Instantly, the child shot back over the gate to leap onto the animal’s scrofulous back, nudging it forward with heels and knees. I opened the gate to let it out, and in a moment the beast was standing amiably between the cart shafts while the boy strapped it in. After some adjustments to the girth, the boy slapped the animal’s shoulder in satisfaction and stood away. “You are to pay me what is owed,” he said.

“Oho,” Holmes retorted, “and when it comes to light that the horse-seller merely sleeps, and you have delivered to my hands a stolen donkey and cart, what then do I tell the police who come to arrest me?”

The boy’s indignation was profound, and well polished. “Sir, never would I do such a thing! You came to buy a donkey, here is your donkey, and I am here to collect for the horse-seller. You have paid him one-half, and all the cost of the cart, and one day’s food. You may pay me the remainder.”

“That much at least he knows correctly,” Holmes said to me, then to the boy, “But you will have to tell me exactly what is owed, before I believe you.”

The child hesitated, caught on dilemma’s horns. If he quoted the amount Holmes clearly had in mind, then we might believe his veracity; if, however, he followed his gut instincts and demanded more—which is the only way to do business in India—then he risked losing all. He sighed, and rolled his eyes to express his disgust for the whole affair.

“Twenty-three rupees,” he admitted. Holmes raised his eyebrows and inclined his head slightly in a nod before turning his attention at last to the beast herself, looking to see if the trick lay with the substitution. But she looked sound beneath the filth, and if she was willing to respond to the blandishments of an urchin, no doubt her affections, or at least her attention, could be bought by owners willing to ply her with plentiful food and the occasional application of a brush to her sides. Holmes reached for his money-pouch, and thumbed the coins into the child’s hand.

The boy accepted the coins with the gravity of a bank manager, bound them up into a rag, and then scampered over the shed and pulled himself up its outside wall, diving headfirst through a small, high window. A minute later he re-emerged, the coin-rag replaced in his hand by a horse-brush and a small sack of grain. His grin told us without words that these were not part of Holmes’ original bargain, but a baksheesh he had appropriated from the horse-dealer’s store. He tossed both sack and brush into the cart beside the armload of hay, gathered up the donkey’s lead, and looked between us expectantly. “Where do we go?”

“Oh no,” Holmes said firmly. “I required a donkey, not a donkey-master. We travel alone.”