He had reached Little Beeding only a few moments before Dick and Stella had crossed into the garden. He had been led by Hubbard into the library, where Mr. Hazlewood was sitting. From the windows he had even seen the thatched cottage where Stella Ballantyne dwelt and its tiny garden bright with flowers.
"It is most kind of you to come," Mr. Hazlewood had said. "Ever since we had our little correspondence I have been anxious to take your opinion on my collection. Though how in the world you manage to find time to have an opinion at all upon the subject is most perplexing. I never open theTimesbut I see your name figuring in some important case."
"And I, Mr. Hazlewood," Thresk replied with a smile, "never open my mail without receiving a pamphlet from you. I am not the only active man in the world."
Even at that moment Mr. Hazlewood flushed with pleasure at the flattery.
"Little reflections," he cried with a modest deprecation, "worked out more or less to completeness—may I say that?—in the quiet of a rural life, sparks from the tiny flame of my midnight oil." He picked up one pamphlet from a stack by his writing-table. "You might perhaps care to look atThe Prison Walls."
Thresk drew back.
"I have got mine, Mr. Hazlewood," he said firmly. "Every man in England should have one. No man in England has a right to two."
Mr. Hazlewood fairly twittered with satisfaction. Here was a notable man from the outside world of affairs who knew his work and held it in esteem. Obviously then he was right to take these few disagreeable twists and turns which would ensure to him a mind free to pursue his labours. He looked down at the pamphlet however, and his satisfaction was a trifle impaired.
"I am not sure that this is quite my best work," he said timidly—"a little hazardous perhaps."
"Would you say that?" asked Thresk.
"Yes, indeed I should." Mr. Hazlewood had the air of one making a considerable concession. "The very title is inaccurate.The Prison Walls must Cast no Shadow." He repeated the sentence with a certain unction. "The rhythm is perhaps not amiss but the metaphor is untrue. My son pointed it out to me. As he says, all walls cast shadows."
"Yes," said Thresk. "The trouble is to know where and on whom the shadow is going to fall."
Mr. Hazlewood was startled by the careless words. He came to earth heavily. All was not as yet quite ready for the little trick which had been devised. The Pettifers had not arrived.
"Perhaps you would like to see your room, Mr. Thresk," he said. "Your bag has been taken up, no doubt. We will look at my miniatures after tea."
"I shall be delighted," said Thresk as he followed Hazlewood to the door."But you must not expect too much knowledge from me."
"Oh!" cried his host with a laugh. "Pettifer tells me that you are a great authority."
"Then Pettifer's wrong," said Thresk and so stopped. "Pettifer? Pettifer?Isn't he a solicitor?"
"Yes, he told me that he knew you. He married my sister. They are both coming to tea."
With that he led Thresk to his room and left him there. The room was over the porch of the house and looked down the short level drive to the iron gates and the lane. It was all familiar ground to Thresk or rather to that other man with whom Thresk's only connection was a dull throb at his heart, a queer uneasiness and discomfort. He leaned out of the window. He could hear the river singing between the grass banks at the bottom of the garden behind him. He would hear it through the night. Then came a knocking upon his door, and he did not notice it at once. It was repeated and he turned and said:
"Come in!"
Hubbard advanced with a note upon a salver.
"Mrs. Ballantyne asked me to give you this at once, sir."
Thresk stared at the butler. The name was so apposite to his thoughts that he could not believe it had been uttered. But the salver was held out to him and the handwriting upon the envelope removed his doubts. He took it up, said "Thank you" in an absent voice and waited until the door was closed again and he was alone. The last time he had seen that writing was eighteen months ago. A little note of thanks, blurred with tears and scribbled hastily and marked with no address, had been handed to him in Bombay. Stella Ballantyne had disappeared then. She was here now at Little Beeding and his relationship with the young struggling barrister of ten years back suddenly became actual and near. He tore open the envelope and read.
"Be prepared to see me. Be prepared to hear news of me. I will have a talk with you afterwards if you like. This is a trap. Be kind."
He stood for a while with the letter in his hand, speculating upon its meaning, until the wheels of a car grated on the gravel beneath his window. The Pettifers had come. But Thresk was in no hurry to descend. He read the note through many times before he hid it away in his letter-case and went down the stairs.
Meanwhile Stella Ballantyne waited below. She heard Mr. Hazlewood in the hall greeting the Pettifers with the false joviality which sat so ill upon him; she imagined the shy nods and glances which told them that the trap was properly set. Mr. Hazlewood led them into the room.
"Is tea ready, Stella? We won't wait for Dick," he said, and Stella took her place at the table. She had her back to the door by which Thresk would enter. She had not a doubt that thus her chair had been deliberately placed. He would be in the room and near to the table before he saw her. He would not have a moment to prepare himself against the surprise of her presence. Stella listened for the sound of his footsteps in the hall; she could not think of a single topic to talk about except the presence of that extra sixth cup; and that she must not mention if the tables were really to be turned upon her antagonists. Surprise must be visible upon her side when Thresk did come in. But she was not alone in finding conversation difficult. Embarrassment and expectancy weighed down the whole party, so that they began suddenly to speak at once and simultaneously to stop. Robert Pettifer however asked if Dick was playing cricket, and so gave Harold Hazlewood an opportunity.
"No, the match was over early," said the old man, and he settled himself in his arm-chair. "I have given some study to the subject of cricket," he said.
"You?" asked Stella with a smile of surprise. Was he merely playing for time, she wondered? But he had the air of contentment with which he usually embarked upon his disquisitions.
"Yes. I do not consider our national pastime beneath a philosopher's attention. I have formed two theories about the game."
"I am sure you have," Robert Pettifer interposed.
"And I have invented two improvements, though I admit at once that they will have to wait until a more enlightened age than ours adopts them. In the first place"—and Mr. Hazlewood flourished a forefinger in the air—"the game ought to be played with a soft ball. There is at present a suggestion of violence about it which the use of a soft ball would entirely remove."
