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, in a serene atmosphere like this, I could never think up a plot for a thriller. I’d need to go back to Calcutta to do so.’ On our way back, Peter and Tom got into a rickshaw. ‘Someone told us there’s a tribal village near here. Tom would like to take some pictures,’ Peter said. They were obviously off to a Santhal village. We waved them off and returned to the lodge, where we spent the rest of the evening playing antakshari. ‘Look, I nearly forgot!’ said Mr Sen before taking his leave. ‘Lalu, I brought this book for you —Life and Work in Birbhum. It was written by a priest a hundred years ago. He was called Reverend Pritchard. It’s full of interesting information. You must read it.’ ‘I certainly will, even if your friend doesn’t. Thank you, Mr Sen,’ said Feluda. We finished breakfast by eight-thirty the next day. Dubrajpur was only twenty-five kilometres away. Mr Dandania’s son had given us excellent directions, and told us that theirs was the largest house in the area. We arrived a little before ten o’clock at a large house with a very high boundary wall. The name plate on the tall iron gate said ‘G L Dandania’. A chowkidar quickly opened the gate for us. He had clearly been warned about our visit. Our car passed through the gate and the long driveway, before coming to a halt at the front door. A young man in his mid-twenties was tinkering with a scooter just outside the door. He left the scooter and came forward to greet us as we got out of our car. ‘My name is Peter Robertson,’ said Peter, shaking his hand. ‘You must be Kishorilal.’ ‘Yes, I am Kishorilal Dandania. My father would like to see you. Please come with me.’ ‘Can my other friends come, too’ ‘Of course.’ We followed Kishorilal through a courtyard, up a flight of stairs, past a couple of rooms before he finally stopped outside the open door of their drawing room. ‘Should we take off our shoes?’ asked Feluda. ‘No, no, there’s no need.’ The drawing room was large, furnished partly with sofas and chairs. One end was covered by a thick mattress. Mr G.L. Dandania sat in one corner of the mattress, leaning on a bolster. He was a pale, thin man with a huge moustache that looked quite incongruous. Besides him in the room was another man of about fifty, wearing grey trousers and a brown jacket. He stood up as we entered. Peter looked at the thin man with the moustache and folded his hands. ‘Namaste,’ he said. ‘Mr Dandania, I presume?’ ‘Yes, and this is my friend, Inspector Chaubey,’ replied Mr Dandania. ‘How do you do? Meet my friend, Tom Maxwell. And here are my other friends, Mr Pradosh Mitter, Lalmohan Ganguli and Tapesh.’ ‘Glad to meet you all. Please be seated. Kishori, inke liye mithai aur sharbat mangwao (send for sweets and sherbet for them).’

Kishori disappeared