“They are generally open. I presume they’re guarded, although if the men are anything like those on the main gates, it should be no great task to get past them. You wish to see inside Old Fort?”

“Why else should we be here?” he asked.

Why else, indeed? “I merely thought that perhaps we ought to send word to Nesbit first, in case something happens.”

“Report or no, Nesbit knows where we are. Our disappearance alone would tell him all he need know.”

Slim comfort.

We moved on the next day, our path a wide circle leading back to The Forts. Here the ground was less fertile, with fewer people working the fields. We strolled the dusty road, the unnaturally amiable donkey following along behind, and as we went I tried to describe the maharaja and his coterie.

“He is, as Nesbit said, a fine sportsman. Having ridden after pig myself now, I understand Nesbit’s praise of the man. Of course, he’s completely insensible to damage inflicted on horses or coolies, but he does play the game by the rules, and was unwilling to leave a wounded boar to die in the bushes.”

“Which may merely be because, were the boar to recover, it would be both ill tempered and experienced when it came to men.”

“True, and it wouldn’t do to have a berserker pig come after, say, a visiting Prince of Wales.”

“But you already told me that the hearty sportsman is not the only side to his personality.”

“His cousin said it: He collects grotesques. In his zoo, but also the people living under his—ach, the sun is so hot today,” I broke off to say, as a farmer reclining in the shade of a tree stirred and sat up at our approach. Holmes asked the man about the next village, and learned that it was tiny but that a few miles farther on was a larger village, with two wells and many clay-brick houses. We thanked him, shared a bidi with him, and returned to the road.

“You were saying, Russell?”

“His pet grotesques. He collects them, but I would have to say, he also creates them. In the zoo, he plays God with animals, seeing how far he can drive them before they go mad. And in the palace, he does a similar thing with his ‘guests,’ finding their weaknesses and twisting his blade in an inch at a time. It’s a game to him, baiting and teasing his hangers-on, undermining their skills, seeing if he can drive them nuts.” Then I told him about the zoo, the casual extermination of the thin creature and my impression that he was using the act deliberately to disturb Sunny Goodheart. And, for the sake of completeness but feeling somewhat embarrassed, I went on to describe the toy room, its taxidermied inhabitants, and my profound distaste for that as well.