Like many a wiser and a better man, Amber was able upon occasion to change his mind without entertaining serious misgivings as to his stability of purpose. Therefore, on second thought, he elected to journey India-wards via the Suez Canal rather than by the western route. As he understood the situation, he had no time to waste; the quicker way to his destination was the eastern way; and, viewed soberly, the chance upon which he had speculated, that of overtaking the girl's party somewhere en route, appeared a long one—a gambler's risk, and far too risky if he did not exaggerate the urgency of his errand. Rutton's instructions had, moreover, been explicit upon one point: Amber was to enter India only by the port of Calcutta. In deferring to this the Virginian lost several days waiting in London for the fortnightly P. & O. boat for Calcutta: a delay which might have been obviated by taking the overland route to Brindisi, connecting there with the weekly P. & O. boat for Bombay, from which latter point Calcutta could have been quickly reached by rail across the Indian Peninsula.

Now Quain's letter to Labertouche went by this quicker route and so anticipated Amber's arrival at the capital of India by about a week; during all of which time it languished unread.

A nice young English boy in Mr. Labertouche's employ received and stamped it with the date of delivery and put it away with the rest of the incoming correspondence in a substantial-looking safe. After which he returned to his desk in the ante-room and resumed his study of the law; which he pursued comfortably enough with a cigarette in his mouth, his chair tilted back, and his feet gently but firmly implanted upon the fair printed pages of an open volume of Blackstone. His official duties, otherwise, seemed to consist solely in imparting to all and sundry the information that Mr. Labertouche was "somewhere up in the Mofussil, hunting bugs—I don't know exactly where."

This was, broadly speaking, perfectly true, within the limitations of the youth's personal knowledge. He was a pleasant-mannered boy of twenty or thereabouts, with an engaging air of candour which successfully masked a close-mouthed reticence, even as his ostensibly heedless, happy-go-lucky ways disguised a habit of extreme caution and keen and particular observation: qualities which caused him to be considered an invaluable office-assistant to a solicitor without any clientele worth mentioning, and who chose to spend most of his time somewhere up in the Mofussil hunting bugs.

The Mofussil, by the way, is an extremely elastic term, standing as it does in the vocabulary of the resident Calcutta-man, for the Empire of India outside the seat of its Government.

Precisely why Mr. Labertouche maintained his office was a matter for casual conjecture to his wide circle of acquaintances; although it's not unlikely that, were he the subject of discussion, the bulk of the wonder expressed would be inspired by his unreasonable preference for Calcutta as a place of residence. The Anglo-Indian imagination is incapable of comprehending the frame of mind which holds existence in Calcutta tolerable when one has the rest of India—including Simla—open to one. And Labertouche was unmarried, unconnected with the Government, and independent of his profession; certainly it would seem that the slender stream of clients which trickled in and out of the little offices on Dhurrumtollah Street, near the Maidan, could hardly have provided him with a practice lucrative enough to be a consideration. On the other hand it had to be admitted that the man kept up his establishment in Calcutta rather than lived there; for he was given to unexpected and extended absences from home, and was frequently reported as having been seen poking sedulously over this plain or through that jungle, with a butterfly net, a bottle of chloroform, and an air of abstraction. In view of all of which he was set down as an original and wholly irresponsible. The first of which he was and the second of which he emphatically was not.

Henry Charles Beresford Labertouche was, in person, a quiet and unassuming body, with nothing particularly remarkable about him save his preference for boot-heels nearly three inches high and a habit of dying his hair—naturally greyish—a jet-black. Inasmuch as he was quite brazen about these matters and would cheerfully discuss with comparative strangers the contrasted merits of this hair-dye and that and the obvious advantages of being five feet nine and one-half inches in height instead of five feet seven, his idiosyncrasies were not held against him. Otherwise he was a man strikingly inconspicuous; his eyes were a very dark brown, which is nothing remarkable, and his features were almost exasperatingly indefinite. You would have found him hard to recall to memory, visually, aside from the boot-heels, which might easily have been overlooked, and the black hair, which was, when all's said, rather becoming than otherwise. Living with two native servants in a modest bungalow somewhere between Chitpur and Barrackpur, he went to and from his office, or didn't, at his whim, with entire lack of ostentation. Soft-spoken and gifted with a distinct sense of the humorous, he would converse agreeably and intelligently upon any impersonal topic for hours at a time, when the spirit so moved him. As an entomologist his attainments were said to be remarkable; he was admittedly an interested student of ethnology; and he filled in his spare time compounding unholy smells in a little laboratory connected with his suburban home. This latter proceeding earned him the wholesome fear and respect of the native population, who firmly believed him an intimate of many devils.

Such, at least, was the superficial man.

Now upon the morning of the day that found the steamship Poonah nuzzling up the Hooghly's dirty yellow flood, Mr. Labertouche's clerk arrived at the Dhurrumtollah Street office at the usual hour; which, in the absence of his employer, was generally between eleven o'clock and noon. Having assorted and disposed of the morning's mail, he donned his office-coat, sat down, thumbed through Blackstone until he found two perfectly clean pages, opened the volume at that place, tipped back his chair, and with every indication of an untroubled conscience imposed his feet upon the book and began the day's labours with a cigarette.

The window at his right was open, affording an excellent view, from an elevation of one storey, of the tide of traffic ebbing and flowing in Dhurrumtollah Street. The clerk watched it sleepily, between half-closed eyelids. Presently he became aware that an especially dirty and travel-worn Attit mendicant had squatted down across the way, in the full glare of sunlight, and was composing himself for one of those apparently purposeless and interminable vigils peculiar to his vocation. Beneath their drooping lashes the eyes of the clerk brightened. But he did not move. Neither did the Attit mendicant.

