Witness for the Defence

by A. E. W. Mason

"Mr. Thresk, what did you mean when you repeated and repeated if she comes?"

Thresk came slowly back into the room.

"I meant that eight years ago I gave her a very good reason why she should put no faith in me."

He told her that quite frankly and simply, but he told her no more than that, and she let him go. He went back to the great hotel on the Apollo Bund and sent off a number of cablegrams to London saying that he had missed his steamer and that the work waiting for him must go to other hands. The letter to Stella Ballantyne he kept to the last. It could not reach her immediately in any case since she was in camp. For all he knew it might be weeks before she read it; and he had need to go warily in the writing of it. Certain words she had used to him were an encouragement; but there were others which made him doubt whether she would have any faith in him. Every now and then there had been a savour of bitterness. Once she had been shamed because of him, on Bignor Hill where Stane Street runs to Chichester, and a second time in front of him in the tent at Chitipur. No, it was not an easy letter which he had to write, and he took the night and the greater part of the next day to decide upon its wording. It could not in any case go until the night-mail. He had finished it and directed it by six o'clock in the evening and he went down with the letter in his hand into the big lounge to post it in the box there. But it never was posted.

Close to the foot of the staircase stood a tape machine, and as Thresk descended he heard the clicking of the instrument and saw the usual small group of visitors about it. They were mostly Americans, and they were reading out to one another the latest prices of the stock-markets. Some of the chatter reached to Thresk's inattentive ears, and when he was only two steps from the floor one carelessly-spoken phrase interjected between the values of two securities brought him to a stop. The speaker was a young man with a squarish face and thick hair parted accurately in the middle. He was dressed in a thin grey suit and he was passing the tape between his fingers as it ran out. The picture of him was impressed during that instant upon Thresk's mind, so that he could never afterwards forget it.

"Copper's up one point," he was saying, "that's fine. Who's Captain Ballantyne, I wonder? United Steel has dropped seven-eighths. Well, that doesn't affect me," and so he ran on.

Thresk heard no more of what he said. He stood wondering what news could have come up on the tape of Captain Ballantyne who was out in camp in the state of Chitipur, or if there was another Captain Ballantyne. He joined the little group in front of the machine, and picking up the ribbon from the floor ran his eyes backwards along it until he came to "United Steel." The sentence in front of that ran as follows:

"Captain Ballantyne was found dead early yesterday morning outside his tent close to Jarwhal Junction."

Thresk read the sentence twice and then walked away. The news might be false, of course, but if it were true here was a revolution in his life. There was no need for this letter which he held in his hand. The way was smoothed out for Stella, for him. Not for a moment could he pretend to do anything but welcome the news, to wish with all his heart that it was true. And it seemed probable news. There was the matter of that photograph. Thresk had carried it out to the Governor's house on Malabar Point on the very morning of his arrival in Bombay. He had driven on to Mrs. Repton's house after he had left it there. But he had taken it away from Chitipur at too late a day to save Ballantyne. Ballantyne had, after all, had good cause to be afraid while he possessed it, and the news had not yet got to Salak's friends that it had left his possession. Thus he made out the history of Captain Ballantyne's death.

The tape machine, however, might have ticked out a mere rumour with no truth in it at all. He went to the office and obtained a copy of The Advocate of India,—the evening newspaper of the city. He looked at the stop-press telegrams. There was no mention of Ballantyne's death. Nor on glancing down the columns could he find in any paragraph a statement that any mishap had befallen him. But on the other hand he read that he himself, Henry Thresk, having brought his case to a successful conclusion, had left India yesterday by the mail-steamer Madras, bound for Marseilles. He threw down the paper and went to the telephone-box. If the news were true the one person likely to know of it was Mrs. Repton. Thresk rang up the house on the Khamballa Hill and asked to speak to her. An answer was returned to him at once that Mrs. Repton had given orders that she was not to be disturbed. Thresk however insisted: