Half an hour ago, we boarded a train at the Agra Fort station to go to Bandikui. We had about three hours to kill in Agra. So we went to see the Taj Mahal again—after ten years—and Feluda gave me a short lecture on the geometry of the building. Yesterday, before leaving Calcutta, we had to attend to some important business. Perhaps I should mention it here. Since the Toofan Express left at 9.30 in the morning, we were both up quite early. At around six o’clock, after we’d had tea, Feluda said, ‘We ought to visit Uncle Sidhu before we go. If he can give us some information, it will really help.’ Uncle Sidhu lives in Sardar Shankar Road, which is only five minutes from our Tara Road. Uncle Sidhu is a strange character. He spent most of his life doing various kinds of businesses, earning a lot of money, and then losing much of it. Now he has retired. His main passion is books. He buys them in large numbers, and spends some of his time on reading, and the rest on playing chess all by himself. Sometimes, he consults a book on chess in between making moves. His other passion is food—or rather, experimenting with food. He likes mixing one item with another. According to him, yoghurt mixed with an omelette tastes like ambrosia. To tell the truth, he is not related to us. He used to live next door to us back in our ancestral village (which I have never seen). So he’s like an elder brother to my father, and we call him ‘uncle’. When we reached his house, he was seated on a low stool, blocking the entrance through his front door, and having his hair cut by his barber, although he has no hair except for some around the back of his head. Upon seeing us, he moved his stool a little and allowed us to go through. ‘Make yourselves comfortable,’ he said. ‘Yell for Narayan, he’ll give you some tea.’ Uncle Sidhu’s room was very simply furnished. There was only a divan, two chairs and three very large bookcases. Books covered half the divan. We knew that the little empty space on it was where Uncle Sidhu liked to sit, so we took the two chairs. Feluda had remembered to bring the book he’d borrowed, which was still covered with newspaper. He slipped it back into an empty slot on a shelf. The barber continued to work on Uncle Sidhu’s hair. ‘Felu,’ said Uncle Sidhu, ‘you are a detective. I hope you’ve read up on the history of criminal investigation? It doesn’t matter what you specialize in. If you know something about the history of your profession, you’ll gain more confidence and find your work much more interesting.’ ‘Yes, of course,’ Feluda replied politely. ‘Who was the first to discover the technique of identifying a criminal through his fingerprints? Can you tell me?’ Feluda winked at me and said, ‘I can’t remember. I did read about it somewhere, but now . . .’. I could tell that Feluda knew the answer all right, but was pretending that he didn’t, just to please Uncle Sidhu.

‘Hmm. Most people would immediately tell you that it was Alphonse Bertillon. But that’s wrong. The correct name is Juan Vucatich. Remember that. He was from Argentina. He was the first to emphasize the importance of thumbprints. Then he divided those prints into four categories. A few years later, Henry from England strengthened the system.’ Feluda glanced at his watch and decided to come straight to the point. ‘You may have heard of Dr Hemanga Hajra, the parapsychologist—?’ ‘Certainly,’ said Uncle Sidhu, ‘Why, I saw his name in the papers only the other day! What’s he done? Something fishy? But he’s not the kind of man to get mixed up in funny business. On the contrary, he has exposed others . . . cheats and frauds.’ ‘Really?’ Feluda looked up. We were about to hear an interesting story. ‘Yes, don’t you know about it? It happened about four years ago, and was reported in the press. A Bengali gentleman—no, I should not call him a gentleman, he was actually a scoundrel—started a centre for spiritual healing in Chicago. Bang in the city centre. Clients poured in every day. The Americans have plenty of money, and are easily impressed by new ideas. This Bengali claimed that he could use hypnotism and cure even the most complex diseases. The same sort of thing that Anton Mesmer did in Europe in the eighteenth century. Perhaps the Bengali managed to cure a couple of patients— that’s not unusual; a few stray cases would be successful. But, around the same time, Hajra arrived in Chicago on a lecture tour. He went to see things for himself, and caught the man out. Oh God, it was a scandal! In the end, the American government forced him to leave the country. Yes, yes . . . I can remember his name now . . . he called himself Bhavananda. That man, Hajra, though, is a solid character. At least, that’s the impression one gets from his articles. I’ve got two of them. See in the right hand corner of that bookcase on your left. You’ll find three journals of the Parapsychological Society.’ Feluda borrowed all three journals. Now, sitting on the train, he was leafing through them. I was looking out of the window and watching the scenery. A little while ago, we had left Uttar Pradesh and entered Rajasthan. ‘The sun here has a different brilliance. No wonder the men are so powerful!’ These words in Bengali came from the bench opposite us. It was a four-berth compartment, and there were four passengers. The man who had spoken those words looked perfectly meek and mild, was very thin and probably shorter than me by at least two inches. And I was only fifteen, so it was likely that I’d grow taller with time. This