“By all means, especially considering the way a certain scoundrel of a red-hat Buddhist monk had just made off with my purse and train ticket, leaving me to trudge through the snow and survive on cups of tea bought with the few coins that remained in my pocket.”

“And did any of them recall another such monk, oh, say about three years before?”

“Surprisingly few. And both of those who did—the sweeper of one inn and the cook in another—remembered him as going uphill, towards Simla, not away.”

“So he took the train out,” I said, disappointed.

“Or went overland to the north. In the summer months, the passes there would be reasonable, for a man who loves the hills at any rate. One thing did come to light: A band of dacoits—robbers—was working in the area north of Simla during that time.”

“Do you think—?”

“I think it highly unlikely that Kimball O’Hara was the victim of casual dacoitry.”

Still, it gave me thought, as I walked along. A while later, another question came to mind.

“What did Bindra make of your tale of woe?” I asked.

“The boy seemed unsurprised. In fact, he tended to embellish my stories rather more than was necessary.”

And that, too, was thought-provoking. The child was shrewder than he appeared and without doubt unscrupulous, but I could not bring myself to picture him as a spy planted in our midst, by Nesbit or anyone else. For one thing, the child was too young for that sort of sustained purpose of mind: Holmes had habitually used youthful Irregulars in his Baker Street days, but only for specific and limited missions.

But if the child was not there under orders, why did he stay? And more to the point, why did he not question the oddities of Holmes’ behaviour?

The mysteries kept me occupied all that day, but they remained mysteries.

We set up that night in a village of perhaps ninety souls, earning a handful of copper for our pains, but with the coins supplemented by a generosity of food and fodder. The village got a bargain, because in my absence Holmes had cobbled together the equipment for a new act which, together with the levitation frame, my bottomless Moslem cap, and the conversions to the blue cart effected by blacksmith and carpenter back in Kalka, was spectacular enough to make even the least superstitious folk uneasy.

Not until we were in our bed-rolls that night could we speak freely, murmuring into each other’s ears in English, the sound inaudible from outside the walls of the tent. Holmes had been thinking about what I had said.

“You say Old Fort appears deserted, but is not,” he said.

“There are no lights, but when one watches with care, one sees the occasional splash of lamp and gleam of a sentry’s gun atop the walls. And twice, a guard’s careless cigarette.”

“What of its gates?”