He passed on, therefore, swiftly to the room he knew to be his Captain's, and knocked. There was no answer. He opened the door and looked in. It was empty. A vague wonder assailed him, and he passed on to Lance Carlyon's room. It was empty also, and the vague uneasiness died down. They must be sitting up still in the balcony overlooking the river, where they sat every day after dinner. Stupid of him not to have gone there first; and yet, surely, it was late. Perhaps they were uneasy; perhaps they had already heard! An open letter "_On Her Majesty's Service_" lying on the dinner table as he passed through the mess room (which was still lit up--sign that the servants had gone to sleep awaiting their masters' call) attracted his attention. He glanced at it, half fearing to find himself forestalled by the police authorities. No! It was from them, as he had seen at once; but it was only that notice for dawn. Ah! what was this? this tiny scrap of paper, which had been twisted to a cocked-hat note, lying caught in the fold of the foolscap, with the two words--"_twelve o'clock_"--written on it? In a woman's writing. Roshan knew enough of invitations from Englishwomen to be sure of that. The vague uneasiness returned, as he went on to the balcony beyond the dining-room. There too, the swinging lamp still burnt, and showed him Lance Carlyon fast asleep in a lounge chair; but no one else. Where was Captain Dering? Captain Dering, who had the key of the little door in the bastion; Captain Dering, who had had a note with "_twelve o'clock_" in it? A sudden thought struck him. If--if there was anything in his vague fear--then, by taking the canoe, which lay at the bottom of the stairs, he could slip down stream, and see-- Forgetting everything else, Roshan stole softly past the sleeping Lance, and went down the stairs. The canoe was not there. Then Captain Dering must have taken it and gone--whither? There was but one place whither he was likely to go alone at that hour of the night; one place, a stair like this leading up to a balcony over the river where he had gone once before with a woman, a woman in a dress which marked her for what she was, really--a dress that marked her secluded--which made _this_, shame unutterable! Roshan's impotent fury rose hot at the inexpressible humiliation. The thought of Captain Dering and Laila alone in that balcony meant but one thing to his inherited ideas. No glaze of romance was possible. It was shame unutterable, irredeemable. Shame that must be revenged without delay. So, forgetting everything else in the world except this, he passed the sleeping Lance once more, hurried back to his quarters for his revolver, and only stopping to see that one chamber at least was loaded, made his way to that door which he knew would be on the latch. That patient, eager crowd was still thronging the courtyard as he crossed it, pausing a moment beside the great gun which centred the union-jack of raised paths.