"Entirely," Mr. Pettifer agreed and his wife exclaimed impatiently:
"Rubbish, Harold, rubbish!"
Stella broke nervously into the conversation.
"Violence? Why even women play cricket, Mr. Hazlewood."
"I cannot, Stella," he returned, "accept the view that whatever women do must necessarily be right. There are instances to the contrary."
"Yes. I come across a few of them in my office," Robert Pettifer said grimly; and once more embarrassment threatened to descend upon the party. But Mr. Hazlewood was off upon a favourite theme. His eyes glistened and the object of the gathering vanished for the moment from his thoughts.
"And in the second place," he resumed, "the losers should be accounted to have won the game."
"Yes, that must be right," said Pettifer. "Upon my word you are in form,Hazlewood."
"But why?" asked Mrs. Pettifer.
Harold Hazlewood smiled upon her as upon a child and explained:
"Because by adopting that system you would do something to eradicate the spirit of rivalry, the desire to win, the ambition to beat somebody else which is at the bottom of half our national troubles."
"And all our national success," said Pettifer.
Hazlewood patted his brother-in-law upon the shoulder. He looked at him indulgently. "You are a Tory, Robert," he said, and implied that argument with such an one was mere futility.
He had still his hand upon Pettifer's shoulder when the door opened.Stella saw by the change in his face that it was Thresk who was entering.But she did not move.
"Ah," said Mr. Hazlewood. "Come over here and take a cup of tea."
Thresk came forward to the table. He seemed altogether unconscious that the eyes of the two men were upon him.
"Thank you. I should like one," he said, and at the sound of his voiceStella Ballantyne turned around in her chair.
"You!" she cried and the cry was pitched in a tone of pleasure and welcome.
"Of course you know Mrs. Ballantyne," said Hazlewood. He saw Stella rise from her chair and hold out her hand to Thresk with the colour aflame in her cheeks.
"You are surprised to see me again," she said.
Thresk took her hand cordially. "I am delighted to see you again," he replied.
"And I to see you," said Stella, "for I have never yet had a chance of thanking you"; and she spoke with so much frankness that even Pettifer was shaken in his suspicions. She turned upon Mr. Hazlewood with a mimicry of indignation. "Do you know, Mr. Hazlewood, that you have done a very cruel thing?"
Mr. Hazlewood was utterly discomfited by the failure of his plot, and when Stella attacked him so directly he had not a doubt but that she had divined his treachery.
"I?" he gasped. "Cruel? How?"
"In not telling me beforehand that I was to meet so good a friend of mine." Her face relaxed to a smile as she added: "I would have put on my best frock in his honour."
Undoubtedly Stella carried off the honour of that encounter. She had at once driven the battle with spirit onto Hazlewood's own ground and left him worsted and confused. But the end was not yet. Mr. Hazlewood waited for his son Richard, and when Richard appeared he exclaimed:
"Ah, here's my son. Let me present him to you, Mr. Thresk. And there's the family."
He leaned back, with a smile in his eyes, watching Henry Thresk. RobertPettifer watched too.
"The family?" Thresk asked. "Is Mrs. Ballantyne a relation then?"
"She is going to be," said Dick.
"Yes," Mr. Hazlewood explained, still beaming and still watchful."Richard and Stella are going to be married."
A pause followed which was just perceptible before Thresk spoke again.But he had his face under control. He took the stroke without flinching.He turned to Dick with a smile.
"Some men have all the luck," he said, and Dick, who had been looking at him in bewilderment, cried:
"Mr. Thresk? Not the Mr. Thresk to whom I owe so much?"
"The very man," said Thresk, and Dick held out his hand to him gravely.
"Thank you," he said. "When I think of the horrible net of doubt and assumption in which Stella was coiled, I tell you I feel cold down my spine even now. If you hadn't come forward with your facts—"
"Yes," Thresk interposed. "If I hadn't come forward with my facts. But I couldn't well keep them to myself, could I?" A few more words were said and then Dick rose from his chair.
"Time's up, Stella," and he explained to Henry Thresk: "We have to look over a house this afternoon."
"A house? Yes, I see," said Thresk, but he spoke slowly and there was just audible a little inflection of doubt in his voice. Stella was listening for it; she heard it when her two antagonists noticed nothing.
"But, Dick," she said quickly, "we can put the inspection off."
"Not on my account," Thresk returned. "There's no need for that." He was not looking at Stella whilst he spoke and she longed to see his face. She must know exactly how she stood with him, what he thought of her. She turned impulsively to Mr. Hazlewood.
"I haven't been asked, but may I come to dinner? You see I owe a good deal to Mr. Thresk."
Mr. Hazlewood was for the moment at a loss. He had not lost hope that between now and dinner-time explanations would be given which would banish Stella Ballantyne altogether from Little Beeding. But he had no excuse ready and he stammered out:
"Of course, my dear. Didn't I ask you? I must have forgotten. I certainly expect you to dine with us to-night. Margaret will no doubt be here."
Margaret Pettifer had taken little part in the conversation about the tea-table. She sat in frigid hostility, speaking only when politeness commanded. She accepted her brother's invitation with a monosyllable.
"Thank you," said Stella, and she faced Henry Thresk, looking him straight in the eyes but not daring to lay any special stress upon the words: "Then I shall see you to-night."
Thresk read in her face a prayer that he should hold his hand until she had a chance to speak with him. She turned away and went from the room with Dick Hazlewood.
The old man rose as soon as the door was closed.
"Now we might have a look at the miniatures, Mr. Thresk. You will excuse us, Margaret, won't you?"
"Of course," she answered upon a nod from her husband. The two men passed through the doors into the great library whilst Thresk took a more ceremonious leave of Mrs. Pettifer; and as Hazlewood opened the drawers of his cabinets Robert Pettifer said in a whisper:
"That was a pretty good failure, I must say. And it was my idea too."
"Yes," replied Hazlewood in a voice as low. "What do you think?"
"That they share no secret."
"You are satisfied then?"