In the course of the next half-hour the clerk consumed two cigarettes and entertained a visitor in the person of a dapper little Greek curio-dealer from the Lal Bazaar, who left behind him an invitation to Mr. Labertouche to call and inspect some scarabs in which he had professed an interest. It was quite a fresh importation, averred the Greek; the clerk was to be careful to remember that.

When he had gone the clerk made a note of it. Then, glancing out the window, he became aware that the Attit mendicant, for some reason dissatisfied, was preparing to move on. Yawning, the clerk resumed his street coat, and went out to lunch, carelessly leaving the door unlocked, and the memorandum of the Greek's invitation exposed upon his blotter. When he returned at three o'clock, the door of Mr. Labertouche's private office was ajar and that gentleman was at his desk. The memorandum was, however, gone.

Mr. Labertouche was in the process of opening and reading a ten-days' accumulation of correspondence, an occupation which he suspended temporarily to call his clerk in and receive his report. This proved to be a tolerably lengthy session, for the clerk, whose name appeared to be Frank, demonstrated his command of a surprising memory. Without notes he enumerated the callers at the office day by day from the time when Labertouche had left for the Mofussil with his specimen-box and the rest of his bug-hunting paraphernalia; naming those known to his employer, minutely describing all others, even repeating their words with almost phonographic fidelity.

Labertouche listened intently, without interrupting, abstractedly tapping his desk with a paper-cutter. At the end he said "Thank you," with a dry, preoccupied air; and resumed consideration of his letters. These seemed to interest him little; one after the other he gave to his clerk, saying "File that," or "Answer that so-and-thusly." Two he set aside for his personal disposition, and these he took up again after the clerk had been dismissed. The first he read and reconsidered for a long time; then crumpled it up and, drawing to him a small tray of hammered brass, dropped the wadded paper upon it and touched a match to it, thoughtfully poking the blazing sheets with his paper-cutter until they were altogether reduced to ashes.

Quain's was the second letter. Having merely glanced at the heading and signature, Labertouche had reserved the rather formidable document—for Quain had written fully—as probably of scant importance, to be dealt with at his absolute leisure. But as he read his expression grew more and more serious and perturbed. Finishing the last page he turned back to the first and went over it a second time with much deliberation and frequent pauses, apparently memorising portions of its contents. Finally he said, "Hum-m!" inscrutably and rang for Frank.

"He left New York by the Lusitania, eh?" said Mr. Labertouche aloud. The clerk entering interrupted his soliloquy. "Bring me, please," he said, "Bradshaw, the News—and the latest P. & O. schedule." And when Frank had returned with these articles, he desired him to go at once and enquire at Government House the whereabouts of Colonel Dominick James Farrell, and further to search the hotels of Calcutta for a Miss Farrell, or for information concerning her. "Have this for me to-night—come to the bungalow at seven," he said. "And … I shall probably not be at the office again for several days."

"Insects?" enquired the clerk.

"Insects," affirmed Mr. Labertouche gravely.

"In the Mofussil?"

"There or thereabouts, Frank."

"Yes, sir. I presume you don't feel the need of a capable assistant yet?"

"Not yet, Frank," said Labertouche kindly. "Be patient. Your time will come; you're doing famously now."

"Thank you."

"Good-afternoon. Lock the door as you leave."

Immediately that he found himself alone, Labertouche made of Quain's letter a second burnt offering to prejudice upon the tray of hammered brass. He was possessed of an incurable aversion to waste-paper baskets and other receptacles from which the curious might fish out torn bits of paper and, with patience, piece together and reconstruct documents of whose import he preferred the world at large to remain unadvised. Hence the tray of brass—a fixture among the furnishings of his desk.

This matter attended to, he lost himself in Bradshaw and the Peninsular & Oriental Steamship Company's list of sailings; from which he derived enlightenment. "He was to come direct," mused Labertouche. "In that case he'll have waited over in London for the Poonah." He turned to the copy of the Indian Daily News which lay at his elbow, somewhat anxiously consulting its shipping news. Under the heading of "Due this Day" he discovered the words: "Poonah, London—Calcutta—Straits Settlements." And his face lengthened with concern.

"That's short notice," he said. "Lucky I got back to-day—uncommon lucky!… Still I may be mistaken." But the surmise failed to comfort him.

He drew a sheet of paper on which there was no letter-head to him and began to write, composing deliberately and with great care.

The building in which his offices were located stood upon a corner; at either end of the long corridor on the upper floor, upon which the various offices opened, were stairways, one descending to Dhurrumtollah Street, the other to a side street little better than an alley. It may be considered significant that, whereas Labertouche himself was not seen either to enter or to leave the building at any time that day, an Attit mendicant did enter from Dhurrumtollah Street shortly after Frank had gone to lunch—and disappeared forthwith; while, in the dusk of evening, a slim Eurasian boy with a clerkly air left by the stairs to the alley. I say a boy, but he may have been thirty; he was carefully attired in clothing of the mode affected by the Anglo-Indian, but wore shoes that were almost heelless. His height may have been five-feet seven inches, but he carried himself with a slight, studious rounding of the shoulders that assorted well with the effect of his large gold-rimmed spectacles.

He stumbled out of the alley into Free School Street and set his face to the Maidan, shuffling along slowly with a peering air, his spectacles catching the light from the shop-windows and glaring glassily through the shadows.