“Oh, yes, they’ve played on our attachment to India by accepting industrial supplies in exchange for little more than a verbal guarantee that they would cease their intrigue in the sub-continent. But then last May, Curzon had to threaten to withdraw trade unless they took their agents out. And, oh the surprise, they have not.”

“And you imagine the Bolsheviks might have laid hands on O’Hara,” Holmes asked, sounding dubious, “or got him in their sights, where the Tsar’s agents could not?”

“Not precisely,” Mycroft replied.

Holmes frowned. “A native agent, then, who worked his way inside O’Hara’s guard?” He seemed only a shade less doubtful about this possibility, but still Mycroft shook his head.

“Sherlock, I am not convinced the man is dead.”

“What, then? Not dead, not held, then—No,” Holmes said sharply as Mycroft’s meaning fell into place. “Kimball O’Hara would never side with the Russians against the Crown. Never.”

“Perhaps not side with them, necessarily, but use them? As a tool for India herself? The move towards self-rule—Gandhi’s swaraj—has adherents on all levels throughout the sub-continent, and between their systematic obstructionism and the actions of outright revolutionaries, the country is a powder-keg. One more atrocity like Dyer’s and the entire country will rise up, battering its own way between the British and the Bolsheviks. Neither of whom has much affection for Mr Gandhi. But even lacking outright revolt, the educated classes are pressing strongly for a voice in their own affairs. And the boy was always more native than white in his sensibilities.”

“Sensibilities, yes, but not in his loyalties. He would not turn coat against His Majesty.”

“Then perhaps he is truly imprisoned. Or dead.”

Holmes did not answer. Instead, he took up the much-folded papers from the table, holding them to the light, one by one, for a long and close study. He found no marks, no pinpricks, nothing to indicate a secret message to the outside world. He even turned the leather case outside-in, as if the stitches of closure might have been embroidered into a code, but there was nothing. And as I knew that Mycroft would have given the objects the same scrutiny, I did not bother doing the same: If neither Holmes brother had found a hidden message, it was unlikely that I should do so.

“Has Kipling been questioned?” Holmes asked.

“The last he heard of O’Hara was in 1916. A letter of condolence arrived some months after Kipling’s son was killed.”

“Who was O’Hara’s contact within the Survey?”

“O’Hara hasn’t worked with the Ethnological Survey for nearly three years, but at the time it was Nesbit, and before that, Apfield. You knew him, I think?”