"I didn't say that"; and Thresk himself appeared in the doorway and went across to the writing-table upon which Hazlewood had just laid a drawer in which miniatures were ranged.
"I haven't met you," said Pettifer, "since you led for us in the greatBirmingham will-suit."
"No," answered Thresk as he took his seat at the table. "It wasn't quite such a tough fight as I expected. You see there wasn't one really reliable witness for the defence."
"No," said Pettifer grimly. "If there had been we should have been beaten."
Mr. Hazlewood began to point out this and that miniature of his collection, bending over Thresk as he did so. It seemed that the two collectors were quite lost in their common hobby until Robert Pettifer gave the signal.
Then Mr. Hazlewood began:
"I am very glad to meet you, Mr. Thresk, for reasons quite outside these miniatures of mine."
He spoke with a noticeable awkwardness, yet Henry Thresk disregarded it altogether.
"Oh?" he said carelessly.
"Yes. Being Richard's father I am naturally concerned in everything which affects him nearly—the trial of Stella Ballantyne for instance."
Thresk bent his head down over the tray.
"Quite so," he said. He pointed to a miniature. "I saw that at Christie's and coveted it myself."
"Did you?" Mr. Hazlewood asked and he almost offered it as a bribe. "Now you gave evidence, Mr. Thresk."
Thresk never lifted his head.
"You have no doubt read the evidence I gave," he said, peering from this delicate jewel of the painter's art to that.
"To be sure."
"And since your son is engaged to Mrs. Ballantyne, I suppose that you were satisfied with it"—and he paused to give a trifle of significance to his next words—"as the jury was."
"Yes, of course," Mr. Hazlewood stammered, "but a witness, I think, only answers the questions put to him."
"That is so," said Thresk, "if he is a wise witness." He took one of the miniatures out of the drawer and held it to the light. But Mr. Hazlewood was not to be deterred.
"And subsequent reflection," he continued obstinately, "might suggest that all the questions which could throw light upon the trial had not been put."
Thresk replaced the miniature in the drawer in front of him and leaned back in his chair. He looked now straight at Mr. Hazlewood.
"It was not, I take it, in order to put those questions to me that you were kind enough, Mr. Hazlewood, to ask me to give my opinion on your miniatures. For that would have been setting a trap for me, wouldn't it?"
Hazlewood stared at Thresk with the bland innocence of a child. "Oh no, no," he declared, and then an insinuating smile beamed upon his long thin face. "Only since youarehere and since so much is at stake for me—my son's happiness—I hoped that you might perhaps give us an answer or two which would disperse the doubts of some suspicious people."
"Who are they?" asked Thresk.
"Neighbours of ours," replied Hazlewood, and thereupon Robert Pettifer stepped forward. He had remained aloof and silent until this moment. Now he spoke shortly, but he spoke to the point:
"I for one."
Thresk turned with a smile upon Pettifer.
"I thought so. I recognised Mr. Pettifer's hand in all this. But he ought to know that the sudden confrontation of a suspected person with unexpected witnesses takes place, in those countries where the method is practised, before the trial; not, as you so ingeniously arranged it this afternoon, two years after the verdict has been given."
Robert Pettifer turned red. Then he looked whimsically across the table at his brother-in-law.
"We had better make a clean breast of it, Hazlewood."
"I think so," said Thresk gently.
Pettifer came a step nearer. "We are in the wrong," he said bluntly. "But we have an excuse. Our trouble is very great. Here's my brother-in-law to begin with, whose whole creed of life has been to deride the authority of conventional man—to tilt against established opinion. Mrs. Ballantyne comes back from her trial in Bombay to make her home again at Little Beeding. Hazlewood champions her—not for her sake, but for the sake of his theories. It pleases his vanity. Now he can prove that he is not as others are."
Mr. Hazlewood did not relish this merciless analysis of his character. He twisted in his chair, he uttered a murmur of protest. But Robert Pettifer waved him down and continued:
"So he brings her to his house. He canvasses for her. He throws his son in her way. She has beauty—she has something more than beauty—she stands apart as a woman who has walked through fire. She has suffered very much. Look at it how one will, she has suffered beyond her deserts. She has pretty deferential ways which make their inevitable appeal to women as to men. In a word, Hazlewood sets the ball rolling and it gets beyond his reach."
Thresk nodded.
"Yes, I understand that."
"Finally, Hazlewood's son falls in love with her—not a boy mind, but a man claiming a man's right to marry where he loves. And at once in Hazlewood conventional man awakes."
"Dear me, no," interposed Harold Hazlewood.
"But I say yes," Pettifer continued imperturbably. "Conventional man awakes in him and cries loudly against the marriage. Then there's myself. I am fond of Dick. I have no child. He will be my heir and I am not poor. He is doing well in his profession. To be an Instructor of the Staff Corps at his age means hard work, keenness, ability. I look forward to a great career. I am very fond of him. And—understand me, Mr. Thresk"—he checked his speech and weighed his words very carefully—"I wouldn't say that he shouldn't marry Stella Ballantyne just because Stella Ballantyne has lain under a grave charge of which she has been acquitted. No, I may be as formal as my brother-in-law thinks, but I hold a wider faith than that. But I am not satisfied. That is the truth, Mr. Thresk. I am not sure of what happened in that tent in far-away Chitipur after you had ridden away to catch the night mail to Bombay."
Robert Pettifer had made his confession simply and with some dignity. Thresk looked at him for a few moments. Was he wondering whether he could answer the questions? Was he hesitating through anger at the trick which had been played upon him? Pettifer could not tell. He waited in suspense. Thresk pushed his chair back suddenly and came forward from behind the table.
"Ask your questions," he said.
"You consent to answer them?" Mr. Hazlewood cried joyously, and Thresk replied with coldness:
"I must. For if I don't consent your suspicions at once are double what they were. But I am not pleased."
"Oh, we practised a little diplomacy," said Hazlewood, making light of his offence.
