“I’d guess this uncle of my friend’s feels even more jittery after the last few months, what with your new government and all. Too many comrades make an outsider feel a mite uncomfortable. Although truth to tell, I haven’t been in touch with him since I left Europe, so I’m sort of playing it all by ear, here.”

“A one-man Intelligence operation,” Holmes commented from his position at the maharaja’s shoulders. He did not, however, sound disbelieving, and I had to agree with him: It made a certain amount of sense that the young man was independent, rather than under the control of some organised group.

“Did you arrange for that balcony to fall on us in Aden?” I asked Goodheart.

“Balcony? Is that what happened to you? Good Lord, no.”

I listened carefully, and could not hear a lie, but as I was at the rear, I could not see his face. His poker face. “What about the hotel fire in Delhi?”

“Ah. Well, there wasn’t really a fire. That is, there was, but it sort of . . . got out of hand.”

“And my missing trunk, off the boat?”

“Well, yes, I am terribly sorry about that. I tried to work some way to have it returned to you, but then you disappeared from the hotel. I only arranged to have it mislaid for a while. It seemed to me that searching your luggage would be one way of finding out if you were Russian spies.”

At that, all three of us stopped dead to stare at his back. At our sudden silence, he turned and saw our expressions. “Really!” he protested. “I’d been told that the most dangerous Bolsheviks were those that didn’t look like the enemy. And I couldn’t see the two of you travelling to India for any of the usual reasons, you just didn’t fit in. So I thought, maybe . . .” His voice died away in the tunnel.

Then O’Hara began to laugh. It started with a snort, then merged into giggles, and in a minute he had dropped his half of our prisoner and collapsed into uncontrolled merriment. Holmes, too, was grinning widely, and despite the vast inconvenience this man’s amateur sleuthing had caused me, even I had to grin. O’Hara giggled, repeating to himself, “Bolshevik spies! Sherlock Holmes a Russian spy!”

Goodheart looked vastly embarrassed. “It’s . . . I know. It was stupid of me, and I’d better give up this spy business before I do something really dangerous. So anyway, when I saw you with Jimmy, I figured you must know what you were doing, and I’d better throw my lot in with you. Um, can I ask, where are you taking him?”

The simple question triggered another paroxysm of mirth in O’Hara, and he began to choke, tears seeping from his eyes. I finally took pity on the American.