Published: Pioneer, 1 March 1888; The Week's News, 3 March 1888; Pioneer Mail, 7 March 1888.

Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 53).

Text: Pioneer.

Notes: In his copy of Chandler's Summary RK has written against this title ‘not mine RK’; a note in another hand questions this with the statement: ‘in cutting book’. Since ‘The Tracking of Chuckerbutti’ was published forty-two years before RK could have seen Chandler's Summary, published in 1930, he had ample time in which to forget the story. The presence of the story in RK's Scrapbooks is decisive evidence for his authorship.

The story has been reprinted in the suppressed Smith Administration, 1891, in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets, and in Harbord, iv, 1979–93.

Chuckerbutti did not understand the working of the Police Department. All he knew was that, at the thanas, the Inspector was wont to put a charpoy gently but firmly on a witness's tummy, while his men, beginning with the slimmest naique and ending with the fattest constabeel, sat down upon it, one by one, until the required evidence had been extracted. Chuckerbutti's uncle had heard this from a Mahajun who once made the pilgrimage to Benares. So there was no doubting the truth of the tale. “It is an unmitigatedly burglarious department” said Chuckerbutti, but he did his best to get his cousin's nephew into it all the same.

One day Chuckerbutti found a Paper. The pressman gave it to the durwan, to whom he owed five annas for pan, and the durwan sold it to Chuckerbutti for eight annas. Chuckerbutti read it all through twice – once forwards and once backwards. Then he threw up his head to the silent stars and gave tongue, calling on his friends to help him. “We are betrayed!” said Chuckerbutti. “Lend me the Webster's Complete with the illustrations. The Empire is tottering to its fundamental base.” He ran his finger down the pages, “amazement, anarchy, brutality, bullying, cowardice, distrust, despotism, espionage, fury, gall, hate, infernal, justice, loathsome;” and so on, down to the end of the alphabet. The resources of the office did not allow him to transfer the illustrations also; but he made arrangements to have these lithographed later on.