"Diplomacy!" For the first time a gleam of anger shone in Thresk's eyes. "You have got me to your house by a trick. You have abused your position as my host. And but that I should injure a woman whom life has done nothing but injure I should go out of your door this instant."
He turned his back upon Harold Hazlewood and sat down in a chair opposite to Robert Pettifer. A little round table separated them. Pettifer, seated upon a couch, took from his pocket the envelope with the press-cuttings and spread them on the table in front of him. Thresk lolled back in his chair. It was plain that he was in no terror of Pettifer's examination.
"I am at your service," he said.
The afternoon sunlight poured into the room golden and clear. Outside the open windows the garden was noisy with birds and the river babbled between its banks. Henry Thresk shut his ears against the music. For all his appearance of ease he dreaded the encounter which was now begun. Pettifer he knew to be a shrewd man. He watched him methodically arranging his press-cuttings in front of him. Pettifer might well find some weak point in his story which he himself had not discovered; and whatever course he was minded afterwards to take, here and now he was determined once more to fight Stella's battle.
"I need not go back on the facts of the trial," said Pettifer. "They are fresh enough in your memory, no doubt. Your theory as I understand it ran as follows: While you were mounting your camel on the edge of the camp to return to the station and Ballantyne was at your side, the thief whose arm you had both seen under the tent wall, not knowing that now you had the photograph of Bahadur Salak which he wished to steal, slipped into the tent unperceived, took up the rook-rifle—"
"Which was standing by Mrs. Ballantyne's writing-table," Thresk interposed.
"Loaded it,—"
"The cartridges were lying open in a drawer."
"And shot Ballantyne on his return."
"Yes," Thresk agreed. "In addition you must remember that when Captain Ballantyne was found an hour or so later Mrs. Ballantyne was in bed and asleep."
"Quite so," said Pettifer. "In brief, Mr. Thresk, you supplied a reasonable motive for the crime and some evidence of a criminal. And I admit that on your testimony the jury returned the only verdict which it was possible to give."
"What troubles you then?" Henry Thresk asked, and Pettifer replied drily:
"Various points. Here's one—a minor one. If Captain Ballantyne was shot by a thief detected in the act of thieving why should that thief risk capture and death by dragging Captain Ballantyne's body out into the open? It seems to me the last thing which he would naturally do."
Thresk shrugged his shoulders.
"I can't explain that. It is perhaps possible that not finding the photograph he fell into a blind rage and satisfied it by violence towards the dead man."
"Dead or dying," Mr. Pettifer corrected. "There seems to have been some little doubt upon that point. But your theory's a little weak, isn't it? To get away unseen would be that thief's first preoccupation, surely?"
"Reasoning as you and I are doing here quietly, at our ease, in this room, no doubt you are right, Mr. Pettifer. But criminals are caught because they don't reason quietly when they have just committed a crime. The behaviour of a man whose mind is influenced by that condition cannot be explained always by any laws of psychology. He may be in a wild panic. He may act as madmen act, or like a child in a rage. And if my explanation is weak it's no weaker than the only other hypothesis: that Mrs. Ballantyne herself dragged him into the open."
Mr. Pettifer shook his head.
"I am not so sure. I can conceive a condition of horror in the wife, horror at what she had done, which would make that act not merely possible but almost inevitable. I make no claims to being an imaginative man, Mr. Thresk, but I try to put myself into the position of the wife"; and he described with a vividness for which Thresk was not prepared the scene as he saw it.
"She goes to bed, she undresses and goes to bed—she must do that if she is to escape—she puts out her light, she lies in the dark awake, and under the same roof, close to her, in the dark too, is lying the man she has killed. Just a short passage separates her from him. There are no doors—mind that, Mr. Thresk—no doors to lock and bolt, merely a grass screen which you could lift with your forefinger. Wouldn't any and every one of the little cracks and sounds and breathings, of which the quietest and stillest night is full, sound to her like the approach of the dead man? The faintest breath of air would seem a draught made by the swinging of the grass-curtain as it was stealthily lifted—lifted by the dead man. No, Mr. Thresk. The wife is just the one person I could imagine who would do that needless barbarous violence of dragging the body into the open—and she would do it, not out of cruelty, but because she must or go mad."
Thresk listened without a movement until Robert Pettifer had finished.Then he said:
"You know Mrs. Ballantyne. Has she the strength which she must have had to drag a heavy man across the carpet of a tent and fling him outside?"
"Not now, not before. But just at the moment? You argued, Mr. Thresk, that it is impossible to foresee what people will do under the immediate knowledge that they have committed a capital crime. I agree. But I go a little further. I say that they will also exhibit a physical strength with which it would be otherwise impossible to credit them. Fear lends it to them."
"Yes," Thresk interrupted quickly, "but don't you see, Mr. Pettifer, that you are implying the existence of an emotion in Mrs. Ballantyne which the facts prove her to have been without—fear, panic? She was found quietly asleep in her bed by the ayah when she came to call her in the morning. There's no doubt of that. The ayah was never for a moment shaken upon that point. The pyschology of crime is a curious and surprising study, Mr. Pettifer, but I know of no case where terror has acted as a sleeping-draught."
Mr. Pettifer smiled and turned altogether away from the question.
"It is, as I said, a minor point, and perhaps one from which any sort of inference would be unsafe. It interested me. I lay no great stress upon it."
He dismissed the point carelessly, to the momentary amusement of Henry Thresk. The art of slipping away from defeat had been practised with greater skill. Thresk lost some part of his apprehension but none of his watchfulness.
"Now, however, we come to something very different," said Pettifer, hitching himself a little closer to his table and fixing his eyes upon Thresk. "The case for the prosecution ran like this: Stephen Ballantyne was, though a man of great ability, a secret drunkard who humiliated his wife in public and beat her in private. She went in terror of him. She bore on more than one occasion the marks of his violence; and upon that night in Chitipur, perhaps in a panic and very likely under extreme provocation, she snatched up her rook-rifle and put an end to the whole bad business."
