hand, appeared to be totally overwhelmed. Everything he saw struck him as ‘fanastatic’. When I pointed out that the word was ‘fantastic’, he said airily that the speed with which he read English was so remarkable that not often did he find the time to look at the words carefully. Besides, there were a number of other questions he wanted answered—was it possible to find polar bears in Simla, did the Aurora Borealis appear here, did the Eskimos use the same snow to build their ilgoos (at which point I had to correct him again and say that it was igloos the Eskimos built, not ilgoos). The man was unstoppable.

The Clarkes Hotel stood on a slope. A veranda ran by the side of its second floor, which led to the street. The manager’s room, the lounge, as well as our own rooms, were all on the second floor. Wooden stairs ran down to the first floor where there were more rooms and the dining-hall.

Feluda got delayed on his way back, so it was past 2 p.m. by the time we finished our lunch. A band was playing in one corner of the dining-hall. Lalmohan Babu called it a concert. The old man with the earplugs was also having lunch in the same room, as were three foreigners—two men and a woman. I had seen a man with dark glasses and a pointed beard leave the room when we came in. It did not appear as though there was anyone else in the hotel apart from these people and ourselves.

‘We are going to see Mr Dhameeja today, aren’t we?’ I asked, slowly sipping the hot soup.

‘Yes, at four o’clock. We needn’t leave before three,’ Feluda replied.

‘Where exactly does he live?’

‘The Wildflower Hall is on the way to Kufri. Eight miles from here.’

‘Why should it take an hour to get there?’

‘Most of the way is snowed under. The car might skid if we try to do anything other than crawl’ Then Feluda said to Lalmohan Babu, ‘Wear all your warm clothes. This place we’re going to is a thousand feet higher than Simla. The snow there is a lot worse.’

Lalmohan Babu put a spoonful of soup into his mouth, slurping noisily, and asked, ‘Is a sherpa going to accompany us?’

I nearly burst out laughing, but Feluda kept a straight face. ‘No,’ he said seriously, ‘there is actually a road that leads up there. We’ll be going in a car.’