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I went to Chitipur upon your word. I have missed my boat. You bade me go to Chitipur. That told me too little or too much. I say too little. I have got to know all now." And he rose up and stood before her. "What do you know about Stephen Ballantyne?" "I'll tell you," said Jane Repton. She looked at the clock. "You had better stay and lunch with us if you will. We shall be alone.
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?
There was a certain shrewd insight which though it had led her astray in this case might well have been true in any other case, might well have been true of him. He remembered her disbelief in all that he had said to her in that tent at Chitipur; and he was appalled by the irony of things and the blind and feeble helplessness of men to combat it. "So that's why I came to Chitipur?" he cried.
And of the two she who had fears and hesitations was still the most impatient to get it done. She had her curiosity and it was beginning to consume her. What had Thresk known of Stella and she of him before she had come out to India and become Stella Ballantyne? Had they been in love? If not why had Thresk gone to Chitipur?
"Stella's loyal even when there's no cause for loyalty; and if loyalty didn't keep her mouth closed, self-respect would. I tell you what I saw. We were at Agra at the time. My husband was Collector there. There was a Durbar held there and the Rajah of Chitipur came to it with his elephants and his soldiers, and naturally Captain Ballantyne and his wife came too. They stayed with us.
He was at pains to set before Jane Repton what he had seen of the life which Stella lived with Stephen Ballantyne and nothing else. "Now," he said when he had finished, "you sent me to Chitipur. I must know why." And when she hesitated he overbore her. "You can be guilty of no disloyalty to your friend," he insisted, "by being frank with me. After all I have given guarantees.
That's over. You have been acquitted." She temporised. "But you?" "I?" and he shrugged his shoulders. "I take the consequences. I doubt if they would be so very heavy. There would be some sympathy. And afterwards it would be as though you had slipped down from Chitipur to Bombay and joined me as I had planned. We can make the best of our lives together."
The heavy double lining of the tent however was thick enough so to muffle and deaden the sound that it would pass unnoticed. The report was considered at Ajmere and forwarded. It now brought Inspector Coluson of the Police up the railway from Bombay. He found Mrs. Ballantyne waiting for him at the Residency of Chitipur. "I must tell you who I am," he said awkwardly.
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."
He had not spoken to her at all since the night at Chitipur; he had no knowledge of the stupor and the prostration into which, after her years of misery, she had fallen; he had no insight into the one compelling passion which now had her, body and soul, in its grip. He turned away from the door and went back to the Taj Mahal.
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