St Alban and the others rode behind the ‘pilgrims’ and their carts – three of them, each pulled by a bullock – for the party knew where they were going, and he wanted to see they all got there. There was no cover beside the road, but it wasn’t impossible that one of them might just manage to conceal himself in a furrow of red earth. And he wanted to keep the pace up, too. (Let them dawdle and it might be dark before they got to the village – and with fewer than they’d started with.) Even so, after an hour they were strung out like women come from a fair.

One of them had straggled so far behind that the horses were almost on top of him. The syce trotted up and gave him a push and a sharp word. The man clasped his hands together and began jabbering, but quietly.

‘Memsahib,’ called the syce.

St Alban nodded, and Georgiana rode forward.

‘Kya baat hai, syce-sahib?’

The syce told her what he’d said.

She looked uneasy suddenly. St Alban saw and came up alongside her.

‘What is it?’

‘This man says he’s a thug, that all in the band are thugs, not one a pilgrim. And there is one of them of very high rank, who’s not one of their band but who hides within.’

‘His name?’

Georgiana asked the man himself rather than through the syce. He in turn apologized but said he didn’t know, only that they addressed him as ‘Guru’.

‘Why does he tell us this?’ asked St Alban.

Georgiana put it to him.

The man looked directly at St Alban as he answered. ‘Huzoor …’

Georgiana listened, asked another question, then thought for a moment. ‘He says if you will promise him protection and pardon, he will show where are all the beles … the places where they bury their victims hereabouts. And he will tell the names of every thug here, and of their village, for he no longer has confidence in the jemadar, the leader.’

St Alban frowned. ‘Tell him, please, that I cannot give him that assurance, but that I will speak on his behalf to the wakeel.’

Georgiana told the man firmly, yet with just enough of a note of sympathy to reassure him.

‘Accha, memsahib, accha.’

It was two hours more before they reached the village. The bullock carts had creaked along at the pace of a lame horse, and St Alban had begun to think he might have to detach them, except that that would probably give the game away, for if the pilgrims were to be searched for contraband, how could the inspector-sahib let the better part of their baggage go? They’d guess that it was they themselves he wanted at the village, not contraband, and then all hell would be stirred.

But what to do now? How was he to detain them till help came from Sthambadree? All he could think of was making them turn out their baggage for inspection, and telling them the customs men would soon be here – delaying, equivocating, humbugging. But how long would they fall for it? What if there was no relief till nightfall? What if there was no relief at all? That wasn’t possible. Acton of all men wouldn’t fail. But wouldn’t it be better to take prisoner now the leader, and this ‘Guru’? The others would scatter, no doubt, but did it matter if he had these two? But what if there were concealed weapons and they tried to stop them taking the ‘Guru’? They could, he supposed, barricade themselves in a house to wait for relief, but – in truth – two dozen armed thugs might prevail against them even then.