Lalmohan Babu’s friend, Shatadal Sen, had come to the station to meet us. He accompanied us back to the lodge. A man of about the same age as Lalmohan Babu, he seemed to know him pretty well. After a long time, I heard someone call him ‘Lalu’. We sat chatting in the lobby before going to our rooms. ‘You’re expecting your car at three, did you say?’ Mr Sen asked. ‘You can come to my house when your car gets here. Anybody in Pearson Palli will show you my house. I’ll take you to see the complex at Uttarayan.’ ‘Thank you. May we bring two foreign visitors with us?’ Feluda asked. ‘Yes, of course. They’d be most welcome.’ Mr Sen left. We moved into our rooms. I was struck immediately by the peace and quiet of our surroundings. This should do Feluda a lot of good. He had just finished solving two complex cases of murder and fraud. He needed a break. A little later, we found Peter and Tom in the dining hall. Feluda told them of our plans for the evening. Peter seemed delighted, but Tom didn’t say anything. ‘By the way,’ said Peter, ‘I received a call from a businessman in Dubrajpur. That’s not far from here, I gather. He got his son to call me since his spoken English, his son said, isn’t all that good. Anyway, he said he had heard about my ruby and wanted to buy it. When I told him I would never sell it, he said that was fine, but he’d like to see it once, so would I be kind enough to visit his house? I agreed.’ ‘What is this man called?’ ‘G.L. Dandania.’ ‘I see. When do you have to meet him?’ ‘At ten tomorrow morning.’ ‘May we go with you?’ ‘Certainly. In fact, I’d be quite grateful for your company. You could act as an interpreter, couldn’t you? After we finish our business with Dandania, we could go and have a look at the terracotta temples in Dubrajpur and Hetampur. McCutcheon wrote about those.’ ‘There are many other things in Dubrajpur worth seeing. We could look at those, too, if we have the time,’ Feluda told him. Lalmohan Babu’s driver arrived with the car at 3.45 p.m. ‘I stopped for lunch in Burdwan,’ he said, ‘and I don’t think I need a rest. If you want to go out, sir, I can take you any time.’ We left for Mr Sen’s house almost immediately. Only a few minutes later, we found ourselves in Uttarayan. Peter said he had never seen a building like it. ‘It looks like a palace out of a fairy tale!’ he exclaimed. Then we went to Udichi and Shyamali, which were as beautiful. Tom, I noticed, did not take out his camera even once, possibly because there was no evidence of poverty anywhere.

Lalmohan Babu looked at everything with great interest. In the end, however, he shook his head sadly and said, ‘No, sir,