"Yes," Thresk agreed, "that was the case for the Crown."
"Yes, and throughout the sitting at the Stipendiary's inquiry before you came upon the scene that theory was clearly developed."
"Yes."
Thresk's confidence vanished as quickly as it had come. He realised whither Pettifer's questions were leading. There was a definitely weak link in his story and Pettifer had noticed it and was testing it.
"Now," the solicitor continued—"and this is the important point—what was the answer to that charge foreshadowed by the defence during those days before you appeared?"
Thresk answered the question quickly, if answer it could be called.
"The defence had not formulated any answer. I came forward before the case for the Crown finished."
"Quite so. But Mrs. Ballantyne's counsel did cross-examine the witnesses for the prosecution—we must not forget that, Mr. Thresk—and from the cross-examination it is quite clear what answer he was going to make. He was going—not to deny that Mrs. Ballantyne shot her husband—but to plead that she shot him in self-defence."
"Oh?" said Thresk, "and where do you find that?"
He had no doubt himself in what portion of the report of the trial a proof of Pettifer's statement was to be discovered, but he made a creditable show of surprise that any one should hold that opinion at all.
Pettifer selected a column of newspaper from his cuttings.
"Listen," he said. "Mr. Repton, a friend of Mrs. Ballantyne, was called upon a subpoena by the Crown and he testified that while he was a Collector at Agra he went up with his wife from the plains to the hill-station of Moussourie during a hot weather. The Ballantynes went up at the same time and occupied a bungalow next to Repton's. One night Repton's house was broken into. He went across to Ballantyne the next morning and advised him in the presence of his wife to sleep with a revolver under his pillow."
"Yes, I remember that," said Thresk. He had indeed cause to remember it very well, for it was just this evidence given by Repton with its clear implication of the line which the defence meant to take that had sent him in a hurry to Mrs. Ballantyne's solicitor. Pettifer continued by reading Repton's words slowly and with emphasis.
"'Mrs. Ballantyne then turned very pale, and running after me down the garden like a distracted woman cried: "Why did you tell him to do that? It will some night mean my death."' This statement, Mr. Thresk, was elicited in cross-examination by Mrs. Ballantyne's counsel, and it could only mean that he intended to set up a plea of self-defence. I find it a little difficult to reconcile that intention with the story you subsequently told."
Henry Thresk for his part knew that it was not merely difficult, it was, in fact, impossible. Mr. Pettifer had read the evidence with an accurate discrimination. The plea of self-defence was here foreshadowed and it was just the certainty that the defence was going to rely upon it for a verdict which had brought Henry Thresk himself into the witness-box at Bombay. Given all that was known of Stephen Ballantyne and of the life he had led his unhappy wife, the defence would have been a good one, but for a single fact—the discovery of Ballantyne's body outside the tent. No plea of self-defence could safely be left to cover that. Thresk himself wondered at it. It struck at public sympathy, it seemed the act of a person insensate and vindictive. Therefore he had come forward with his story. But Mr. Pettifer was not to know it.
"There are three things for you to remember," said Thresk. "In the first place it is too early to assume that self-defence was going to be the plea. Assumptions in a case of this kind are very dangerous, Mr. Pettifer. They may lead to an irreparable injustice. We must keep to the fact that no plea of self-defence was ever formulated. In the second place Mrs. Ballantyne was brought down to Bombay in a state of complete collapse. Her married life had been a torture to her. She broke down at the end of it. She was indifferent to anything that might happen."
Pettifer nodded. "Yes, I can understand that."
"It followed that her advisers had to act upon their own initiative."
"And the third point?" Pettifer asked.
"Well, it's not so much a point as an opinion of mine. But I hold it strongly. Her counsel mishandled the case."
Pettifer pursed up his lips and grunted. He tapped a finger once or twice on the table in front of him. He looked towards Thresk as if all was not quite said. Harold Hazlewood, to whom the position of a neglected listener was rare and unpalatable, saw an opportunity for intervention.
"The three points are perhaps not very conclusive," he said.
Thresk turned towards him coldly:
"I promised to answer such questions as Mr. Pettifer put to me. I am doing that. I did not undertake to discuss the value of my answers afterwards."
"No, no, quite so," murmured Mr. Hazlewood. "We are very grateful, I am sure," and he left once more the argument to Pettifer.
"Then I come to the next question, Mr. Thresk. At some moment in this inquiry you of your own account put yourself into communication with Mrs. Ballantyne's advisers and volunteered your evidence?"
"Yes."
"Isn't it strange that the defence did not at the very outset get into communication with you?"
"No," replied Thresk. Here he was at his ease. He had laid his plans well in Bombay. Mr. Pettifer might go on asking questions until midnight upon this point. Thresk could meet him. "It was not at all strange. It was not known that I could throw any light upon the affair at all. All that passed between Ballantyne and myself passed when we were alone; and Ballantyne was now dead."
"Yes, but you had dined with the Ballantynes on that night. Surely it's strange that since you were in Bombay Mrs. Ballantyne's advisers did not seek you out."
"Yes, yes," added Mr. Hazlewood, "very strange indeed, Mr. Thresk—since you were in Bombay"; and he looked up at the ceiling and joined the tips of his fingers, his whole attitude a confident question: "Answer that if you can."
Thresk turned patiently round.
"Hasn't it occurred to you, Mr. Hazlewood, that it is still more strange that the prosecution did not at once approach me?"
"Yes," said Pettifer suddenly. "That question too has troubled me"; andThresk turned back again.
"You see," he explained, "I was not known to be in Bombay at all. On the contrary I was supposed to be somewhere in the Red Sea or the Mediterranean on my way back to England."
Mr. Pettifer looked up in surprise. The statement was news to him and iftrue provided a natural explanation of some of his chief perplexities."Let me understand that!" and there was a change in his voice whichThresk was quick to detect. There was less hostility.
