"And there was no answer?"

"No. No answer, Sahib," replied the man cheerfully.

"Very well."

He waited yet another hour, and since still no acknowledgment had come he
strolled along the road himself. He came to a large white house. A
flagpost tapered from its roof but no flag blew out its folds. There was
a garden about the house, the trim well-ordered garden of the English
folk with a lawn and banks of flowers, and a gardener with a hose was
busy watering it. Thresk stopped before the hedge. The windows were all
shuttered, the big door closed: there was nowhere any sign of the
inhabitants.

Thresk turned and walked back to the hotel. He found the bearer laying
out a change of clothes for him upon his bed.

"His Excellency is away," he said.

"Yes, Sahib," replied the bearer promptly. "His Excellency gone on
inspection tour."

"Then why in heaven's name didn't you tell me?" cried Thresk.

The bearer's face lost all its cheerfulness in a second and became a
mask. He was a Madrassee and black as coal. To Thresk it seemed that the
man had suddenly withdrawn himself altogether and left merely an image
with living eyes. He shrugged his shoulders. He knew that change in his
servant. It came at the first note of reproach in his voice and with such