A. E. W. Mason

“ Pettifer had read the evidence with an accurate discrimination. The plea of self-defence was here foreshadowed and it was just the certainty that the defence was going to rely upon it for a verdict which had brought Henry Thresk himself into the witness-box at Bombay. Given all that was known of Stephen Ballantyne and of the life he had led his unhappy wife, the defence would have been a good one, but for a single fact—the discovery of Ballantyne's body outside the tent. No plea of self-defence could safely be left to cover that. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The art of slipping away from defeat had been practised with greater skill. Thresk lost some part of his apprehension but none of his watchfulness.
"Now, however, we come to something very different," said Pettifer, hitching himself a little closer to his table and fixing his eyes upon Thresk. "The case for the prosecution ran like this: Stephen Ballantyne was, though a man of great ability, a secret drunkard who humiliated his wife in public and beat her in private. She went in terror of him. She bore on more than one occasion the marks of his violence ”

“ Ballantyne herself dragged him into the open."
Mr. Pettifer shook his head.
"I am not so sure. I can conceive a condition of horror in the wife, horror at what she had done, which would make that act not merely possible but almost inevitable. I make no claims to being an imaginative man, Mr. Thresk, but I try to put myself into the position of the wife"; and he described with a vividness for which Thresk was not prepared the scene as he saw it. ”

“ Mr. Pettifer looked up in surprise. The statement was news to him and if true provided a natural explanation of some of his chief perplexities. "Let me understand that!" and there was a change in his voice which Thresk was quick to detect. There was less hostility.
"Certainly," Thresk answered. "I left the tent just before eleven to catch the Bombay mail. I was returning direct to England. The reason why Ballantyne asked me to take the photograph of Bahadur Salak was that since I was going on board straight from the train it could be no danger to me." ”

“ There are a couple of bath-rooms isn't that splendid in a small house?" And then across the room she heard the scratch of a lucifer and words were spoken which brought her fears in an overmastering legion back to her. ”