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