Thresk’s fears were justified.
Sympathy for Stella Ballantyne had already begun to
wane. The fact that Ballantyne had been found
outside the door of the tent was already assuming
a sinister importance. Mrs. Ballantyne’s
counsel slid discreetly over that awkward incident.
Very fortunately, as it was now to prove, he did not
cross-examine the doctor from Ajmere at all.
But there are always the few who oppose the general
opinion the men and women who are in the
minority because it is the minority; those whom the
hysterical glorification made of Stella Ballantyne
had offended; the austere, the pedantic, the just,
the jealous, all were quick to seize upon this disconcerting
fact: Stella Ballantyne had dragged her dying
husband from the tent. It was either sheer callousness
or blind fury you might take your choice.
In either case it dulled the glow of martyrdom which
for a week or two had been so radiant upon Stella
Ballantyne’s forehead; and the few who argued
thus attracted adherents daily. And with the
sympathy for Stella Ballantyne interest in the case
began to wane too.
The magisterial inquiry threatened
to become tedious. The pictures of the witnesses
and the principals occupied less and less space in
the newspapers. In another week the case would
be coldly left with a shrug of the shoulders to the
Law Courts. But unexpectedly curiosity was stirred
again, for the day after Thresk had called upon the
lawyer, when the case for the Crown was at an end,
Mrs. Ballantyne’s counsel, Mr. Travers, asked
permission to recall Baram Singh. Permission was
granted, and Baram Singh once more took his place
in the witness-box.
Mr. Travers leant against the desk
behind him and put his questions with the most significant
slowness.
“I wish to ask you, Baram Singh,”
he said, “about the dinner-table on the Thursday
night. You laid it?”
“Yes,” replied Baram Singh.
“For how many?”
“For three.”
There was a movement through the whole court.
“Yes,” said Mr. Travers, “Captain
Ballantyne had a visitor that night.”
Baram Singh agreed.
“Look round the court and tell
the magistrate if you can see here the man who dined
with Captain Ballantyne and his wife that night.”
For a moment the court was filled
with the noise of murmuring. The usher cried
“Silence!” and the murmuring ceased.
A hush of expectation filled that crowded room as
Baram Singh’s eyes travelled slowly round the
walls. He dropped them to the well of the court,
and even his unexpressive face flashed with a look
of recognition.
“There,” he cried, “there!”
and he pointed to a man who was sitting just underneath
the counsel’s bench.
Mr. Travers leant forward and in a
quiet but particularly clear voice said:
“Will you kindly stand up, Mr. Thresk?”
Thresk stood up. To many of those
present the idlers, the people of fashion,
the seekers after a thrill of excitement who fill the
public galleries and law-courts his long
conduct of the great Carruthers trial had made him
a familiar figure. To the others his name, at
all events, was known, and as he stood up on the floor
of the court a swift and regular movement like a ripple
of water passed through the throng. They leant
forward to get a clearer view of him and for a moment
there was a hiss of excited whispering.
“That is the man who dined with
Captain and Mrs. Ballantyne on the night when Captain
Ballantyne was killed?” said Mr. Travers.
“Yes,” replied Baram Singh.
No one understood what was coming.
People began to ask themselves whether Thresk was
concerned in the murder. Word had been published
that he had already left for England. How was
it he was here now? Mr. Travers, for his part,
was enjoying to the full the suspense which his question
had aroused. Not by any intonation did he allow
a hint to escape him whether he looked upon Thresk
as an enemy or friend.
“You may sit down, sir, now,”
he said, and Thresk resumed his seat.
“Will you tell us what you know
of Mr. Thresk’s visit to the Captain?”
Travers resumed, and Baram Singh told how a camel had
been sent to the dâk-house by the station of Jarwhal
Junction.
“Yes,” said Mr. Travers,
“and he dined in the tent. How long did
he stay?”
“He left the camp at eleven
o’clock on the camel to catch the night train
to Bombay. The Captain-sahib saw him off from
the edge of the camp.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Travers, “Captain
Ballantyne saw him off?”
“Yes from the edge of the camp.”
“And then went back to the tent?”
“Yes.”
“Now I want to take you to another point.
You waited at dinner?”
“Yes.”
“And towards the close of dinner Mrs. Ballantyne
left the room?”
“Yes.”
“She did not come back again?”
“No.”
“No. The two men were then left alone?”
“Yes.”
“After dinner was the table cleared?”
“Yes,” said Baram Singh,
“the Captain-sahib called to me to clear the
table quickly.”
“Yes,” said Travers.
“Now, will you tell me what the Captain-sahib
was doing while you were clearing the table?”
Baram Singh reflected.
“First of all the Captain-sahib
offered a box of cheroots to his visitor, and his
visitor refused and took a pipe from his pocket.
The Captain-sahib then lit a cheroot for himself and
replaced the box on the top of the bureau.”
“And after that?” asked Travers.
“After that,” said Baram
Singh, “he stooped down, unlocked the bottom
drawer of his bureau and then turned sharply to me
and told me to hurry and get out.”
“And that order you obeyed?”
“Yes.”
“Now, Baram Singh, did you enter the room again?”
Baram Singh explained that after he
had gone out with the table-cloth he returned in a
few moments with an ash-tray, which he placed beside
the visitor-sahib.
“Yes,” said Travers. “Had Captain
Ballantyne altered his position?”
