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 from Poona," Thresk agreed. "But don't you see, this trial that's coming along in Calcutta makes all the difference. It's known I have got it. It's not safe here now and no more am I so long as I've got it." One question had been puzzling Thresk ever since he had seen the look of terror reappear in Ballantyne's face. It was clear that he lived in a very real fear. He believed that he was watched, and he believed that he was in danger; and very probably he actually was. There had, to be sure, been no attempt that night to rob him of it as he imagined. But none the less Salak and his friends could not like the prospect of the production of that photograph in Calcutta, and would hardly be scrupulous what means they took to prevent it. Then why had not Ballantyne destroyed it? Thresk asked the question and was fairly startled by the answer. For it presented to him in the most unexpected manner another and a new side of the strange and complex character of Stephen Ballantyne. "Yes, why don't I destroy it?" Ballantyne repeated. "I ask myself that," and he took the photograph out of Thresk's hands and sat in a sort of muse, staring at it. Then he turned it over and took the edge between his forefinger and his thumb, hesitating whether he would not even at this moment tear it into strips and have done with it. But in the end he cast it upon the table as he had done many a time before and cried in a voice of violence: "No, I can't. That's to own these fellows my masters and I won't. By God I won't! I may be every kind of brute, but I have been bred up in this service. For twenty years I have lived in it and by it. And the service is too strong for me. No, I can't destroy that photograph. There's the truth. I should hate myself to my dying day if I did." He rose abruptly as if half ashamed of his outburst and crossing to his bureau lighted another cheroot. "Then what do you want me to do with it?" asked Thresk. "I want you to take it away."