"And what of Mr. Jinnah himself?" Sir Geoffrey asked. "Did he address the crowds? Hold court in the yard? Cast aspersions on the Government? Stir them with speeches?"
The older spy shook his head.
"To be frank, Sir… no. He stayed mostly in his study. Spent time with ledgers and reports. He came out when needed—when there were disputes or announcements—but otherwise, he let the doctor, the nurse, and the Farabis run the daily operations."
Sir Geoffrey's jaw tightened a fraction.
"That," he said, "is worse."
The spies tensed.
"Sir?" the younger one asked, genuinely puzzled.
"A man who talks too much shows his hand," the Governor said. "You can hear his slogans, count his followers, arrest his lieutenants. A man who watches quietly while others move on his behalf… is planning something. He is testing how far his reach can extend without him visibly pulling the strings."
He steepled his fingers.
"And the villagers?" he asked. "What do they say of him?"
The older spy glanced at his notes.
"They speak of Sandalbar as refuge, Sir," he replied. "Some said they feel safer within the estate boundaries than in their original villages. They speak of regular food, medical attention, discipline. They say 'Jinnah Sahib's place runs on rules, not whims.'"
The Governor's expression did not obviously change, but something sharpened behind his eyes.
"Refuge," he repeated. "Safer than their own villages."
It was not anger that crossed his face then, nor simple suspicion. It was something more analytic: the quick mental movement of a man who saw not only the present, but its possible future forms.
A Dangerous Shape on the Map
He rose from his chair with the unhurried grace of someone who knew others would wait.
"Come," he said, walking toward the large map pinned to the wall.
The spies followed.
The map of Punjab loomed before them: rivers like veins, canal lines drawn in sharp blue, railways in thick imperial red. District names sat neatly inside their borders: Lahore, Amritsar, Montgomery, Multan.
Sir Geoffrey's finger traced downward to the canal colonies, then westward to a small ink mark someone had added recently—Sandalbar.
"A remote corner," he mused aloud. "Sparse official presence. Irrigation the main concern. Into this, we place a respected barrister. We allow him to purchase an estate. He proceeds to build: clinic, school, militia, wireless hut. And now, thanks to the flood, he suddenly has ten villages living under his protection and according to his rules."
He glanced briefly at the spies.
"Tell me," he said, voice low, "does that not resemble the beginning of a parallel authority?"
The older spy hesitated.
"One could interpret it that way, Sir," he said carefully. "Especially now that the peasants associate order and survival with him, not with the district officers."
"And we British," Sir Geoffrey went on, turning his gaze back to the map, "have learned, again and again, that small experiments in self-governance—no matter how benign at first—have a tendency to bloom into something… less manageable."
He tapped the dot that marked Sandalbar.
"Once people taste order beyond the Government's hand," he said softly, "they begin to ask a very inconvenient question: 'Why did we live without this for so long?'"
He let that hang in the air for a moment.
Files and Futures
They returned to the desk.
Sir Geoffrey sat, removed his spectacles, and began cleaning them with a piece of velvet cloth. It was a small motion, but the spies knew better than to take it as a sign of relaxation.
"Prepare a full dossier on Sandalbar," he said.
"Yes, Sir," the older spy replied at once.
"I want the names of every Farabi currently in that camp," Sir Geoffrey continued. "Family ties, previous occupations, any criminal records. I want a list of the principal villagers lodged there, particularly any natural leaders or troublemakers. I want everything you can find on the Englishwoman and the nurse—training, former postings, political sympathies. And a record of every structured activity being carried out in that estate. Not just the medical work. The teaching, the policing, the food distribution. Everything."
The younger spy nodded, committing each category to memory.
"And, Sir…" the older one ventured, choosing his words, "should we treat the estate as a—"
"Threat?" the Governor finished for him, slipping his spectacles back on.
The spy swallowed. "Yes, Sir."
Sir Geoffrey considered, eyes briefly unfocused as he ran through possible outcomes like a trained chess-player.
If they moved too harshly now—sent troops, dissolved the camp, publicly humiliated Jinnah—they would inherit ten frightened, angry villages and a small scandal in the press about "Government cruelty in flood relief." If they did nothing, they risked allowing a competent, articulate Indian to demonstrate, in real time, that he could administer better than many district officers.
In either case, Sandalbar was valuable. The question was whether to treat it as a model to exploit or a plant to uproot.
"No," he said at last. "Not yet."
The spies exhaled, very slightly.
Sir Geoffrey folded his hands.
"But you will keep watching," he added. "Very closely. A man like Jinnah—quiet, disciplined, brilliant—may, in the long run, prove more dangerous to the established order than any bomb-throwing youth shouting slogans outside an assembly hall."
He looked down at the file, then closed it with a deliberate, final motion.
"The moment Sandalbar becomes more than a flood camp," he said, each word precise, "the moment it begins to function as a political centre rather than merely an administrative experiment—I want to know."
The older spy bowed.
"Yes, Your Excellency."
The younger one echoed him.
"Yes, Sir."
"Good," Sir Geoffrey said. "Leave the file."
They did, placing it carefully on the polished desk.
As they left, the aide slipped back in, collecting the closed file and adding it to a growing stack marked INTERNAL – CONFIDENTIAL.
Outside, the corridor buzzed with ordinary bureaucratic life: clerks arguing over forms, a peon carrying a tray of tea, a distant typewriter clacking out someone else's fate.
Inside the office, the Governor of Punjab sat in a brief, thoughtful silence.
He had not, today, ordered arrests or proclamations. He had not signed a warrant or declared an emergency. He had done something more subtle and, in its way, more dangerous:
He had admitted to himself that somewhere in a flooded corner of his province, an Indian barrister had built a small machine of order that worked.
And he had decided—for now—to let it run, under watch.
"Unusual," he murmured again, almost to himself.
In a province where so much of the British system survived on habit and fear, "unusual" was both a compliment and a warning.
Sandalbar had earned both.