Hands were shaken, and Goodheart said, “Mr Holmes, not Mr Russell. The purser told me, the day after the fancy-dress ball.”

“So the costume was an accident?” Holmes asked.

“Er, not entirely. I’d heard one of the passengers, a lady from Savannah, talking about Sherlock Holmes. At the time I just thought she meant that you looked like Sherlock Holmes, not that you were him. I hadn’t meant any disrespect.”

“I shouldn’t worry, young man. A lady from Savannah, you say? I don’t remember meeting her.”

“Yes, odd that. She must have left the ship at Aden; I didn’t see her again.”

“Holmes, can we leave this for later?” I suggested.

“Indeed,” he said, although the puzzle remained in his voice.

It proved impossible to shoulder our still-limp burden down the narrow passageway, but with one each at his head and feet and the spare two lighting the way with candles, we transported him through the belly of the hill, sweating and cursing, and no doubt bruising him all over. But the maharaja didn’t complain, not in his condition, and the necessarily slow rate of progress made it possible for me to repeat my question to Goodheart, at the fore of the procession. This time I received an answer.

“So, who are you?”

“Tommy Goodheart, travelling through India with his somewhat dotty mother.”

“But something else as well.”

“Yes. You see, when I was at Harvard, one of my friends had an uncle who is high in the War Department. Military Intelligence. He told me that I had such a superb poker face, I mustn’t waste it. And so I played along with him, went to a couple of Red meetings, even got myself arrested once—what a lark. Then when I graduated, and he found out I was going to be travelling in Europe, he called me in and gave me a serious talk.

“Our government believes that the Soviet Union is a spent force, militarily. We’ve been helping them rebuild their factories, giving them food, in the hopes that they might stay where they are. I mean to say, one only has to look at a map to be a bit nervous about the Reds, don’t you think? There’s a considerable acreage there.

“So he sort of suggested that if I went in that direction, I might just keep my eyes open. Nothing formal, you know? The U. S. of A. as a whole doesn’t have much of an interest in Intelligence—we seem to think it’s what the Brits would call ‘unsporting.’

“But when I got to Russia, I found the factories looked just fine, and there are an awful lot of healthy-looking soldiers. And then I’ve been told that the Soviets are buying guns and planes from the Germans. A whole lot of planes.