Feluda, Jatayu and I were sitting in Indian Airlines flight number 263, on our way to Delhi. The plane left at 7.30 a.m. Feluda had explained to Jatayu, while we were waiting in the departure lounge, about our visit to Pretoria Street and the ensuing events. Jatayu listened, round-eyed, occasionally breaking into exclamations like ‘thrilling!’ and ‘highly suspicious!’ Then he jotted down in his notebook the little matter of the thief and the mustard oil. ‘Have you flown before?’ I asked him. ‘If,’ he replied sagely, ‘a man’s imagination is lively enough, he can savour an experience without actually doing anything. No, I’ve never travelled by air. But if you asked me whether I’m feeling nervous, my answer would be “not a bit” because in my imagination, I have travelled not just in an aeroplane but also in a rocket. Yes, I have been to the moon!’ Despite these brave words, when the plane began to speed across the runway just before take-off, I saw Lalmohan Babu clutching the armrests of his seat so tightly that his knuckles turned white. When the plane actually shot up in the air, his colour turned a rather unhealthy shade of yellow and his face broke into a terrible grimace. ‘What happened to you?’ I asked him afterwards. ‘But that was natural!’ he said. ‘When a rocket leaves for outer space, even the faces of astronauts get distorted. The thing is, you see, as you’re leaving the ground, the laws of gravity pull you back. In that conflict, the facial muscles contract, and hence the distortion of the whole face.’ I wanted to ask if that was indeed the case, why should Lalmohan Babu be the only person to be singled out by the laws of gravity, why didn’t everyone else get similarly affected; but seeing that he had recovered his composure and was, in fact, looking quite cheerful, I said nothing more. Breakfast arrived soon, with the cutlery wrapped in a cellophane sheet. Lalmohan Babu attacked his omelette with the coffee spoon, used the knife like a spoon to scoop out the marmalade from its little pot, putting it straight into his mouth without bothering to spread it on a piece of bread; then he tried to peel the orange with his fork, but gave up soon and used his fingers instead. Finally, he leant forward and said to Feluda, ‘I saw you chewing betel-nut a while ago. Do you have any left?’ Feluda took out the Kodak container from the blue attaché case and passed it to Lalmohan Babu. I couldn’t help glancing again at Mr Dhameeja’s case. Did it know that we were going to travel twelve hundred miles to a snow-laden place situated at a height of seven thousand feet, simply to return it to its owner and pick up an identical one? The thought suddenly made me shiver. Feluda had said virtually nothing after we took off. He had taken out his famous blue notebook (volume seven) and was