A minute later, a strange creature was shown in: a smallish man in his mid-sixties, clad in a loose and ill-fitting yellow suit, a green tie wound rather horrifically round his throat, a beard that stood out like the bristles of an old brush and a moustache that reminded me of a fat and well-fed caterpillar. His eyes were abnormally bright, and he carried a stout walking-stick. He looked around as he entered the room and asked in a gruff voice, ‘Tarafdar? Which one of you is Tarafdar?’ ‘I am. Please sit down,’ Mr Tarafdar invited. ‘And these three?’ The man’s eyes swept over us imperiously. ‘Three very close friends.’ ‘Names? Names?’ ‘This is Pradosh Mitter, and this is his cousin, Tapesh. And over there is Lalmohan Ganguli.’ ‘All right. Now let’s get to work, to work.’ ‘Yes, what can I do for you?’ ‘Do you know who I am?’ ‘You only mentioned your surname on the phone, Mr Thakur. That’s all I know.’ ‘I am Tarak Nath Thakur. TNT. Trinitrotolvene—ha ha ha!’ Mr Thakur roared with laughter, startling everyone in the room. I knew TNT was used in making powerful explosives. But what was so funny about it? Mr Thakur did not enlighten us. Feluda asked him a question instead. ‘Does an exceptionally small dwarf live in your house?’ ‘Kichomo. A Korean. Eighty-two centimetres. The smallest adult in the entire world.’ ‘I read about him in the papers a few months ago.’ ‘Now the Guinness Book of Records will include his name.’ ‘Where did you find him?’ Lalmohan Babu asked. ‘I travel all over the world. I have plenty of money. I got it all from my father, I’ve never had to earn a penny in my life. Do you know how he made his money? Perfumes, he ran a thriving business in perfumes. Now a nephew of mine looks after it. I am a collector.’ ‘Oh? What do you collect?’ ‘People and animals. People from different countries and different continents. People who have some unique trait in them. I’ve just told you about Kichomo. Besides him, I have a Maori secretary who can write simultaneously with both hands. He’s called Tokobahani. I have a black parrot that speaks three different languages, a Pomeranian with two heads, a sadhu from Laxmanjhoola who sits in the air—quite literally, six feet from the ground, and . . .’ ‘Just a minute, sir,’ Lalmohan Babu interrupted. Tarak Nath Thakur reacted instantly. He raised his stick over his head and shouted, ‘You dare interrupt me? Me? Why, I—’

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ Lalmohan Babu offered abject apologies. ‘What I wanted to know was whether all these people in your collection stay in your house totally voluntarily?’ ‘Why shouldn’t they? They’re well-fed, well-paid and kept in comfort, so they’re quite happy to live where I keep them. You may not have heard of me or my collection, but hundreds of people elsewhere in the world have. Why, only the other day, an American journalist interviewed