The bungalow was silent, dimly lit. A servant lay rolled up in a cotton sheet, like a corpse, across the threshold of the drawing-room door, which was open. Why was the door open? Why were the venetian outer doors not closed and bolted?
The gharry, with his baggage on the roof, the sleepy driver and the miserable ponies, waited at the foot of the veranda steps while the sahib awoke the slumbering servant both with voice and foot.
The man sprang up with the terrified bewilderment of the suddenly awakened native. "Thieves! Murder! Thieves!" he yelled, until he recognised his master, when he bound his turban hastily about his dishevelled head and salaamed in respectful apology. The gharry man was paid, the luggage was deposited in the veranda, and the ramshackle conveyance rattled out of the compound. It all caused a noisy disturbance, and yet Trixie had not been aroused. No questioning call came from her bedroom to know what it all meant. In puzzled apprehension Coventry passed through the drawing-room, where a couple of wall lamps still burned low. Also the light in her bedroom had not been put out. He pushed aside the short curtain and looked into the room. She was not there. The bed was empty, undisturbed.
He returned to the drawing-room and called the bearer. "Where has the memsahib gone to dine?" he asked, realising at the same moment that it was long past the hour for dinner parties to break up.
The man told him blandly that he "believed the memsahib had gone to dine with Captain Roy-memsahib," then added, standing on one foot and rubbing a great toe against the other ankle, that he thought the syce had brought the "tum-tum" back some time ago.
"Call the syce!" said Coventry shortly; and the bearer obeyed, obviously relieved that he was to be questioned no further, since the sahib seemed annoyed.
The syce, a dull but well-intentioned person, could only say that the memsahib had told him to take the cart and the pony home from Roy-mem's bungalow. He did not know why. He also stood on one foot, vaguely apprehensive of the Colonel-sahib's displeasure.
"It was the memsahib's order," he added in hopeful self-exoneration.
"Very well," said Coventry; "go and get the tum-tum ready."
He stood and smoked in the veranda until the trap came round. His mind was in chaos; he could not think connectedly. What was Trixie doing? Had she been taken ill at Mrs. Roy's bungalow? Or had Mrs. Roy been taken ill, and was Trixie staying with her for the night? Either reason, lots of reasons, would explain her absence. Yet beneath the plausible explaining there lurked a dreadful doubt that clutched malevolently at his heart.