Pandit Uday Mahesh stared at Neel as if he had suddenly started speaking in tongues. The maestro, a man accustomed to the logic of melody and rhythm, was utterly lost.
"My... my floor polish?" he stammered, his brows knitting together in confusion. "What in God's name does that have to do with anything? My sitar, the legacy of my ancestors, is gone, and you ask me about polish?"
Neel remained perfectly still, his gaze unwavering. It was a technique he had perfected long ago: a profound, unsettling calm that forced the other person to fill the silence, to grasp for answers, and in doing so, reveal more than they intended.
"Everything has to do with everything, Pandit-ji," Neel said simply. "The world is a system. A thief removes an instrument from a room. The room is a system. The theft is a disruption of that system. To understand the disruption, you must first understand the system. So, the polish?"
Flustered, the maestro waved a dismissive hand. "I don't know. The housekeeper buys it. It's... it's the good kind. Imported. High-gloss, but not slippery. My manager insisted on it after I almost slipped during a recording last year."
Neel's eyes sharpened, a flicker of confirmation in their dark depths. Not slippery. The first piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
"And during the performance," Neel continued, leaning back in his chair, "did you notice anything else out of the ordinary? Besides the vanishing instrument. A sound? A smell?"
"I already told you, the room is soundproof!" the Pandit insisted, his frustration growing. "And I was... I was playing! My focus was absolute. I noticed nothing!"
"Think again," Neel urged, his tone gentle but firm. "The mind registers more than we are conscious of. A draft of air. A change in the light. A scent that doesn't belong."
The maestro closed his eyes, his memory reaching back. He was a musician; his world was built on nuance. "The... the lights flickered once. Just for a second. The tech crew is always warning me about the power grid in that part of the house." He paused, then his eyes opened, a spark of recollection in them. "And there was a smell. Faint. I thought it was from the flowers my wife puts in the hallway. Mogra."
High-grip polish. A flickering light. The scent of Mogra.
Neel's mind moved like lightning, connecting the disparate points into a shimmering web of possibility. He saw the scene not as the police did—a locked door and a missing object—but as a performance. A piece of theatre with a hidden stagehand.
He stood up, the first real movement he'd made since the maestro's arrival. He walked to the window, looking out at the rain-swept city below, his back to his client.
"Your rival, the one the police are so interested in, Vikramaditya Narayan... he is a musician, not a fool," Neel stated, his voice now carrying a new edge of authority. "He would want to ruin you, yes. But stealing your sitar in a way that makes him the prime suspect is crude. It lacks elegance."
"So you don't think it was him?" Uday Mahesh asked, a sliver of hope in his voice.
"Oh, I think he was behind it," Neel said, turning back from the window. "He just didn't do it himself. He hired a specialist."
He let the silence stretch for a moment before delivering the conclusion that had formed in his mind.
"You're looking for a thief, Pandit-ji. You should be looking for a dancer."
The maestro's mouth fell open. "A... a dancer? What are you talking about?"
"A classical dancer, to be precise. Or perhaps a gymnast. Someone trained in acrobatics. Someone light, silent, and disciplined," Neel explained, beginning to pace slowly. "Someone who would recognize the utility of a high-grip floor polish. Someone who wears mogra in their hair not as a perfume, but as part of a traditional costume. Someone who could use the cover of a flickering light to drop from a concealed ceiling vent, move like a shadow, and exit the same way, all while you were lost in your music."
The theory was outrageous, yet it fit the impossible facts with a terrifying logic. The locked room wasn't a fortress; it was a stage, and they had all been looking at the wrong part of it.
Pandit Uday Mahesh was speechless, his mind reeling.
Neel walked back to his desk and picked up a pen. He scribbled a name on a piece of paper. It was the name of a celebrated dance academy in the city, one famously patronized by the maestro's rival.
He pushed the paper across the desk.
"Don't call the police with this," Neel instructed. "Not yet. Call your manager. Tell him to quietly get the full student and faculty roster from this academy for the last two years. Tell him I need to know if any of them have a background in gymnastics or rock climbing. And one more thing."
"Yes?" the maestro asked, his voice barely a whisper.
"Tell him to find out which one of them has a brother who works as an electrician."