e after a vain effort to stare Thresk down
changed to a more cordial tone.

"Well, you say it's a valuable thing to have just now. I say it's an
infernally dangerous thing. On the one side there's Salak the great
national leader, Salak the deliverer, Salak professing from his prison in
Calcutta that he has never used any but the most legitimate
constitutional means to forward his propaganda. And here on the other is
Salak in his garden-chair amongst the burglars. Not a good thing to
possess--this photograph, Mr. Thresk. Especially because it's the only
one in existence and the negative has been destroyed. So Salak's friends
are naturally anxious to get it back."

"Do they know you have it?" Thresk asked.

"Of course they do. You had proof that they knew five minutes ago when
that brown arm wriggled in under the tent-wall."

Ballantyne's fear returned upon him as he spoke. He sat shivering; his
eyes wandered furtively from corner to corner of the great tent and came
always back as though drawn by a serpent to the floor by the wall of the
tent. Thresk shrugged his shoulders. To dispute with Ballantyne once more
upon his delusion would be the merest waste of time. He took up the
photograph again.

"How do you come to possess it?" he asked. If he was to serve his host in
the way he suspected he would be asked to, he must know its history.

"I was agent in a state not far from Poona before I came here."

Thresk agreed.

"I know. Bakuta."

"Oh?" said Ballantyne with a sharp look. "How did you know that?"

He was always in alarm lest somewhere in the world gossip was whispering
his secret.

"A Mrs. Carruthers at Bombay."

"Did she tell you anything else?"

"Yes. She told me that you were a great man."

Ballantyne grinned suddenly.

"Isn't she a fool?" Then the grin left his face. "But how did you come to
discuss me with her at all?"

That was a question which Thresk had not the slightest intention to
answer. He evaded it altogether.

"Wasn't it natural since I was going to Chitipur?" he asked, and
Ballantyne was appeased.

"Well, the Rajah of Bakutu had that photograph and he gave it to me when
I left the State. He came down to the station to see me off. He was too
near Poona to be comfortable with that in his pocket. He gave it to me on
the platform in full view, the damned coward. He wanted to show that he
had given it to me. He said that I should be safe with it in Chitipur."

"Chitipur's a long way