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man had suddenly withdrawn himself altogether and left merely an image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
completeness that it gave him the shock of a conjurer's trick. One moment
the bearer was before him, the next he had disappeared.

"What did you do with the letter?" Thresk asked and was careful that
there should be no exasperation in his voice.

The bearer came to life again, his white teeth gleamed in smiles.

"I leave the letter. I give it to the gardener. All letters are sent to
his Excellency."

"When?"

"Perhaps this week, perhaps next."

"I see," said Thresk. He stood for a moment or two with his eyes upon the
window. Then he moved abruptly.

"We go back to Bombay to-morrow afternoon."

"The Sahib will see Chitipur to-morrow. There are beautiful palaces on
the lake."

Thresk laughed, but the laugh was short and bitter.

"Oh yes, we'll do the whole thing in style to-morrow."

He had the tone of a man who has caught himself out in some childish act
of folly. He seemed at once angry and ashamed.

None the less he was the next morning the complete tourist doing India
at express speed during a cold weather. He visited the Museum, he walked
through the Elephant Gate into the bazaar, he was rowed over the lake to
the island palaces; he admired their marble steps and columns and floors
and was confounded by their tinkling blue glass chandeliers. He did the
correct thing all through that morning and early in the afternoon climbed
into the little train which was to carry him back to Jarwhal Junction and
the night mail to Bombay.

"You will have five hours to wait at the junction, Mr. Thresk," said the
manager of the hotel, who had come to see him off. "I have put up some
dinner for yo