Thresk came out from the telephone-box with a face puzzled and very grave.  Mrs. Repton refused to speak to him!

It was a fact, an inexplicable fact, and it alarmed him.  It was impossible to believe that mere reflection during the last twenty-four hours had brought about so complete a revolution in her feelings.  He to whom she had passionately cried “Write!  Write!” only yesterday could hardly be barred out from mere speech with her to-day for any fault of his.  He had done nothing, had seen no one.  Thresk was certain now that the news upon the tape was true.  But it could not be all the truth.  There was something behind it—­something rather grim and terrible.

Thresk walked to the door of the hotel and called up a motor-car.  “Tell him to drive to the Khamballa Hill,” he said to the porter.  “I’ll let him know when to stop.”

The porter translated the order and Thresk stopped him at Mrs. Repton’s door.

“The Memsahib does not receive any one to-day,” said the butler.

“I know,” replied Thresk.  He scribbled on a card and sent it in.  There was a long delay.  Thresk stood in the hall looking out through the open door.  Night had come.  There were lights upon the roadway, lights a long way below at the water’s edge on Breach Candy, and there was a light twinkling far out on the Arabian Sea.  But in the house behind him all was dark.  He had come to an abode of desolation and mourning; and his heart sank and he was attacked with forebodings.  At last in the passage behind him there was a shuffling of feet and a gleam of white.  The Memsahib would receive him.

Thresk was shown into the drawing-room.  That room too was unlit.  But the blinds had not been lowered and light from a street lamp outside turned the darkness into twilight.  No one came forward to greet him, but the room was not empty.  He saw Repton and his wife huddled close together on a sofa in a recess by the fireplace.

“I thought that I had better come up from Bombay,” said Thresk, as he stood in the middle of the room.  No answer was returned to him for a few moments and then it was Repton himself who spoke.

“Yes, yes,” he said, and he got up from the sofa.  “I think we had better have some light,” he added in a strange indifferent voice.  He turned the light on in the central chandelier, leaving the corners of the room in shadow, like—­the parallel forced its way into Thresk’s mind—­like the tent in Chitipur.  Then very methodically he pulled down the blinds.  He did not look at Thresk and Jane Repton on the couch never stirred.  Thresk’s forebodings became a dreadful certainty.  Some evil thing had happened.  He might have been in a house of death.  He knew that he was not wanted there, that husband and wife wished to be alone and silently resented his presence.  But he could not go without more knowledge than he had.

“A message came up on the tape half an hour ago,” he said in a low voice.  “It reported that Ballantyne was dead.”