He reached the bungalow. It stood like a shrouded ghost, and the drip,
drip, drip of the rain on the veranda came to him like a death-knell.

A gaunt figure met him almost on the threshold, and he recognized his
messenger with a sharp sense of coming disaster. The man stood mutely at
the salute.

"Well? Well? Speak!" he ordered, nearly beside himself with anxiety.
"Why didn't you come back with an answer?"

The man spoke with deep submission. "_Sahib_, there was no answer."

"What do you mean by that? What the--

Here, let me pass!" cried Merryon, in a ferment. "There must have
been--some sort of answer."

"No, _sahib_. No answer." The man spoke with inscrutable composure. "The
_mem-sahib_ has not come back," he said. "Let the _sahib_ see for
himself."

But Merryon had already burst into the bungalow; so he resumed his
patient watch on the veranda, wholly undisturbed, supremely patient.

The _khitmutgar_ came forward at his master's noisy entrance. There was
a trace--just the shadow of a suggestion--of anxiety on his dignified
face under the snow-white turban. He presented him with a note on a
salver with a few murmured words and a deep salaam.