‘How did you learn about this particular watch, Mr Mitter?’

‘From a diary written by someone in the nineteenth century. It was the daughter of the man who owned the watch.’

‘A diary? Not a letter?’

‘No. It was a diary.’

Mr Choudhury had taken out a packet of foreign cigarettes, together with a gold lighter and holder.

‘Don’t you know William?’ he asked, inserting a cigarette into his holder.

‘No, I don’t know anyone called William.’

A flame appeared at the end of Mr Choudhury’s Dunhill lighter.

‘So what you read in that diary was enough to make you greedy?’

‘Greedy? No, Mr Choudhury, only you have a monopoly on greed.’

A shadow appeared on Mr Choudhury’s velvety face. The cigarette-holder, clutched between two fingers, was trembling a little.

‘Mind how you speak to me, Mr Mitter!’

‘I never mind how I speak to anyone, when I speak the truth. All I wanted to do was make sure that the watch did not leave Godwin’s grave. If a man like you could lay ...’

Feluda could not complete his sentence. A man had come into the room, carrying an object placed on a silk handkerchief. As soon as Mr Choudhury picked it up, Lalmohan Babu—sitting next to me—began groaning and spluttering.

‘M-m-my-my-my-!’

He had just opened his eyes and seen the object in Mr Choudhury’s hand. It was something with which Lalmohan Babu was thoroughly familiar.

It is impossible to describe what happened to Mr Choudhury. Once Feluda had told me that the seven major musical notes bore a relationship to the seven colours of a rainbow, but I had no idea that a man’s face could change colour so quickly and pass through so many shades. Nor had I ever heard anyone’s voice strike a different pitch every second.

The expletives that poured out of his mouth were difficult to hear, impossible to repeat. Feluda, however, remained perfectly unperturbed. I could tell the whole thing was his doing. When he had visited the cemetery in the afternoon, he must have done it then. But did that mean that the real watch did not exist at all?

Like a mad man, Mr Choudhury flung the Cooke- Kelvey watch on an empty chair by his side. ‘Call William!’ he roared, ‘and give me that revolver!’

Pyarelal handed the revolver to Mr Choudhury and left the room. Mr Choudhury muttered ‘Scoundrel!’ and ‘Swindler!’ a couple of times. Then he got to his feet and began pacing impatiently.

Pyarelal returned in a few moments through the door at the back. With him was another man with long hair going down to his shoulders, and a moustache that drooped down to his chin. He was wearing trousers, a shirt and a cotton jacket.