The Witness for the Defense by A. E. W. Mason (best mystery novels of all time TXT) 📖

don't you think?"

"Yes."

But it was not the beauty of the girl who had ridden along the South Downs with him eight years ago. There was more of character in the face now, less, much less, of youth and none of the old gaiety. The open frankness had gone. The big dark eyes which looked out straight at Thresk as he stood before them had, even in that likeness, something of aloofness and reserve. And underneath, in a contrast which seemed to him startling, there was her name signed in the firm running hand in which she had written the few notes which passed between them during that month in Sussex. Thresk looked back again at the photograph and then resumed his seat.

"Tell me about her, Mrs. Carruthers," he said. "You hear from her often?"

"Oh no! Stella doesn't write many letters, and I don't know her very well."

"But you have her photograph," said Thresk, "and signed by her."

"Oh yes. She stayed with me last Christmas, and I simply made her get her portrait taken. Just think! She hadn't been taken for years. Can you understand it? She declared she was bored with it. Isn't that curious? However, I persuaded her and she gave me one. But I had to force her to write on it."

"Then she was in Bombay last winter?" said Thresk slowly.

"Yes." And then Mrs. Carruthers had an idea.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "if you are really interested in Stella I'll put
Mrs. Repton next to you to-night."

"Thank you very much," said Thresk. "But who is Mrs. Repton?"

Mrs. Carruthers sat forward in her chair.

"Well, she's Stella's great friend—very likely her only real friend in India. Stella's so reserved. I simply adore her, but she quite prettily and politely keeps me always at arm's length. If she has ever opened out to anybody it's to Jane Repton. You see Charlie Repton was Collector at Agra before he came into the Bombay Presidency, and so they went up to Mussoorie for the hot weather. The Ballantynes happened actually to have the very next bungalow—now wasn't that strange?—so naturally they became acquainted. I mean the Ballantynes and the Reptons did…"

"But one moment, Mrs. Carruthers," said Thresk, breaking in upon the torrent of words. "Am I right in guessing that Mrs. Ballantyne lives in India?"

"But of course!" cried Mrs. Carruthers.

"She is actually in India now?"

"To be sure she is!"

Thresk was quite taken aback by the news.

"I had no idea of it," he said slowly, and Mrs. Carruthers replied sweetly:

"But lots of people live in India, Mr. Thresk. Didn't you know that? We are not the uttermost ends of the earth."

Thresk set to work to make his peace. He had not heard of Mrs. Ballantyne for so long. It seemed strange to him to find himself suddenly near to her now—that is if he was near. He just avoided that other exasperating trick of treating India as if it was a provincial town and all its inhabitants neighbours. But he only just avoided it. Mrs. Carruthers, however, was easily appeased.

"Yes," she said. "Stella has lived in India for the best part of eight years. She came out with some friends in the winter, made Captain Ballantyne's acquaintance and married him almost at once—in January, I think it was. Of course I only know from what I've been told. I was a schoolgirl in England at the time."

"Of course," Thresk agreed. He was conscious of a sharp little stab of resentment. So very quickly Stella had forgotten that morning on the Downs! It must have been in the autumn of that same year that she had gone out to India, and by February she was married. The resentment was quite unjustified, as no one knew better than himself. But he was a man; and men cannot easily endure so swift an obliteration of their images from the thoughts and the hearts of the ladies who have admitted that they loved them. None the less he pressed for details. Who was Ballantyne? What was his position? After all he was obviously not the millionaire to whom in a more generous moment he had given Stella. He caught himself on a descent to the meanness of rejoicing upon that. Meanwhile Mrs. Carruthers rippled on.

"Captain Ballantyne? Oh, he's a most remarkable man! Older than Stella, certainly, but a man of great knowledge and insight. People think most highly of him. Languages come as easily to him as crochet-work to a woman."

This paragon had been Resident in the Principality of Bakuta to the north of Bombay when Stella had first arrived. But he had been moved now to Chitipur in Rajputana. It was supposed that he was writing in his leisure moments a work which would be the very last word upon the native Principalities of Central India. Oh, Stella was to be congratulated! And Mrs. Carruthers, in her fine mansion on Malabar Hill, breathed a sigh of envy at the position of the wife of a high official of the British Raj.

Thresk looked over again to the portrait on the piano.

"I am very glad," he said cordially as once more he rose.

"But you shall sit next to Mrs. Repton to-night," said Mrs. Carruthers.
"And she will tell you more."

"Thank you," answered Thresk. "I only wished to know that things are going well with Mrs. Ballantyne—that was all."

CHAPTER IV JANE REPTON

Mrs. Carruthers kept her promise. She went in herself with Henry Thresk, as she had always meant to do, but she placed Mrs. Repton upon his left just round the bend of the table. Thresk stole a glance at her now and then as he listened to the rippling laughter of his hostess during the first courses. She was a tall woman and rather stout, with a pleasant face and a direct gaze. Thresk gave her the age of thirty-five and put her down as a cheery soul. Whether she was more he had to wait to learn with what patience he could. He was free to turn to her at last and he began without any preliminaries.

"You know a friend of mine," he said.

