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 To Thresk it seemed that the man had suddenly withdrawn himself altogether and left merely an image with living eyes.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 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?"