No answer. No sound. Half a minute passed. Then the same question was repeated, this time more urgently:

‘Thomas Godwin ... are you with us?’

‘Ye-es! Ye-es!’

Next to me, I could feel a leg shaking violently. No, not the leg of a table, but that of a man. To be precise, it was Lalmohan Babu’s knee.

‘Yes. I have come. I am here!’

Although the voice said ‘here’, it sounded as if it was speaking from quite far.

The group resumed asking questions. ‘Are you happy? Are you in peace?’

‘No-o-o!’ came the answer.

‘Why are you unhappy?’

Silence fell again. Mr Arakis and his friends waited for nearly a whole minute before repeating the question: ‘Why are you unhappy?’

‘I ... I ... want ... I want ... I want my ... my casket!’

This remark was followed by some strange happenings. Someone let out a bloodcurdling scream from the next room—a scream born out of pure terror— and, the next instant, someone pulled hard at my sleeve. A voice whispered in my ear: ‘Come on, Topshe!’

The guard outside was so perplexed to see us rush out that he did nothing to either stop us or follow us down the stairs. A minute later, we had left Ripon Lane behind us and were moving towards our car parked on Royd Street.

‘That,’ Lalmohan Babu declared, ‘was a special show. If anyone showed a similar thing in a film, it would crash all box-office records!’

The reason for this praise was simple. Feluda was now clutching an ivory casket, given to Thomas Godwin by Nawab Sadat Ali.

Chapter 7

The following morning, Feluda himself summoned me to his room. After Lalmohan Babu had dropped us the previous night, Feluda had had a shower and finished his dinner within half an hour. Then he had gone straight to his room and shut the door. I had not been able to sleep very well. It was clear that we had got embroiled in a bizarre mystery. It was like being lost in a maze ... something perhaps even more complex than the Bhoolbhulaia in Lucknow. I had no idea where to turn; my only hope was Feluda. But did Feluda know the way out of the maze?

I found him seated on his bed. In front of him was Thomas Godwin’s casket. Its contents were strewn over the bed. There were two white pipes that could be filled with tobacco—but they looked different from any pipe I had seen before; a snuff box; a pair of spectacles set in a gold frame; and four red leather-bound notebooks. Each had the word ‘diary’ inscribed on the cover in gold letters. The piece of silk in which they had been wrapped was lying on one side, together with the blue ribbon with which the parcel had been tied. Feluda offered me one of the notebooks, saying, ‘Turn the first page—be careful!’

‘Why, this is Charlotte Godwin’s diary!’