He wedged a chip of brick under the edge of the door to discourage intruders, and took out his folding knife to slice through the twine of one parcel, tossing its contents in my direction. Most of the garments landed on the dirt floor—thus, I supposed, adding to the verisimilitude of my appearance. From another parcel he took a bottle about five inches in height, containing a thick, dark liquid. This he did not toss, but placed with a scrap of soft cloth on the top of one of the barrels. I removed most of my upper garments, uncorked the bottle, and set about turning myself into a Eurasian.

Without a mirror or adequate light, the walnut-based skin dye was a somewhat haphazard affair, and would need attention the next morning in order to pass close inspection. But for now, by night and heavily clothed, our faces and hands would give the necessary impression. When the dyestuff had worked its way into our pores, Holmes prised the top from one of the barrels, and we washed our skin in the water it contained.

Baggy salwaar trousers of coarse white cotton, knee-length kameez and padded waistcoats over, floppy turbans wrapping our heads and woollen shawls around our shoulders: We would disappear into a crowd. My once-handsome shoes went into the bag Holmes had found to replace the dignified leather case, and I pulled on a pair of toe-cutting native sandals. We looked more like a pair of enthusiastic guests at a costume party than we did two residents of the great sub-continent, but it would do for the moment. Holmes blew out the candle, and we slipped away into the city.

Chapter Nine

For two days, we camped in a tiny room in the back of a spice- seller’s in a small bazaar to the south of Delhi. The warring fragrances were a mixed blessing, becoming at times so powerful as to make one dizzy, but even when sealed up for the night they succeeded in overriding the less appealing odours of our surroundings.

I should say, rather, that I camped there, for Holmes spent the entire first day scavenging through the city for what we should need; on the second day, he abandoned the shack well before dawn, leaving me with a jug of a particularly disgusting and considerably more permanent skin dye. He was away until the afternoon, and returned to find me black of hair and brown of skin, to say nothing of bored to tears. He rapped on the sheet of metal that was the door, and I removed the prop to let him in.