At daybreak on the morning of the Friday a sentry on the outer edge of the camp at Jarwhal Junction had noticed something black lying upon the ground in the open just outside the door of the Agent’s big marquee.  He ran across the ground and discovered Captain Ballantyne sprawling, face downwards, in the smoking-suit which he had worn at dinner the night before.  The sentry shook him gently by the shoulder, but the limpness of the body frightened him.  Then he noticed that there was blood upon the ground, and calling loudly for help he ran to the guard-room tent.  He returned with others of the native levies and they lifted Ballantyne up.  He was dead and the body was cold.  The levies carried him into the tent and opened his shirt.  He had been shot through the heart.  They then roused Mrs. Ballantyne’s ayah and bade her wake her mistress.  The ayah went into Mrs. Ballantyne’s room and found her mistress sound asleep.  She waked her up and told her what had happened.  Stella Ballantyne said not a word.  She got out of bed, and flinging on some clothes went into the outer tent, where the servants were standing about the body.  Stella Ballantyne went quite close to it and looked down upon the dead man’s face for a long time.  She was pale, but there was no shrinking in her attitude—­no apprehension in her eyes.

“He has been killed,” she said at length; “telegrams must be sent at once:  to Ajmere for a doctor, to Bombay, and to His Highness the Maharajah.”

Baram Singh salaamed.

“It is as your Excellency wills,” he said.

“I will write them,” said Stella quietly.  And she sat down at her own writing-table there and then.

The doctor from Ajmere arrived during the day, made an examination and telegraphed a report to the Chief Commissioner at Ajmere.  That report contained the three significant points which Repton had enumerated to Thresk, but with some still more significant details.  The bullet which pierced Captain Ballantyne’s heart had been fired from Mrs. Ballantyne’s small rook-rifle, and the exploded cartridge was still in the breech.  The rifle was standing up against Mrs. Ballantyne’s writing-table in a corner of the tent, when the doctor from Ajmere discovered it.  In the second place, although Ballantyne was found in the open, there was a patch of blood upon the carpet within the tent and a trail of blood from that spot to the door.  There could be no doubt that Ballantyne was killed inside.  There was the third point to establish that theory.  Neither the sentry on guard nor any one of the servants sleeping in the adjacent tents had heard the crack of the rifle.  It would not be loud in any case, but if the weapon had been fired in the open it would have been sufficiently sharp and clear to attract the attention of the men on guard.  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.