"I do?"

"Yes."

"Who is it?"

"Mrs. Ballantyne."

He noticed at once a change in Mrs. Repton. The frankness disappeared from her face; her eyes grew wary.

"I see," she said slowly. "I was wondering why I was placed next to you, for you are the lion of the evening and there are people here of more importance than myself. I knew it wasn't for my beaux yeux."

She turned again to Thresk.

"So you know my Stella?"

"Yes. I knew her in England before she came out here and married. I have not, of course, seen her since. I want you to tell me about her."

Mrs. Repton looked him over with a careful scrutiny.

"Mrs. Carruthers has no doubt told you that she married very well."

"Yes; and that Ballantyne is a remarkable man," said Thresk.

Mrs. Repton nodded.

"Very well then?" she said, and her voice was a challenge.

"I am not contented," Thresk replied. Mrs. Repton turned her eyes to her plate and said demurely:

"There might be more than one reason for that."

Thresk abandoned all attempt to fence with her. Mrs. Repton was not of those women who would lightly give their women-friends away. Her phrase "my Stella" had, besides, revealed a world of love and championship. Thresk warmed to her because of it. He threw reticence to the winds.

"I am going to give you the real reason, Mrs. Repton. I saw her photograph this afternoon on Mrs. Carruthers' piano, and it left me wondering whether happiness could set so much character in a woman's face."

Mrs. Repton shrugged her shoulders.

"Some of us age quickly here."

"Age was not the new thing which I read in that photograph."

Mrs. Repton did not answer. Only her eyes sounded him. She seemed to be judging the stuff of which he was made.

"And if I doubted her happiness this afternoon I must doubt it still more now," he continued.

"Why?" exclaimed Mrs. Repton.

"Because of your reticence, Mrs. Repton," he answered. "For you have been reticent. You have been on guard. I like you for it," he added with a smile of genuine friendliness. "May I say that? But from the first moment when I mentioned Stella Ballantyne's name you shouldered your musket."

Mrs. Repton neither denied nor accepted his statement. She kept looking at him and away from him as though she were still not sure of him, and at times she drew in her breath sharply, as though she had already taken upon herself some great responsibility and now regretted it. In the end she turned to him abruptly.

"I am puzzled," she cried. "I think it's strange that since you are
Stella's friend I knew nothing of that friendship—nothing whatever."

Thresk shrugged his shoulders.

"It is years since we met, as I told you. She has new interests."

"They have not destroyed the old ones. We remember home things out here, all of us. Stella like the rest. Why, I thought that I knew her whole life in England, and here's a definite part of it—perhaps a very important part—of which I am utterly ignorant. She has spoken of many friends to me; of you never. I am wondering why."

She spoke obviously without any wish to hurt. Yet the words did hurt. She saw Thresk redden as she uttered them, and a swift wild hope flamed like a rose in her heart: if this man with the brains and the money and the perseverance sitting at her side should turn out to be the Perseus for her beautiful chained Andromeda, far away there in the state of Chitipur! The lines of a poem came into her thoughts.

"I know; the world proscribes not love,
Allows my finger to caress
Your lips' contour and downiness
Provided it supplies the glove."

Suppose that here at her side was the man who would dispense with the glove! She looked again at Thresk. The lean strong face suggested that he might, if he wanted hard enough. All her life had been passed in the support of authority and law. Authority—that was her husband's profession. But just for this hour, as she thought of Stella Ballantyne, lawlessness shone out to her desirable as a star.

"No, she has never once mentioned your name, Mr. Thresk."

Again Thresk was conscious of the little pulse of resentment beating at his heart.

"She has no doubt forgotten me."

Mrs. Repton shook her head.

"That's one explanation. There might be another."

"What is it?"

"That she remembers you too much."

Mrs. Repton was a little startled by her own audacity, but it provoked nothing but an incredulous laugh from her companion.

"I am afraid that's not very likely," he said. There was no hint of elation in his voice nor any annoyance. If he felt either, why, he was on guard no less than she. Mrs. Repton was inclined to throw up her hands in despair. She was baffled and she was little likely, as she knew, to get any light.

"If you take the man you know best of all," she used to say, "you still know nothing at all of what he's like when he's alone with a woman, especially if it's a woman for whom he cares—unless the woman talks."

Very often the woman does talk and the most intimate and private facts come in a little while to be shouted from the housetops. But Stella Ballantyne did not talk. She had talked once, and once only, under a great stress to Jane Repton; but even then Thresk had nothing to do with her story at all.

Thresk turned quickly towards her.

"In a moment Mrs. Carruthers will get up. Her eyes are collecting the women and the women are collecting their shoes. What have you to tell me?"

Mrs. Repton wanted to speak. Thresk gave her confidence. He seemed to be a man without many illusions, he was no romantic sentimentalist. She went back to the poem of which the lines had been chasing one another through her head all through this dinner, as a sort of accompaniment to their conversation. Had he found it out? she asked herself—

"The world and what it fears."

Thus she hung hesitating while Mrs. Carruthers gathered in her hands her gloves and her fan. There was a woman at the other end of the table however who would not stop talking. She was