Thresk was prepared for that question. He had the truth ready and he spoke it frankly. Mr. Pettifer turned away to Hazlewood, who was watching him expectantly.
"We have nothing more to do, Hazlewood, but to thank Mr. Thresk for answering our questions and to apologise to him for having put them."
Mr. Hazlewood was utterly disconcerted. After all, then, the marriage must take place; the plot had ignominiously failed, the great questions which were to banish Stella Ballantyne from Little Beeding had been put and answered. He sat like a man stricken by calamity. He stammered out reluctantly a few words to which Thresk paid little heed.
"You are satisfied then?" he asked of Pettifer; and Pettifer showed him unexpectedly a cordial and good-humoured face.
"Yes. Let me say to you, Mr. Thresk, that ever since I began to study this case I have wished less and less to bear hardly upon Mrs. Ballantyne. As I read those columns of evidence the heavy figure of Stephen Ballantyne took life again, but a very sinister life; and when I look at Stella and think of what she went through during the years of her married life while we were comfortably here at home I cannot but feel a shiver of discomfort. Yes, I am satisfied and I am glad that I am satisfied"; and with a smile which suddenly illumined his dry parched face he held out his hand to Henry Thresk.
It was perhaps as well that the questions were over, for even while Pettifer was speaking Stella's voice was heard in the hall. Pettifer had just time to thrust away the envelope with the cuttings into a drawer before she came into the room with Dick. She had been forced to leave the three men together, but she had dreaded it. During that one hour of absence she had lived through a lifetime of terror and anxiety. What would Thresk tell them? What was he now telling them? She was like one waiting downstairs while a surgical operation is being performed in the theatre above. She had hurried Dick back to Little Deeding, and when she came into the room her eyes roamed round in suspense from Thresk to Hazlewood, from Hazlewood to Pettifer. She saw the tray of miniatures upon the table.
"You admire the collection?" she said to Thresk.
"Very much," he answered, and Pettifer took her by the arm and in a voice of kindness which she had never heard him use before he said:
"Now tell me about your house. That's much more interesting."