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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evil Shepherd, by E. Phillips Oppenheim
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Evil Shepherd
+
+Author: E. Phillips Oppenheim
+
+Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5743]
+Posting Date: June 13, 2009
+Last Updated: March 9, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVIL SHEPHERD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EVIL SHEPHERD
+
+
+By E. Philips Oppenheim
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Francis Ledsam, alert, well-satisfied with himself and the world, the
+echo of a little buzz of congratulations still in his ears, paused on
+the steps of the modern Temple of Justice to light a cigarette before
+calling for a taxi to take him to his club. Visions of a whisky and
+soda--his throat was a little parched--and a rubber of easy-going bridge
+at his favourite table, were already before his eyes. A woman who had
+followed him from the Court touched him on the shoulder.
+
+“Can I speak to you for a moment, Mr. Ledsam?”
+
+The barrister frowned slightly as he swung around to confront his
+questioner. It was such a familiar form of address.
+
+“What do you want?” he asked, a little curtly.
+
+“A few minutes' conversation with you,” was the calm reply. “The matter
+is important.”
+
+The woman's tone and manner, notwithstanding her plain, inconspicuous
+clothes, commanded attention. Francis Ledsam was a little puzzled. Small
+things meant much to him in life, and he had been looking forward almost
+with the zest of a schoolboy to that hour of relaxation at his club.
+He was impatient of even a brief delay, a sentiment which he tried to
+express in his response.
+
+“What do you want to speak to me about?” he repeated bluntly. “I shall
+be in my rooms in the Temple to-morrow morning, any time after eleven.”
+
+“It is necessary for me to speak to you now,” she insisted. “There is a
+tea-shop across the way. Please accompany me there.”
+
+Ledsam, a little surprised at the coolness of her request, subjected his
+accoster to a closer scrutiny. As he did so, his irritation diminished.
+He shrugged his shoulders slightly.
+
+“If you really have business with me,” he said, “I will give you a few
+minutes.”
+
+They crossed the street together, the woman self-possessed, negative,
+wholly without the embarrassment of one performing an unusual action.
+Her companion felt the awakening of curiosity. Zealously though she had,
+to all appearance, endeavoured to conceal the fact, she was without a
+doubt personable. Her voice and manner lacked nothing of refinement. Yet
+her attraction to Francis Ledsam, who, although a perfectly normal human
+being, was no seeker after promiscuous adventures, did not lie in these
+externals. As a barrister whose success at the criminal bar had been
+phenomenal, he had attained to a certain knowledge of human nature. He
+was able, at any rate, to realise that this woman was no imposter. He
+knew that she had vital things to say.
+
+They passed into the tea-shop and found an empty corner. Ledsam hung up
+his hat and gave an order. The woman slowly began to remove her gloves.
+When she pushed back her veil, her vis-a-vis received almost a shock.
+She was quite as good-looking as he had imagined, but she was far
+younger--she was indeed little more than a girl. Her eyes were of a deep
+shade of hazel brown, her eyebrows were delicately marked, her features
+and poise admirable. Yet her skin was entirely colourless. She was as
+pale as one whose eyes have been closed in death. Her lips, although
+in no way highly coloured, were like streaks of scarlet blossom upon
+a marble image. The contrast between her appearance and that of her
+companion was curiously marked. Francis Ledsam conformed in no way to
+the accepted physical type of his profession. He was over six feet in
+height, broad-shouldered and powerfully made. His features were cast in
+a large mould, he was of fair, almost sandy complexion, even his mouth
+was more humourous than incisive. His eyes alone, grey and exceedingly
+magnetic, suggested the gifts which without a doubt lay behind his
+massive forehead.
+
+“I am anxious to avoid any possible mistake,” she began. “Your name is
+Francis Ledsam?”
+
+“It is,” he admitted.
+
+“You are the very successful criminal barrister,” she continued, “who
+has just been paid an extravagant fee to defend Oliver Hilditch.”
+
+“I might take exception to the term 'extravagant',” Ledsam observed
+drily. “Otherwise, your information appears to be singularly correct.
+I do not know whether you have heard the verdict. If not, you may be
+interested to know that I succeeded in obtaining the man's acquittal.”
+
+“I know that you did,” the woman replied. “I was in the Court when the
+verdict was brought in. It has since occurred to me that I should like
+you to understand exactly what you have done, the responsibility you
+have incurred.”
+
+Ledsam raised his eyebrows.
+
+“Responsibility?” he repeated. “What I have done is simple enough. I
+have earned a very large fee and won my case.”
+
+“You have secured the acquittal of Oliver Hilditch,” she persisted.
+“He is by this time a free man. Now I am going to speak to you of that
+responsibility. I am going to tell you a little about the man who owes
+his freedom to your eloquence.”
+
+It was exactly twenty minutes after their entrance into the teashop when
+the woman finished her monologue. She began to draw on her gloves again.
+Before them were two untasted cups of tea and an untouched plate of
+bread and butter. From a corner of the room the waitress was watching
+them curiously.
+
+“Good God!” Francis Ledsam exclaimed at last, suddenly realising his
+whereabouts. “Do you mean to affirm solemnly that what you have been
+telling me is the truth?”
+
+The woman continued to button her gloves. “It is the truth,” she said.
+
+Ledsam sat up and looked around him. He was a little dazed. He had
+almost the feeling of a man recovering from the influence of some
+anaesthetic. Before his eyes were still passing visions of terrible
+deeds, of naked, ugly passion, of man's unscrupulous savagery. During
+those few minutes he had been transported to New York and Paris, London
+and Rome. Crimes had been spoken of which made the murder for which
+Oliver Hilditch had just been tried seem like a trifling indiscretion.
+Hard though his mentality, sternly matter-of-fact as was his outlook,
+he was still unable to fully believe in himself, his surroundings, or
+in this woman who had just dropped a veil over her ashen cheeks. Reason
+persisted in asserting itself.
+
+“But if you knew all this,” he demanded, “why on earth didn't you come
+forward and give evidence?”
+
+“Because,” she answered calmly, as she rose to her feet, “my evidence
+would not have been admissible. I am Oliver Hilditch's wife.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Francis Ledsam arrived at his club, the Sheridan, an hour later than he
+had anticipâtéd. He nodded to the veteran hall-porter, hung up his hat
+and stick, and climbed the great staircase to the card-room without any
+distinct recollection of performing any of these simple and reasonable
+actions. In the cardroom he exchanged a few greetings with friends,
+accepted without comment or without the slightest tinge of gratification
+a little chorus of chafing congratulations upon his latest triumph,
+and left the room without any inclination to play, although there was
+a vacant place at his favourite table. From sheer purposelessness he
+wandered back again into the hall, and here came his first gleam of
+returning sensation. He came face to face with his most intimate friend,
+Andrew Wilmore. The latter, who had just hung up his coat and hat,
+greeted him with a growl of welcome.
+
+“So you've brought it off again, Francis!”
+
+“Touch and go,” the barrister remarked. “I managed to squeak home.”
+
+Wilmore laid his hand upon his friend's shoulder and led the way towards
+two easy-chairs in the lounge.
+
+“I tell you what it is, old chap,” he confided, “you'll be making
+yourself unpopular before long. Another criminal at large, thanks to
+that glib tongue and subtle brain of yours. The crooks of London will
+present you with a testimonial when you're made a judge.”
+
+“So you think that Oliver Hilditch was guilty, then?” Francis asked
+curiously.
+
+“My dear fellow, how do I know or care?” was the indifferent reply.
+“I shouldn't have thought that there had been any doubt about it. You
+probably know, anyway.”
+
+“That's just what I didn't when I got up to make my speech,” Francis
+assured his friend emphatically. “The fellow was given an opportunity of
+making a clean breast of it, of course--Wensley, his lawyer, advised him
+to, in fact--but the story he told me was precisely the story he told at
+the inquest.”
+
+They were established now in their easy-chairs, and Wilmore summoned a
+waiter.
+
+“Two large whiskies and sodas,” he ordered. “Francis,” he went on,
+studying his companion intently, “what's the matter with you? You don't
+look as though your few days in the country last week had done you any
+good.”
+
+Francis glanced around as though to be sure that they were alone.
+
+“I was all right when I came up, Andrew,” he muttered. “This case has
+upset me.”
+
+“Upset you? But why the dickens should it?” the other demanded, in a
+puzzled tone. “It was quite an ordinary case, in its way, and you won
+it.”
+
+“I won it,” Francis admitted.
+
+“Your defence was the most ingenious thing I ever heard.”
+
+“Mostly suggested, now I come to think of it,” the barrister remarked
+grimly, “by the prisoner himself.”
+
+“But why are you upset about it, anyway?” Wilmore persisted.
+
+Francis rose to his feet, shook himself, and with his elbow resting upon
+the mantelpiece leaned down towards his friend. He could not rid himself
+altogether of this sense of unreality. He had the feeling that he had
+passed through one of the great crises of his life.
+
+“I'll tell you, Andrew. You're about the only man in the world I could
+tell. I've gone crazy.”
+
+“I thought you looked as though you'd been seeing spooks,” Wilmore
+murmured sympathetically.
+
+“I have seen a spook,” Francis rejoined, with almost passionate
+seriousness, “a spook who lifted an invisible curtain with invisible
+fingers, and pointed to such a drama of horrors as De Quincey, Poe and
+Sue combined could never have imagined. Oliver Hilditch was guilty,
+Andrew. He murdered the man Jordan--murdered him in cold blood.”
+
+“I'm not surprised to hear that,” was the somewhat puzzled reply.
+
+“He was guilty, Andrew, not only of the murder of this man, his partner,
+but of innumerable other crimes and brutalities,” Francis went on. “He
+is a fiend in human form, if ever there was one, and I have set him
+loose once more to prey upon Society. I am morally responsible for his
+next robbery, his next murder, the continued purgatory of those forced
+to associate with him.”
