ce," he said.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE WITNESS

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 pre