Tintin Forums

P. 53 and f., you see the bad guys had built a secret, huge, concrete base, right under/next to the Maharaja's palace. How could they build it without the Maharaja and his guards noticing? No noise, no dust, no nothing. That's certainly what they call doing something in front of someone else's nose!

I think this is what happened:

There was originally a base further away from the Palace, but something bad was slowly happening to it (maybe the Maharaja's forces were trying to arrest them?). One day, when the Maharaja's father was ruling, he commisionned for some more trees in the palace gardens.

(From this point onwards, my memory may be switching from the colour edition to the facsimile, so bear with me!)

The Maharaja's traitor advisor saw this as the gang's chance to escape unnoticed, as anyway they needed to get rid of him and his family. He got a fake palm-tree smuggled, which was hollow, and in the night, the base was steadily built, and the fakir managed to use his magic and conjure away any pieces of the evidence.

Maybe the underground lair did exist before the palace was built?
I assume that it is part of an ancient tomb that was forgotten - it's more obvious in the original black and white version when there was this statue with the snakes in it and the trapdoor leading to a pool with crocodiles.

Maybe the fakir knew about the old tomb and the bad guys decided to turn it into their headquarters?
They then re-installed all those traps that were originally there to prevent tomb raiders getting into the tomb.

I think Herge just wanted to find a way to explain how and where the fakir disappeared the previous week during serialisation.