Baram Singh then related that Captain
Ballantyne was still sitting in his chair by the bureau,
but that the drawer of the bureau was now open, and
that on the ground close to Captain Ballantyne’s
feet there was a red despatch-box.
“The Captain-sahib,” he
continued, “turned to me with great anger, and
drove me again out of the room.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Travers, and he
sat down.
The prosecuting counsel rose at once.
“Now, Baram Singh,” he
said with severity, “why did you not mention
when you were first put in the witness-box that this
gentleman was present in the camp that night?”
“I was not asked.”
“No, that is quite true,”
he continued, “you were not asked specifically,
but you were asked to tell all that you knew.”
“I did not interfere,”
replied Baram Singh. “I answered what questions
were asked. Besides, when the sahib left the camp
the Captain-sahib was alive.”
At this moment Mr. Travers leaned
across to the prosecuting counsel and said: “It
will all be made clear when Mr. Thresk goes into the
box.”
And once more, as Mr. Travers spoke
these words, a rustle of expectancy ran round the
court.
Travers opened the case for the defence
on the following morning. He had been originally
instructed, he declared, to reserve the defence for
the actual trial before the jury, but upon his own
urgent advice that plan was not to be followed.
The case which he had to put before the stipendiary
must so infallibly prove that Mrs. Ballantyne was free
from all complicity in this crime that he felt he
would not be doing his duty to her unless he made
it public at the first opportunity. That unhappy
lady had already, as every one who had paid even the
most careless attention to the facts that had been
presented by the prosecution must know, suffered so
much distress and sorrow in the course of her married
life that he felt it would not be fair to add to it
the strain and suspense which even the most innocent
must suffer when sent for trial upon such a serious
charge. He at once proposed to call Mr. Thresk,
and Thresk rose and went into the witness-box.
Thresk told the story of that dinner-party
word for word as it had occurred, laying some emphasis
on the terror which from time to time had taken possession
of Stephen Ballantyne, down to the moment when Baram
Singh had brought the ash-tray and left the two men
together, Thresk sitting by the table in the middle
of the room and Ballantyne at his bureau with the
despatch-box on the floor at his feet.
“Then I noticed an extraordinary
look of fear disfigure his face,” he continued,
“and following the direction of his eyes I saw
a lean brown arm with a thin hand as delicate as a
woman’s wriggle forward from beneath the wall
of the tent towards the despatch-box.”
“You saw that quite clearly?” asked Mr.
Travers.
“The tent was not very brightly
lit,” Thresk explained. “At the first
glance I saw something moving. I was inclined
to believe it a snake and to account in that way for
Captain Ballantyne’s fear and the sudden rigidity
of his attitude. But I looked again and I was
then quite sure that it was an arm and hand.”
The evidence roused those present
to such a tension of excitement and to so loud a burst
of murmuring that it was quite a minute before order
was restored and Thresk took up his tale again.
He described Ballantyne’s search for the thief.
“And what were you doing,”
Mr. Travers asked, “whilst the search was being
made?”
“I stood by the table holding
the despatch-box firmly in my hands as Ballantyne
had urgently asked me to do.”
“Quite so,” said Mr. Travers;
and the attention of the court was now directed to
that despatch-box and the portrait of Bahadur Salak
which it contained. The history of the photograph,
its importance at this moment when Salak’s trial
impended, and Ballantyne’s conviction of the
extreme danger which its possessor ran a
conviction established by the bold attempt to steal
it made under their very eyes was laid before
the stipendiary. He sent the case to trial as
he was bound to do, but the verdict in most people’s
eyes was a foregone conclusion. Thresk had supplied
a story which accounted for the crime, and cross-examination
could not shake him. It was easy to believe that
at the very moment when Thresk was saying goodbye
to Captain Ballantyne by the fire on the edge of the
camp the thief slipped into the marquee, and when discovered
by Ballantyne either on his return or later shot him
with Mrs. Ballantyne’s rifle. It was clear
that no conviction could be obtained while this story
held the field and in due course Mrs. Ballantyne was
acquitted. Of Thresk’s return to the tent
just before leaving the camp nothing was said.
Thresk himself did not mention it and the counsel for
the Crown had no hint which could help him to elicit
it.
Thus the case ended. The popular
heroine of a criminal trial loses, as all observers
will have noticed, her crown of romance the moment
she is set free; and that good fortune awaited Stella
Ballantyne. Thresk called the next day upon Jane
Repton and was coldly told that Stella had already
gone from Bombay. He betook himself to her solicitor,
who was cordial but uncommunicative. The Reptons,
it appeared, were responsible to him for the conduct
of the case. He had not any knowledge of Stella
Ballantyne’s destination, and he pointed to
a stack of telegrams and letters as confirmation of
his words.
“They will all go up to Khamballa
Hill,” he said. “I have no other
address.”
The next day, however, a little note
of gratitude came to Thresk through the post.
It was unsigned and without any address. But it
was in Stella Ballantyne’s handwriting and the
post-mark was Kurrachee. That she did not wish
to see him he could quite understand; Kurrachee was
a port from which ships sailed to many destinations;
he could hardly set out in a blind search for her
across the world. So here, it seemed, was that
chapter closed. He took the next steamer westwards
from Bombay, landed at Brindisi and went back to his
work in the Law Courts and in Parliament.