This was too easy! The babu was prepared to bargain for an hour, fighting for rupee after rupee until his wit assured him he had reached the limit. Now he began to believe he had set the limit far too low.

"I do not remember," he said slowly but with great conviction, scratching at his stomach as if he kept his recollections stored there.

"You said twenty-five rupees, eight annas? Well, I will pay the half of it, and no more," said Ranjoor Singh in a new voice that seemed to suggest unutterable things. "Moreover, I will pay it when I have proved thy memory true. Now, scratch that belly of thine and let the thoughts come forth!"

"Nay, sahib, I forget."

Ranjoor Singh drew out his purse and counted twelve rupees and three quarters into the palm of his hand.

"Which way?" he demanded.

"Twenty-five rupees, eight annas of earned emolument—gone while I watched the movements of a murderer! It is not easy to keep brave heart and remember things!"

"See here, thou bellyful of memories! Remember and tell me, or I return this money to my purse and march thee by the nape of thy fat neck to the police station, where they will put thee in a cell for the night and jog thy memory in ways the police are said to understand! Speak! Here, take the money!"

The babu reached out a fat hand and the silver changed owners.

"There!" said the babu, jerking a thumb over his right shoulder.

"Through that door!"

"That narrow teak door, down the passage?"

But the babu was gone, hurrying as if goaded by fear of hell and all its angels.

Ranjoor Singh strode across the street in a bee-line and entered the dark passage. He had seen the yellow light of a lamp-flame through a chink in an upper shutter, and he intended to try directness on the problem once again. It was ten full paces down the passage to the door; he counted them, finishing the last one with a kick against the panel that would have driven it in had it been less than teak.