of the engine’s hooter, a roar from the small crowd on the platform, a whoosh of air, a trembling of the rails. And then, like a dragon of old, the red-and-gold steam engine burst through the receding mist into the sunshine, gliding to a stop beside the decorated platform. Stationmaster Mukherjee dashed about on the platform, unable to contain his excitement. ‘It’s here, it’s here, the Doon Express, God bless us all!’ Mr Mukherjee, a good-natured man, was always showering blessings on people. It was also rumoured that he wrote poetry in secret. Colonel Shakespeare, although distantly related to his namesake, did not write poetry, but was engaged in penning a history of the Gurkha War and recent military engagements in Afghanistan and Burma. His wife was writing a cookbook—Custards, Jellies and Jams
in a Hot Climate. There were a number of other VIPs on the platform—a magistrate, 120/21
a railway superintendent, a nawab from Purkazi and a raja from Bijnor—and several on the train, including a well-known big-game hunter. But we are concerned here with a certain gentleman, very English-looking, in tweeds and plus fours and wearing a deerstalker hat in the manner of Sherlock Holmes—an English country gentleman about to make the rounds of his estates. Which was exactly what he was about to do. For this was Cecil D. Lincoln Esq., proprietor of Lucknow’s palatial Carlton Hotel, and part-owner of Darjeeling’s Everest Hotel and Calcutta’s Great Eastern. He was in his mid-thirties, balding slightly, and tall, but with a slight stoop acquired after years of bending to negotiate entrances and exits that had been designed for smaller men. Now, on his way to Mussourie to open a new hotel, he had already made a note to the effect that all doors must be large enough to allow both the tall and the broad to pass through comfortably.
The Book of Aleph