For one thing, we seemed to be heavily weighted to the masculine now, the three flighty German girls gone, a couple of visiting wives returned to their homes. The feminine exodus had left behind eight rather hard-looking females who would only by the furthest stretches of chivalry be termed “ladies,” two of whom I thought I recognised from the nautch dancers, as well as four diminutive Japanese girls, two peculiar-looking albino women, and three of the maharaja’s female dwarfs, all of them wearing heavy make-up and scanty dress.

We didn’t actually make it as far as the billiards room, not with drinks being served on the terrace. We were standing with our glasses in our hands and a couple of flirtatious women in our faces when Thomas Goodheart came onto the terrace, spotted me, and stopped dead. I carefully took no notice of him, bending instead to listen to the witticism of the painted lady, but he certainly took notice of my every action. After a few minutes he brought his drink over to where Nesbit and I stood.

“Hello, Captain Nesbit,” Goodheart said, although he was watching me as he spoke. “I didn’t know you were coming to Khanpur.”

“Good evening, old chap,” Nesbit said, pumping the American’s hand in greeting. “And I didn’t realise you were still here. I don’t see your charming sister. Or your mother.”

“No, they’ve gone to meet Mama’s friend. I stayed on to . . . I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said, although he didn’t sound at all sure of it.

“Captain Martin Russell, old friend of mine,” Nesbit told him. We shook, and I arranged a somewhat tired smile on my face.

“From your reaction I take it that you, too, have met my twin sister. Whatever she did, I probably don’t want to know.”

Nesbit’s ease and my hearty masculinity completed what the hair-cut and false moustache began, and Goodheart, like the others before him, began tentatively to accept this peculiar coincidence. I felt various eyes on me during the evening, but my mask did not slip, and by the evening’s end, I was Captain Russell, not Miss.

After dinner we were again entertained by nautch girls, and although they were the same dancers who had entertained us the other night, their performance tonight was a rather different thing from that wholesome version. When the dozen figures came into the durbar hall, whirling and clashing and gyrating seductively, I could not help glancing to see what Geoffrey Nesbit made of it. He seemed much taken aback, so much so that he looked over at me and then quickly away, his face going blank, if slightly pink about neck and ears. Clearly, this was not a form of entertainment commonly offered on his past visits.