The Montgomery district office had a telephone line that did not belong to ordinary life.
It was not the public instrument the clerks used to confirm railway wagons or to beg Lahore for forms that never arrived on time. It was Harrington's line—kept in his room, guarded by procedure, and treated like a weapon: drawn rarely, and only when the district's paper could not move fast enough.
He used it after midnight, when the corridors were finally quiet and the day's noise had drained out of the building. The punkah wallah had gone. Only the ceiling fan remained, turning with a steady, tired rhythm, pushing warm air in circles.
On Harrington's desk lay Ahmed Khan's ledger—entries written cleanly, as if discipline itself had taken ink and shaped it into lines: arrests, recovered weapons, recovered grain, recovered livestock, and the list that made the whole district feel heavier—women and children recovered alive.
Harrington stared at it a moment longer, then lifted the receiver.
He turned the crank once, then waited for the line to wake.
A click. A hiss. Then nothing.
He waited.
The silence on the line was not empty; it was crowded with distance, with switchboards, with tired operators, with half a province trying to talk at once. Harrington kept the receiver pressed to his ear, listening to faint bleed-through—voices chopped into fragments, someone arguing, someone laughing, the empire's private nervous system humming out of sight.
At last, an operator came through—thin and weary.
"Trunk call," she said. "Hold, please."
Harrington's jaw tightened. "I am holding."
There was a pause, then the clatter of plugs moving, the soft mutter of the operator to someone else. The line crackled like dry leaves.
"Lahore exchange," she said. "One moment. I am connecting you to Government House."
Harrington stared at the wall while he waited. The fan continued its rotation. A mosquito whined near the lamp. Outside the office window, Montgomery slept uneasily—villages that had just begun to believe they could sleep without listening for footsteps.
Then the line cleared, clean enough to feel dangerous.
A voice entered—older, controlled, unhurried in a way that only high office could afford.
"Yes?" the Governor said. "Commissioner Harrington."
Harrington straightened, as if the Governor's eyes were in the room.
"Your Excellency," he said. "My apologies for disturbing you at this hour."
The Governor's reply came immediately, edged with irritation.
"You have my private line," he said. "If this could be sent by telegraph or letter, then you have made a mistake calling."
Harrington did not argue. He went straight to the reason.
"It cannot wait," he said. "Because it is not only a report. It is a decision."
A pause—brief, but enough to signal that the Governor was now listening rather than merely hearing.
"Proceed."
Harrington spoke with administrative precision, letting the facts carry authority.
"The joint operation in Montgomery is complete," he said. "Three strongholds cleared. Forty-two arrests secured and transferred to the police station under Army escort. Weapons recovered—firearms, ammunition stocks, and stolen supplies."
The Governor was silent.
Harrington continued.
"Recovered assets: substantial grain stores, livestock, cash, and household goods."
Still silence.
Then Harrington delivered the piece that justified the call.
"And we recovered kidnapped persons, Your Excellency. Women and children. Twenty-six. Alive."
The pause this time was longer.
"That," the Governor said slowly, "is a scandal. Not merely a policing matter."
"Yes," Harrington replied. "And it has created an opportunity—and a risk."
The Governor's tone sharpened. "Explain."
"There is a proposal," Harrington said, "to return a portion of the recovered assets to the villages. Not privately—under the Crown's banner. As restoration and relief."
The Governor's voice became colder. "By what authority do you propose to do this?"
"By district order," Harrington said. "Under my office. Verified lists. Receipts. Signatures. Stored at the police station for chain-of-custody. Village-by-village, not one great crowd."
The Governor let out a slow breath, the sound of someone hearing both the usefulness and the danger.
"And whose idea was this?" he asked. "Before you tell me it is yours."
Harrington chose clarity over evasion.
"It was advised by Mr. Jinnah," he said. "His argument is strategic: that villagers have long seen the Raj as a shadow behind the Zaildar. If the Crown visibly returns stolen assets, the Raj becomes the hand that gives—and your word begins to carry weight directly, not through intermediaries."
A faint sound came through the receiver—either amusement or contempt, restrained into a single exhale.
"You are quoting a barrister to me at midnight," the Governor said. "Is that where Punjab has come to?"
Harrington held steady.
"I am quoting an observation that aligns with our own problem," Harrington said. "The district has lived under proxy-rule. This is a chance to break that pattern at minimal cost, using the enemy's own seized stores."
The Governor was quiet. Harrington could imagine him looking at a map, not of land, but of risk: Lahore's optics, Congress noise, Unionist maneuvering, the press, the bureaucratic chain.
Finally, the Governor spoke.
"You may proceed," he said.
Harrington's shoulders eased slightly.
"But hear the conditions," the Governor continued. "It will be purely a Crown initiative."
"Yes, Your Excellency."
"No mention of Mr. Jinnah as the originator," the Governor said. "No speeches in his name. No banners. No performance that suggests the Crown is sharing legitimacy with a private estate."
"Understood."
"This will be treated as a test case," the Governor added. "A controlled demonstration. If it produces compliance and reduces resentment, we replicate. If it creates agitation, we terminate it and return to procedure."
"Yes," Harrington said.
"I will send observers," the Governor said. "They will watch the distribution and report directly to me. You will provide them access to the ledgers and to your chain-of-custody. I want it clean."
Harrington's jaw tightened. Observers meant protection, but it also meant surveillance.
"Yes, Your Excellency. Full access."
"And Harrington," the Governor said, voice tightening into warning, "if any politician appears at these events, you will shut them down immediately. Congress will claim it. Unionists will spin it. I do not want the Crown's relief turned into someone else's theatre."
"We will keep it small," Harrington said. "Village-by-village. Controlled numbers. Verified lists only."
"Good," the Governor replied. "Send me a telegraph summary tonight. Full written plan by morning. And remember—success in a district is not only measured by arrests. It is measured by the story villagers tell each other afterward."
Harrington held the receiver a fraction tighter.
"Yes," he said. "That is precisely why I am asking for approval."
The Governor's tone returned to its normal distance.
"Then do it. And do it properly."
The line clicked. Dead.
Harrington lowered the receiver slowly and sat still for a moment, letting the silence settle back into the room.
Montgomery was not a lake and breeze. It was paper, dust, sweat, and the smell of ink in heat. But in that plain office—under a turning fan and a single lamp—Harrington realized something he disliked admitting:
Order was no longer only rifles and jail cells.
Order was narrative, and narrative required evidence.
He reached for the bell on his desk.
"Send Ahmed Khan to me," he said to the night clerk outside. "Immediately."
He paused, then added with deliberate emphasis:
"And if anyone asks what we are doing tonight, the answer is: paperwork."