On entering it I thought he must be feeling pleased. It was as still as a tomb. I could see no one in the living rooms; and the verandah, too, was empty, except for a man at the far end dozing prone in a long chair. At the noise of my footsteps he opened one horribly fish-like eye. He was a stranger to me. I retreated from there, and crossing the dining room⁠—a very bare apartment with a motionless punkah hanging over the centre table⁠—I knocked at a door labelled in black letters: “Chief Steward.”

The answer to my knock being a vexed and doleful plaint: “Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What is it now?” I went in at once.