While the riches of Khanpur are many, the demands on its guests should be few. For however long you may grace us with your presence, please feel completely at home here, free to participate in our many activities, or free to remain in your quarters in quiet meditation, or with a book from our library. Bells will be rung at the following times, but if you wish not to join us at table, please, merely turn your name-plate outside your door to face inwards, and we shall know not to make a setting for you.

And again, if there is anything we might do to serve you, you need only ask.

There followed a list of times, most of them for meals—tea, I saw, was being served now on the upper terrace, wherever that might be; the next bell that came would indicate drinks, followed an hour later by dinner, which was followed by the notation “Dress: Casual.” I turned the page and found a description of the palace, with the interesting sights in the vicinity and suggestions of places to go in the town, all written in an ornate English that had me smiling.

There was even a map.

It was an odd document, I thought, one more suited to an hotel than to a private estate, and it said a great deal about the mind of the man behind it. Clearly, the maharaja was accustomed to entertaining large numbers of guests with highly disparate interests, and found it more convenient to present each with this cool, almost commercial document rather than convey the information in some more personal manner.

Well, it suited me nicely. I left my name-tag facing outwards, and took myself to the marble-and-gold bath to explore the intricacies of the Victorian hot water system.

The bell that rang the summons for the programme’s drinks-before-dinner event was no gong, but a small, silvery voice that approached, paused outside of my door, and continued on to the next guest. I finished arranging my hair, thrust my revolver into hiding beneath the feather bed, and checked the palace plan in the album. Map-reading proved unnecessary, for a uniformed chuprassi was squatting patiently in the hallway outside; he stood instantly to guide me to the room where the guests were gathering.