"Certainly," Thresk answered. "I left the tent just before eleven to catch the Bombay mail. I was returning direct to England. The reason why Ballantyne asked me to take the photograph of Bahadur Salak was that since I was going on board straight from the train it could be no danger to me."
"Then why didn't you go straight on board?" asked Pettifer.
"I'll tell you," Thresk replied. "I thought the matter over on the journey down to Bombay, and I came to the conclusion that since the photograph might be wanted at Salak's trial I had better take it to the Governor's house at Bombay. But Government House is out at Malabar Point, four miles from the quays. I took the photograph out myself and so I missed the boat. But there was an announcement in the papers that I had sailed, and in fact the consul at Marseilles came on board at that port to inquire for me on instructions from the Indian Government."
Mr. Pettifer leaned back.
"Yes, I see," he said thoughtfully. "That makes a difference—a big difference." Then he sat upright again and said sharply:
"You were in Bombay then when Mrs. Ballantyne was brought down fromChitipur?"
"Yes."
"And when the case for the Crown was started?"
"Yes."
"And when the Crown's witnesses were cross-examined?"
"Yes."
"Why did you wait then all that time before you came forward?" Pettifer put the question with an air of triumph. "Why, Mr. Thresk, did you wait till the very moment when Mrs. Ballantyne was going to be definitely committed to a particular line of defence before you announced that you could clear up the mystery? Doesn't it rather look as if you had remained hidden on the chance of the prosecution breaking down, and had only come forward when you realised that to-morrow self-defence would be pleaded, the firing of that rook-rifle admitted and a terrible risk of a verdict of guilty run?"
Thresk agreed without a moment's hesitation.
"But that's the truth, Mr. Pettifer," he said, and Mr. Pettifer sprang up.
"What?"
"Consider my position"—Thresk drew up his chair close to the table—"a barrister who was beginning to have one of the large practices, the Courts opening in London, briefs awaiting me, cases on which I had already advised coming on. I had already lost a fortnight. That was bad enough, but if I came forward with my story I must wait in Bombay not merely for a fortnight but until the whole trial was completed, as in the end I had to do. Of course I hoped that the prosecution would break down. Of course I didn't intervene until it was absolutely necessary in the interests of justice that I should."
He spoke so calmly, there was so much reason in what he said, thatPettifer could not but be convinced.
"I see," he said. "I see. Yes. That's not to be disputed." He remained silent for a few moments. Then he shuffled his papers together and replaced them in the envelope. It seemed that his examination was over. Thresk rose from his chair.
"You have no more questions to ask me?" he inquired.
"One more."
Pettifer came round the table and stood in front of Henry Thresk.
"Did you know Mrs. Ballantyne before you went to Chitipur?"
"Yes," Thresk replied.
"Had you seen her lately?"
"No."
"When had you last seen her?"
"Eight years before, in this neighbourhood. I spent a holiday close by. Her father and mother were then alive. I had not seen her since. I did not even know that she was in India and married until I was told so in Bombay."
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."
Henry Thresk took Mrs. Pettifer in to dinner that night and she found him poor company. He tried indeed by fits and starts to entertain her, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was in a great pother and trouble about Stella Ballantyne, who sat over against him on the other side of the table. She wore no traces of the consternation which his words had caused her a couple of hours before. She had come dressed in a slim gown of shimmering blue with her small head erect, a smile upon her lips and a bright colour in her cheeks. Thresk hardly knew her, he had to tell himself again and again that this was the Stella Ballantyne whom he had known here and in India. She was not the girl who had ridden with him upon the downs and made one month of his life very memorable and one day a shameful recollection. Nor was she the stricken creature of the tent in Chitipur. She was a woman sure of her resources, radiant in her beauty, confident that what she wore was her colour and gave her her value. Yet her trouble was greater than Thresk's, and many a time during the course of that dinner, when she felt his eyes resting upon her, her heart sank in fear. She sought his company after dinner, but she had no chance of a private word with him. Old Mr. Hazlewood took care of that. One moment Stella must sing; at another she must play a rubber of bridge. He at all events had not laid aside his enmity and suspected some understanding between her and his guest. At eleven Mrs. Pettifer took her leave. She came across the room to Henry Thresk.
"Are you staying over to-morrow?" she asked, and Thresk with a laugh answered:
"I wish that I could. But I have to catch an early train to London. Even to-night my day's work's not over. I must sit up for an hour or two over a brief."
Stella rose at the same time as Mrs. Pettifer.
"I was hoping that you would be able to come across and see my little cottage to-morrow morning," she said. Thresk hesitated as he took her hand.
"I should very much like to see it," he said. He was in a very great difficulty, and was not sure that a letter was not the better if the more cowardly way out of it. "If I could find the time."
"Try," said she. She could say no more for Mr. Hazlewood was at her elbow and Dick was waiting to take her home.
It was a dark clear night; a sky of stars overarched the earth, but there was no moon, and though lights shone brightly even at a great distance there was no glimmer from the road beneath their feet. Dick held her close in his arms at the door of her cottage. She was very still and passive.
"You are tired?" he asked.
"I think so."
"Well, to-night has seen the last of our troubles, Stella."
She did not answer him at once. Her hands clung about his shoulders and with her face smothered in his coat she whispered:
"Dick, I couldn't go on without you now. I couldn't. I wouldn't."
There was a note of passionate despair in her voice which made her words suddenly terrible to him. He took her and held her a little away from him, peering into her face.
"What are you saying, Stella?" he asked sternly. "You know that nothing can come between us. You break my heart when you talk like that." He drew her again into his arms. "Is your maid waiting up for you?"
"No."
"Call her then, while I wait here. Let me see the light in her room. I want her to sleep with you to-night."
"There's no need, Dick," she answered. "I am unstrung to-night. I said more than I meant. I swear to you there's no need."
He raised her head and kissed her on the lips.
"I trust you, Stella," he said gently; and she answered him in a low trembling voice of so much tenderness and love that he was reassured. "Oh, you may, my dear, you may."
