‘Your ring?’ I could tell that Feluda was quite taken aback by the question. Bonobihari Babu did not reply. He only stared at Feluda, the pipe hanging from one corner of his mouth, a little smile on his lips. The crickets outside were silent. ‘Besides,’ Feluda continued, ‘what makes you think I have got it?’ Bonobihari Babu spoke this time. ‘I had my suspicions throughout. I knew it couldn’t have been stolen by an outsider. No one could have simply walked into the house and taken something from Dhiru Babu’s bedroom without anyone having seen or heard anything. I found that impossible to believe. But although I suspected you, I didn’t have any evidence to prove my theory. Now I do.’ ‘And what is that evidence?’ Silently, Bonobihari Babu picked up his tape-recorder and, placing it once more on his lap, switched it on. It froze my blood to hear what I did. ‘It was that ring, wasn’t it?’ spoke my own voice from the machine. ‘Since you have guessed it already, there is no point in hiding things from you . . ’ Bonobihari Babu turned the machine off with a click. ‘I had left it under your bed last night before you returned to your room,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t, of course, be sure that you would indeed talk about the ring. But since you did, I couldn’t miss such an opportunity to get what I wanted What better evidence would you need, eh, Felu Babu?’ ‘But how can you claim that the ring is yours?’ Bonobihari Babu put the recorder on the table, crossed his legs and leant back in his chair. ‘In 1948,’ he said, ‘that is, exactly eighteen years ago, I bought that ring from the Naulakha Company in Calcutta. It cost me two hundred thousand rupees. I got to know Pyarelal soon after this. He didn’t tell me he was interested in antiques, but I did show him the ring. The look on his face on seeing it made me instantly wary. Two days later, it disappeared from my house. The police were informed, but they couldn’t catch the thief. Then I came to Lucknow, and so did Pyarelal. I learnt that he had had the ring all these years only when Srivastava showed it to me. I don’t suppose Pyarelal thought he would survive his first heart attack. So he got rid of what he had stolen many years ago. But then he recovered, and I went to see him. What I had thought was that if he admitted to the theft, I could perhaps get the ring back from Srivastava. I’m sure he would have agreed, and I was even prepared to offer him some compensation. But do you know what happened? Pyarelal simply denied the whole thing. In fact, he went so far as to say he had never seen the ring in my house in Calcutta!’ Feluda broke in at this point, not a trace of fear in his voice,