h the news of his death."

"Yes," said the Inspector uncomfortably. That detail, next to the
dragging of the body out of the tent, seemed to him the grimmest part of
the whole tragedy.

He shut up his book.

"I am afraid it is all very unsatisfactory," he said. "I think we must go
back to Bombay."

"It is as your Excellency wills," said Stella in Hindustani, and the
Inspector was startled by the bad taste of the joke. He had not the
knowledge of her life with Ballantyne, which alone would have given him
the key to understand her. But he was not a fool, and a second glance at
her showed to him that she was not speaking in joke at all. He had an
impression that she was so tired that she did not at the moment care what
happened to her at all. The fatigue would wear off, no doubt, when she
realised that she must fight for her life, but now she stood in front of
him indifferent and docile--much as one of the native levies was wont to
stand before her husband. The words which the levies used and the
language in which they spoke them rose naturally to her lips, as the only
words and language suitable to the occasion.

"You see, Mrs. Ballantyne," he said gently, "there is no reason to
suspect a single one of your servants or of your escort."

"And there is reason to suspect me," she added, looking at him quietly
and steadily.

The Inspector for his part looked away. He was a young man--no more than
a year or two older than Stella Ballantyne herself. They both came from
the same kind of stock. Her people and his people might have been friends
in some pleasant country village in one of the English counties. She was
pretty, too, disconcertingly pretty, in spite of the dark circles under
her eyes and the pallor of her face. There was a delicacy in her looks
and in her dress which appealed to him for tenderness. The appeal was all
the stronger because it was only in that way and unconsciously that she
appealed. In her voice, in her bearing, in her eyes there was no request,
no prayer.

"I have been to the Palace," he said, "I have had an audience with the
Maharajah."

"Of course," she answered. "I shall put no difficulties in your way."

He was standing in her own drawing-room, noticing with what skill
comfort had been combined with daintiness, and how she had followed the
usual instinct of her kind in trying to create here in this room a piece
of England. Through the window he looked out upon a lawn which was being
wat