She went up to her room and turned on the light, and sat down in her chair just as she had done after her first dinner at Little Beeding. She had foreseen then all the troubles which had since beset her, but she had seemed to have passed through them—until this afternoon. Over there in the library of the big house was Henry Thresk—the stranger. Very likely he was at this moment writing to her. If he had only consented to come over in the morning and give her the chance of pleading with him! She went to the window and, drawing up the blind, leaned her head out and looked across the meadow. In the library one of the long windows stood open and the curtain was not drawn. The room was full of light. Henry Thresk was there. He had befriended her this afternoon as he had befriended her at Bombay, for the second time he had won the victory for her; but the very next moment he had warned her that the end was not yet. He would send her a letter, she had not a doubt of it. She had not a doubt either of the message which the letter would bring.
A sound rose to her ears from the gravel path below her window—the sound of a slight involuntary movement. Stella drew sharply back. Then she leaned out again and called softly:
"Dick."
He was standing a little to the left of the window out of reach of the light which streamed out upon the darkness from the room behind her. He moved forward now.
"Oh, Dick, why are you waiting?"
"I wanted to be sure that all was right, Stella."
"I gave you my word, Dick," she whispered and she wished him good-night again and waited till the sound of his footsteps had altogether died away. He went back to the house and found Thresk still at work in the library.
"I don't want to interrupt you," he said, "but I must thank you again. I can't tell you what I owe you. She's pretty wonderful, isn't she? I feel coarse beside her, I tell you. I couldn't talk like this to any one else, but you're so sympathetic."
Henry Thresk had responded with nothing more than a grunt. He sat slashing at his brief with a blue pencil, all the while that Dick Hazlewood was speaking, and wishing that he would go to bed. Dick however was unabashed.
"Did you ever see a woman look so well in a blue frock? Or in a black one either? There's a sort of painted thing she wears sometimes too. Well, perhaps I had better go to bed."
"I think it would be wise," said Thresk.
Young Hazlewood went over to the table in the corner and lit his candle.
"You'll shut that window before you go to bed, won't you?"
"Yes."
Hazlewood filled for himself a glass of barley-water and drank it, contemplating Henry Thresk over the rim. Then he went back to him, carrying his candle in his hand.
"Why don't you get married, Mr. Thresk?" he asked. "You ought to, you know. Men run to seed so if they don't."
"Thank you," said Thresk.
The tone was not cordial, but mere words were an invitation to Dick Hazlewood at this moment. He sat down and placed his lighted candle on the table between Thresk and himself.
"I am thirty-four years old," he said, and Thresk interposed without glancing up from his foolscap:
"From your style of conversation I find that very difficult to believe,Captain Hazlewood."
"I have wasted thirty-four complete years of twelve months each," continued the ecstatic Captain, who appeared to think that on the very day of his birth he would have recognised his soul's mate. "Just jogging along with the world, a miracle about one and not half an eye to perceive it. You know."
"No, I don't," Thresk observed. He lifted the candle and held it out toDick. Dick got up and took it.
"Thank you," he said. "That was very kind of you. I told you—didn'tI?—how sympathetic I thought you."
Thresk was not proof against his companion's pertinacity. He broke into a laugh. "Are you going to bed?" he pleaded, and Dick Hazlewood replied, "Yes I am." Suddenly his tone changed.
"Stella had a very good friend in you, Mr. Thresk. I am sure she still has one," and without waiting for any answer he went upstairs. His bedroom was near to the front in the side of the house. It commanded a view of the meadow and the cottage and he rejoiced to see that all Stella's windows were dark. The library was out of sight round the corner at the back, but a glare of light from the open door spread out over the lawn. Hazlewood looked at his watch. It was just midnight. He went to bed and slept.
In the library Thresk strove to concentrate his thoughts upon his brief. But he could not, and he threw it aside at last. There was a letter to be written, and until it was written and done with his thoughts would not be free. He went over to the writing-table and wrote it. But it took a long while in the composition and the clock upon the top of the stable was striking one when at last he had finished and sealed it up.
"I'll post it in the morning at the station," he resolved, and he went to the window to close it. But as he touched it a slight figure wrapped in a dark cloak came out of the darkness at the side and stepped past him into the room. He swung round and saw Stella Ballantyne.
"You!" he exclaimed. "You must be mad."
"I had to come," she said, standing well away from the window in the centre of the room as though she thought he would drive her out. "I heard you say you would be sitting late here."
"How long have you been waiting out there?"
"A little while…I don't know…Not very long. I wasn't sure that you were alone."
Thresk closed the window and drew the curtain across it. Then he crossed the room and locked the doors leading into the dining-room and hall.
"There was no need for you to come," he said in a low voice. "I have written to you."
"Yes." She nodded her head. "That's why I had to come. This afternoon you spoke of leaving your pipe behind. I understood," and as he drew the letter from his pocket she recoiled from it. "No, it has never been written. I came in time to prevent its being written. You only had an idea of writing. Say that! You are my friend." She took the letter from him now and tore it across and again across. "See! It has never been written at all."
But Thresk only shook his head. "I am very sorry. I see to-night the stricken woman of the tent in Chitipur. I am very sorry," and Stella caught at the commiseration in his voice. She dropped the cloak from her shoulders; she was dressed as she had been at the dinner some hours before, but all her radiance had gone, her cheeks trembled, her eyes pleaded desperately.
"Sorry! I knew you would be. You are not hard. You couldn't be. You must come close day by day in your life to so much that is pitiful. One can talk to you and you'll understand. This is my first chance, the first real chance I have ever had, Henry, the very first."
Thresk looked backwards over the years of Stella Ballantyne's unhappy life. It came upon him with a shock that what she said was the bare truth; and remorse followed hard upon the heels of the shock. This was her first real chance and he himself was to blame that it had come no earlier. The first chance of a life worth the living—it had been in his hands to give her and he had refused to give it years ago on Bignor Hill.
"It's quite true," he admitted. "But I don't ask you to give it up, Stella." She looked at him eagerly. "No! You would have understood that if you had read my letter instead of tearing it up. I only ask you to tell your lover the truth."
