I had, it seemed, three choices. I could wait here; I could go after Holmes by myself; or I could ask Nesbit for help. And if I forced myself to overlook the alarming method by which the prince had laid hands on the magician—not an easy thing to do, to ignore my body’s nearly overwhelming impulse to race down the road in the wake of the car—I had to admit that Holmes was very probably in no great danger. Yes, he had been abducted in an alarmingly similar fashion once before, and yes, that time the results had been nearly catastrophic, but I had no reason (no rational reason) to feel that anything of the sort was going to happen here. Potential Lenin or no, there was no indication that the maharaja was arresting Holmes for a spy; his words had said merely that the prince of Khanpur wanted to see a magician do his tricks. Annoyed he might be by having to search for the magician, and granted, he was in the habit of “inviting” his guests to stay on, and on, but once my heart had ceased to pump in buckets of adrenaline, my mind’s voice could be heard, saying that it would not be much harder to retrieve Holmes in four or five days than it would be if I stormed the palace tonight.

And—my brain at last beginning to function with clarity—it was quite possible that Holmes might find traces of Kimball O’Hara where I had failed. Particularly if, as I thought possible, the spy was quartered in Old Fort rather than among the European guests.

Still, I did not think that sitting in this mud-walled village would help anyone, so I wiped away the artificial blood from the “slashes” on my arms and legs, doused the guttering flares, and went to look for the headman.

It took some doing to convince the man that I was neither dead nor spirit. In the end, the solidity of the rupees I put in his hand decided the matter. He would guard the wagon and feed the donkey, and although he had no horse himself to sell me, he could send for a man who did.

By midnight, I was jogging north out of the village on a sturdy pony that had a bone-jarring gait but loads of stamina. I took the first road that came in from the right, and pressed on for half an hour before the moonlight failed entirely and the horse let me know that it was blind. I hobbled the creature and curled up in a blanket for a short time, rising and setting off again as soon as the road became visible.