"After you, General," laughed Bathurst. "We know your capacity on both the field and the floor, and how you respond to the shell and the bow. Come on! The ballroom is calling to us, and I doubt whether we'll explain to the satisfaction of everybody why we've been away from it so long. You, too, Harry!" They rose in a group and went out hastily. Harry was last, and his hand was on the bolt of the door, preparatory to closing it, when the general turned to Bathurst and said: "You've that diagram of ours, haven't you, Bathurst? It's not a thing to be left lying loose." "Why, no, sir, I thought you put it in your pocket." The general laughed. "You're suffering from astigmatism, Bathurst," he said. "Doubtless it was Colton whom you saw stowing it away. I think we'd better tear it into little bits as we have no further use for it." "But I haven't it, sir," said Colton, a veteran colonel, just recovering from a wound in the arm. "I supposed of course that one of the others took it." An uneasy look appeared in the general's eyes, but it passed in an instant. "You have it, Morton?" "No, sir. Like Bathurst I thought one of the others took it." "And you, Kitteridge?" "I did not take it, sir." "You surely have it, Johnson?" "No, sir, I was under the impression that you had taken it away with you." "And you, McCurdy?" McCurdy shook his head. "Then Kenton, as you were the last to rise, you certainly have it." "I was just a looker-on; I did not touch it," said Harry, whose hand was still on the bolt of the partly opened door. The general laughed. "Another case of everybody expecting somebody else to do a thing, and nobody doing it," he said. "Kenton, go back and take it from the table. In our absorption we've been singularly forgetful, and that plan must be destroyed at once." Harry reentered the room, and in their eagerness all of the officers followed. Then a simultaneous "Ah!" of dismay burst from them all. There was nothing on the table. The plan was gone. They looked at one another, and in the eyes of every one apprehension was growing. "The window is partly open," said the general, affecting a laugh, although it had an uneasy note, "and of course it has blown off the table. We'll surely find it behind the sofa or a chair." They searched the room eagerly, going over every inch of space, every possible hiding place, but the plan was not there. "Perhaps it's in the court," said the general. "It might have fluttered out there. Raise the sash higher, Kenton. Let nobody make any noise. We must be as quiet as possible about this. Luckily there's enough moonlight now for us to find even a small scrap of paper in the court." They stole through the window silently, one by one, and searched every inch of the court's space. But nothing was in it, save the grass and the flowers and the rosebushes that belonged there. They returned to the room, and once more looked at one another in dismay.