At this moment Mr. Travers leaned across to the prosecuting counsel and said:  “It will all be made clear when Mr. Thresk goes into the box.”

And once more, as Mr. Travers spoke these words, a rustle of expectancy ran round the court.

Travers opened the case for the defence on the following morning.  He had been originally instructed, he declared, to reserve the defence for the actual trial before the jury, but upon his own urgent advice that plan was not to be followed.  The case which he had to put before the stipendiary must so infallibly prove that Mrs. Ballantyne was free from all complicity in this crime that he felt he would not be doing his duty to her unless he made it public at the first opportunity.  That unhappy lady had already, as every one who had paid even the most careless attention to the facts that had been presented by the prosecution must know, suffered so much distress and sorrow in the course of her married life that he felt it would not be fair to add to it the strain and suspense which even the most innocent must suffer when sent for trial upon such a serious charge.  He at once proposed to call Mr. Thresk, and Thresk rose and went into the witness-box.

Thresk told the story of that dinner-party word for word as it had occurred, laying some emphasis on the terror which from time to time had taken possession of Stephen Ballantyne, down to the moment when Baram Singh had brought the ash-tray and left the two men together, Thresk sitting by the table in the middle of the room and Ballantyne at his bureau with the despatch-box on the floor at his feet.

“Then I noticed an extraordinary look of fear disfigure his face,” he continued, “and following the direction of his eyes I saw a lean brown arm with a thin hand as delicate as a woman’s wriggle forward from beneath the wall of the tent towards the despatch-box.”

“You saw that quite clearly?” asked Mr. Travers.

“The tent was not very brightly lit,” Thresk explained.  “At the first glance I saw something moving.  I was inclined to believe it a snake and to account in that way for Captain Ballantyne’s fear and the sudden rigidity of his attitude.  But I looked again and I was then quite sure that it was an arm and hand.”

The evidence roused those present to such a tension of excitement and to so loud a burst of murmuring that it was quite a minute before order was restored and Thresk took up his tale again.  He described Ballantyne’s search for the thief.

“And what were you doing,” Mr. Travers asked, “whilst the search was being made?”

“I stood by the table holding the despatch-box firmly in my hands as Ballantyne had urgently asked me to do.”