Nishanathbabu’s visit had stoked our stifled, sweltering lives with renewed vigour. So, when Byomkesh ended his conversation over the phone and came into my room with the words, ‘Ajit, wake up, we are going to Mohanpur,’ I wasted no time and leaped out of bed.

‘When do we have to go?’

‘Immediately. And Ramenbabu is invited too. I got the impression from Nishanathbabu’s remarks that he believes the ex-actress, Sunayana Devi, to be somewhere close at hand. If his suspicions are well-founded, then Ramenbabu has to go there and identify the culprit.’

We arrived at Ramenbabu’s house by eight o’clock. He was ensconced in his drawing room, reading the Anandabazaar . He was clad in a lungi and a sleeveless vest and he greeted us with delight.

On hearing of Byomkesh’s proposal, he stood up enthusiastically and exclaimed, ‘Won’t I go? You bet I will! Please give me five minutes and I’ll get dressed.’ He went inside.

True to his word, he was dressed in five minutes—the perfect dandy, just the way we had seen him the previous evening.

At the Sealdah station, he wouldn’t allow us to purchase the tickets, insisting on buying the three tickets for the first class compartment himself. It was as if his enthusiasm and impatience were greater by far.

In about an hour, we had reached our destination. The station was quite deserted; we went outside to find a man standing by the paan stall, chewing on one and nattering on with the shopkeeper. Byomkesh went up to him and asked, ‘Could you tell us the way to Golap Colony?’

The man shut one eye and inspected us thoroughly; then, he asked in a wry tone, ‘So you want to go to the zoo?’

‘Zoo?’

‘Well, it’s a zoo all right, Golap Colony is. Strange place … weird people. It even beats the Alipore Zoo. It’s not very difficult getting there. There, you can see the chariot from the zoo; climb on to it and it will roll on to its destination.’

We hadn’t noticed it, but in a corner of the station’s compound stood a ramshackle little buggy. It was long and narrow, like the vans that transported girls to school. It carried the name ‘Golap Colony’ in gold paint that had worn so thin that the letters were now hardly discernible. The horse was standing alone, occasionally flicking out a hoof to shoo away the flies; there seemed to be no other soul around.

We approached the carriage and found a man sitting on the footrest behind, lost in his enjoyment of a smoke. He was a Muslim and looked quite old. His beard was sparse, his face riddled with pockmarks, and a wealth of experience was etched into the bleary eyes. He wore shabby pyjamas and a vest. He dropped the beedi when he saw us, stood up and asked, ‘Are you from Calcutta?’

‘Yes. We’d like to go to Golap Colony.’

‘Yes, that’s right, the boss has told me to