Sanyal flopped down on a bench. He was trembling once more—but with fear this time, not rage. He knew there could be no escape. In the meantime, someone must have realized there was something wrong and pulled the cord, for the train came to an unexpected halt. It wouldn’t have stopped unless the cord had been pulled. Within seconds, we could hear a confused babel. Several voices were shouting the same name: ‘Victor! Victor! Where have you gone, Victor?’ I could hear Mr Ghoshal’s voice. Victor Perumal had messed things up. He was supposed to jump on the roof of the train. Instead of doing that, he had jumped into our compartment. Feluda leant out of the door and called, ‘Mr Ghoshal! Over here!’ Mr Ghoshal arrived, looking profoundly distressed and harassed. That was hardly surprising as any hold-up in shooting such a complex scene would be liable to cause heavy losses, perhaps to the tune of thirty thousand rupees. ‘What’s the matter with you, Victor? Have you gone completely mad?’ he demanded. ‘Mr Ghoshal,’ said Feluda, ‘if anyone in your film deserves to be called jet Bahadur, it is Victor Perumal.’ ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Mr Ghoshal asked. He was now looking perplexed, but perplexity was still outweighed by annoyance. ‘Besides,’ Feluda went on, ‘the role of that smuggler should have gone to this man here, not your actor called Paramesh Kapoor.’ ‘What rubbish are you talking, Mr Mitter? Who is this man?’ Mr Ghoshal glanced at Sanyal. By this time, two vehicles had appeared on the road. One was a police jeep, and the other was a police van. The jeep pulled up next to our compartment. Inspector Patwardhan climbed out of it. In reply to Mr Ghoshal’s question, Feluda walked up to Sanyal, grabbed his beard and moustache and yanked them off, before pulling off his wig and glasses. ‘I would have been delighted,’ Feluda remarked, ‘if I could remove that scent from your body, Mr Gore. Sadly, that’s something even Felu Mitter cannot do.’ ‘Laluda, who told you a film would remain incomplete if its producer was arrested?’ The question came from Mr Ghoshal. To tell the truth, Lalmohan babu hadn’t spoken at all. He was simply sitting there, looking pensive and morose. Anyone could guess that he was worried about the future of Jet Bahadur. ‘No one,’ Mr Ghoshal continued, ‘can stop our film. Gore might go to prison—or hell—or wherever—but don’t you see, he wasn’t the only producer in Bombay? There’s Chuni Pancholi; he’s been pestering me for over a year to make a film for him. I’ll get things going again, you mark my words. Even before you leave Bombay, you’ll see me shooting the film under a new banner.’

That day, however, all shooting had ground to a halt at half past one. Gore and Nimmo were arrested and handcuffed. Nanasaheb’s naulakha necklace was in police custody. Feluda had anticipated trouble during the first day’s shooting. When he’d told us in