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India was a wild, strange, and dangerous place when I worked there as a journalist many years ago. It was even wilder, stranger, and more dangerous than it is today. It was the kind of place where you never knew what was going to happen next. It was a place where people lived by laws that nobody could understand, and where you could be suddenly rich or suddenly poor and then suddenly rich again. You could be a beggar one day, a prince the next, and then a beggar again. All sorts of strange people came from England to try and make money there, and they found very unusual ways to make it. There was enormous wealth in India, and if you could find a way to get some of it you could live very well. If you couldn't find a way, you would live very badly indeed; begging is not fun. At the time that my story begins, I wasn't a beggar, but I was certainly not a prince. I was traveling to Mhow from Ajmir on the train, and because of lack of funds, I had to travel in third class, which is not very nice. There are no cushions on the seats, and the passengers carry their food in bundles and pots and drink water from the roadside. In summer, when it is really hot, third-class passengers are sometimes carried out of the carriages dead. I was the only person in the carriage until we reached Nasirabad, when a huge Englishman in shirt sleeves came in and began to talk to me. He was also a traveler, and we shared stories of our past adventures. He then wondered how he could send a telegram to his friend, who was in Ajmir, because he only had enough money for his dinner. I had no money at all, and although I would be paid when I reached Mhow there was no telegraph office there, so I was not able to help him.

"Did you say that you would be traveling back along this line soon?" asked my big friend. "In about ten days," I replied. "Can't you make it eight? My business is urgent." "I can send your telegram for you in ten days' time if that will help you," I said. My fellow-passenger thought about it for a moment. "My friend is traveling from Delhi to Bombay on the twenty-third, so I don't think the telegram will reach him in time, but perhaps there is another way. He will pass through Marwar Junction early in the morning of the twenty-fourth, and you might be returning through there at about that time. Do you think you could be there to give him a message? If I don't tell him where I am, he won't know where to go." I thought that this might just be possible. "All you have to say to him is, 'He has gone south for the week.' He'll know what that means. He's a big man with a red beard, and he'll be asleep in a second-class carriage. Just wake him up and tell him the message." I said that I would do it if I could, and then he told me that he was on his way to Degumber because he had heard that the Raja had done something bad. His plan was to blackmail the Raja by pretending to be a journalist and threatening to publish the story in his newspaper. People like him generally lived a hard life and died suddenly. I kept my promise and was at Marwar Junction on the twenty-fourth. I found the red-bearded man in a second-class carriage, woke him up, and told him the message. "I am to tell you that he has gone south for the week." The red-bearded man rubbed his eyes. "That's just like him. Did he say I was to give you anything? I won't."