In his brief but mesmerising account of underground insurgency entirely integrated into an agreeable metropolitan life, David remembered tramping with his Indian companion, Vinayak Savarkar, a law student and charismatic revolutionary activist, across Hampstead Heath until they arrived at India House, then the headquarters of the Nationalist movement in Highgate. About 30 Indians were gathered, playing an Indian hymn proscribed by the Raj on a gramophone.  "I felt free," Garnett recalled. "I was always feeling shy. Now I was delivered from that burden, simply because I did not know these people's standards. Whatever I did, or was, would be strange to them. I felt exhilarated. I had embarked on an adventure of my own finding; there was nobody to guide me; nobody to feel ashamed of me." What he specifically loved about Savarkar was "an intensity of faith [...] and a curious single-minded recklessness". The Indians put on English music for their visitor. When he objected, the silent Byronic figure of Madanlal Dhingra changed the record back to Indian song — the same man who would soon murder  Sir William Curzon Wyllie, mistaking him for the former Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, and hang for it too.

A white-faced Edward had flapped the newspaper at David when news of Wyllie's assassination in London broke on July 1, 1909. "Are these your friends? Do you know anything about this?"

David doesn't record his answer but relates what happened subsequently when police also arrested Savarkar in 1910 and put him in Brixton jail. Savarkar had supplied guns to rebels in India and was awaiting deportation. Garnett identified weaknesses in the prison routine and decided he could free him.

He had a Winchester rifle, a present from "uncle" John Galsworthy, future Nobel laureate for literature, which he had passed on to Indian volunteers who had gone to Morocco to help local forces repel the Spanish. Confiscated in Gibraltar, the rifle came back to Garnett along with a second weapon, a Browning automatic with the serial number shaved off. When he found the number on the barrel still intact he wondered at his amateurish friends, but pressed on with his own plan. A couple of bags of pepper and a truncheon would do to overwhelm the Brixton prison guards. A car would then take Savarkar to the coast and from there his supporters would sail him to France.

David went to Paris to organise a team of helpers but the Nationalist representative there refused to cooperate. David's intense personal adventure began when he realised he didn't care a fig for their cause, or any cause, only for his friend. He took a train to the French coast to charter a yacht, but the weather blew up and no ship could put to sea. It was his third night without sleep, and he realised what a fool he was. "Then my intoxication and vainglory vanished suddenly."