"He knows it," she said sullenly.
"No!"
"He does! He does!" she protested, her voice rising to a low cry.
"Hush! You'll be heard," said Thresk, and she listened for a moment anxiously. But there was no sound of any one stirring in the house.
"We are safe here," she said. "No one sleeps above us. Henry, he knows the truth."
"Would you be here now if he did?"
"I came because this afternoon you seemed to be threatening me. I didn't understand. I couldn't sleep. I saw the light in this room. I came to ask you what you meant—that's all."
"I'll tell you what I meant," said Thresk, and Stella with her eyes fixed upon him sank down upon a chair. "I left my pipe behind me in the tent on the night I dined with you. Your lover, Stella, doesn't know that. I came back to fetch it. He doesn't know that. You were standing by the table—" and Stella Ballantyne broke in upon him to silence the words upon his lips.
"There was no reason why he should know," she exclaimed. "It had nothing to do with what happened. We know what happened. There was a thief"—and Thresk turned to her then with such a look of sheer amazement upon his face that she faltered and her voice died to a murmur of words—"a lean brown arm—a hand delicate as a woman's."
"There was no thief," he said quietly. "There was a man delirious with drink who imagined one. There was you with the bruises on your throat and the unutterable misery in your eyes and a little rifle in your hands. There was no one else."
She ceased to argue; she sat looking straight in front of her with a stubborn face and a resolution to cling at all costs to her chance of happiness.
"Come, Stella," Thresk pleaded. "I don't say tell every one. I do say tell him. For unless you do I must."
Stella stared at him.
"You?" she said. "You would tell him that you came back into the tent and saw me?"
"Oh, much more—that I lied at the trial, that the story which secured your acquittal was false, that I made it up to save you. That I told it again this afternoon to give you a chance of slipping out from an impossible position."
She looked at Thresk for a moment in terror. Then her expression changed.A wave of relief swept over her; she laughed in Thresk's face.
"You are trying to frighten me," she said. "Only I know you. Do you realise what it would mean to you if it were ever really known that you had lied at the trial?"
"Yes."
"Your ruin. Your absolute ruin."
"Worse than that."
"Prison!"
"Perhaps. Yes."
Stella laughed again.
"And you would run the risk of the truth becoming known by telling it to so much as one person. No, no! Another, perhaps—not you! You have had one dream all your life—to rise out of obscurity, to get on in the world, to hold the high positions. Everything and every one has been sacrificed to its fulfilment. Oh, who should know better than I?" and she struck her hands together sharply as she uttered that bitter cry. "You have lain down late and risen early, and you have got on. Well, are you the man to throw away all this work and success now that they touch fulfilment? You are in the chariot. Will you step down and run tied to the wheels? Will you stand up and say, 'There was a trial. I perjured myself'? No. Another, perhaps. Not you, Henry."
Thresk had no answer to that indictment. All of it was true except its inference, and it was no news to him. He made no effort to defend himself.
"You are not very generous, Stella," he replied gently. "For if I lied, I saved you by the lie."
Stella was softened by the words. Her voice lost its hardness, she reached out her hand in an apology and laid it on his arm.
"Oh, I know. I sent you a little word of thanks when you gave me my freedom. But it won't be of much value to me if I lose—what I am fighting for now."
"So you use every weapon?"
"Yes."
"But this one breaks in your hand," he said firmly. "The thing you think it incredible that I should do I shall do none the less."
Stella looked at him in despair. She could no longer doubt that he really meant his words. He was really resolved to make this sacrifice of himself and her. And why? Why should he interfere?
"You save me one day to destroy me the next," she said.
"No," he replied. "I don't think I shall do that, Stella," and he explained to her what drove him on. "I had no idea why Hazlewood asked me here. Had I suspected it I say frankly that I should have refused to come. But I am here. The trouble's once more at my door but in a new shape. There's this man, young Hazlewood. I can't forget him. You will be marrying him by the help of a lie I told."
"He loves me," she cried.
"Then he can bear the truth," answered Thresk. He pulled up a chair opposite to that in which Stella sat. "I want you to understand me, if you will. I don't want you to think me harsh or cruel. I told a lie upon my oath in the witness-box. I violated my traditions, I struck at my belief in the value of my own profession, and such beliefs mean a good deal to any man." Stella stirred impatiently. What words were these? Traditions! The value of a profession!
"I am not laying stress upon them, Stella, but they count," Thresk continued. "And I am telling you that they count because I am going to add that I should tell that lie again to-morrow, were the trial to-morrow and you a prisoner. I should tell it again to save you again. Yes, to save you. But when you go and—let me put it very plainly—use that lie to your advantage, why then I am bound to cry 'stop.' Don't you see that? You are using the lie to marry a man and keep him in ignorance of the truth. You can't do that, Stella! You would be miserable yourself if you did all your life. You would never feel safe for a moment. You would be haunted by a fear that some day he would learn the truth and not from you. Oh, I am sure of it." He caught her hands and pressed them earnestly. "Tell him, Stella, tell him!"
Stella Ballantyne rose to her feet with a strange look upon her face. Her eyes half closed as though to shut out a vision of past horrors. She turned to Thresk with a white face and her hands tightly clenched.
"You don't know what happened on that night, after you rode away to catch your train?"
"No."
"I think you ought to know—before you sit in judgment"; and so at last in that quiet library under the Sussex Downs the tragic story of that night was told. For Thresk as he listened and watched, its terrors lived again in the eyes and the hushed voice of Stella Ballantyne, the dark walls seemed to fall back and dissolve. The moonlit plain of far-away Chitipur stretched away in front of him to the dim hill where the old silent palaces crumbled; and midway between them and the green signal-lights of the railway the encampment blazed like the clustered lights of a small town. But Thresk learnt more than the facts. The springs of conduct were disclosed to him; the woman revealed herself, dark places were made light; and he bowed himself beneath a new burden of remorse.