“Good Lord, Captain Nesbit! How on earth did you get here so quickly?”

“I was in Delhi, rather than Simla, so I didn’t have to waste half a day in getting down from the hills. Come, let us get off the street.”

We rode out of the city to a nondescript villa in the middle of broad fields of pulse and corn. A syce took the two horses, and Nesbit led me to a room furnished with a narrow bed, some prints of English landscapes, and a door leading to a bath-room.

“You’d probably like to bath,” he said. “If you need clothes, there are things in the drawers. When you’re finished, the breakfast room is down the hall to your left. I’ll be there.”

As the stinking, travel-grey garments on my back were the only clothing I had with me, I pawed through the drawers in gratitude, coming up with an odd assortment of English and native garments that smelt deliciously of sun and the iron. I scrubbed, rinsed, and towelled vigorously until my skin was nearly its normal colour, pulled on the trousers and shirt I had found, and bound my damp hair in a turban-cloth. There was even a tooth-brush, which I had neglected to bring from the mirrored wagon and had missed terribly.

Nesbit was sitting at a table with coffee and a sheaf of official-looking papers, which he cleared away so I could take a seat in the sun that poured through the window. Plates appeared mere moments later, softly poached eggs, toast, kippers, and tomatoes. I devoured every crumb, and helped myself to more of the toast and jam, while Nesbit ate more sparingly and talked of politics and news from home.

When I was replete, he gathered his papers and we went down the hall to a study, where he closed the door and pulled two chairs close together.

I told him everything, beginning with the arrival of the aeroplane on the road outside the train station and ending with my breaking into the telegraph office. He interrupted only when my narrative passed over some detail, commented mostly with nods and raised eyebrows, although my description of the godowns and what I had seen there brought him briefly to his feet. When I had come to an end, he gazed out the window for a bit and then asked me for further details on the maharaja’s other guests; after that, he pulled out maps and asked me precisely where one thing or another had taken place.

In all, it took the rest of the morning. After lunch, he excused himself, saying that business required him elsewhere.

“Are you going to report what I’ve told you?” I asked him.