+
+“You're dotty, Francis,” his friend declared shortly.
+
+“I told you I was crazy,” was the desperate reply. “So would you be if
+you'd sat opposite that woman for half-an-hour, and heard her story.”
+
+“What woman?” Wilmore demanded, leaning forward in his chair and gazing
+at his friend with increasing uneasiness.
+
+“A woman who met me outside the Court and told me the story of Oliver
+Hilditch's life.”
+
+“A stranger?”
+
+“A complete stranger to me. It transpired that she was his wife.”
+
+Wilmore lit a cigarette.
+
+“Believe her?”
+
+“There are times when one doesn't believe or disbelieve,” Francis
+answered. “One knows.”
+
+Wilmore nodded.
+
+“All the same, you're crazy,” he declared. “Even if you did save the
+fellow from the gallows, you were only doing your job, doing your duty
+to the best of poor ability. You had no reason to believe him guilty.”
+
+“That's just as it happened,” Francis pointed out. “I really didn't care
+at the time whether he was or not. I had to proceed on the assumption
+that he was not, of course, but on the other hand I should have fought
+just as hard for him if I had known him to be guilty.”
+
+“And you wouldn't now--to-morrow, say?”
+
+“Never again.”
+
+“Because of that woman's story?”
+
+“Because of the woman.”
+
+There was a short silence. Then Wilmore asked a very obvious question.
+
+“What sort of a person was she?”
+
+Francis Ledsam was several moments before he replied. The question was
+one which he had been expecting, one which he had already asked himself
+many times, yet he was unprepared with any definite reply.
+
+“I wish I could answer you, Andrew,” his friend confessed. “As a matter
+of fact, I can't. I can only speak of the impression she left upon me,
+and you are about the only person breathing to whom I could speak of
+that.”
+
+Wilmore nodded sympathetically. He knew that, man of the world though
+Francis Ledsam appeared, he was nevertheless a highly imaginative
+person, something of an idealist as regards women, unwilling as a rule
+to discuss them, keeping them, in a general way, outside his daily life.
+
+“Go ahead, old fellow,” he invited. “You know I understand.”
+
+“She left the impression upon me,” Francis continued quietly, “of a
+woman who had ceased to live. She was young, she was beautiful, she had
+all the gifts--culture, poise and breeding--but she had ceased to live.
+We sat with a marble table between us, and a few feet of oil-covered
+floor. Those few feet, Andrew, were like an impassable gulf. She spoke
+from the shores of another world. I listened and answered, spoke and
+listened again. And when she told her story, she went. I can't shake off
+the effect she had upon me, Andrew. I feel as though I had taken a step
+to the right or to the left over the edge of the world.”
+
+Andrew Wilmore studied his friend thoughtfully.
+
+He was full of sympathy and understanding. His one desire at that moment
+was not to make a mistake. He decided to leave unasked the obvious
+question.
+
+“I know,” he said simply. “Are you dining anywhere?”
+
+“I thought of staying on here,” was the indifferent reply.
+
+“We won't do anything of the sort,” Wilmore insisted. “There's scarcely
+a soul in to-night, and the place is too humpy for a man who's been
+seeing spooks. Get back to your rooms and change. I'll wait here.”
+
+“What about you?”
+
+“I have some clothes in my locker. Don't be long. And, by-the-bye, which
+shall it be--Bohemia or Mayfair? I'll telephone for a table. London's so
+infernally full, these days.”
+
+Francis hesitated.
+
+“I really don't care,” he confessed. “Now I think of it, I shall be glad
+to get away from here, though. I don't want any more congratulations
+on saving Oliver Hilditch's life. Let's go where we are least likely to
+meet any one we know.”
+
+“Respectability and a starched shirt-front, then,” Wilmore decided.
+“We'll go to Claridge's.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The two men occupied a table set against the wall, not far from the
+entrance to the restaurant, and throughout the progress of the earlier
+part of their meal were able to watch the constant incoming stream of
+their fellow-guests. They were, in their way, an interesting contrast
+physically, neither of them good-looking according to ordinary
+standards, but both with many pleasant characteristics. Andrew Wilmore,
+slight and dark, with sallow cheeks and brown eyes, looked very much
+what he was--a moderately successful journalist and writer of stories,
+a keen golfer, a bachelor who preferred a pipe to cigars, and lived
+at Richmond because he could not find a flat in London which he could
+afford, large enough for his somewhat expansive habits. Francis Ledsam
+was of a sturdier type, with features perhaps better known to the world
+owing to the constant activities of the cartoonist. His reputation
+during the last few years had carried him, notwithstanding his
+comparative youth--he was only thirty-five years of age--into the very
+front ranks of his profession, and his income was one of which men spoke
+with bated breath. He came of a family of landed proprietors, whose
+younger sons for generations had drifted always either to the Bar or the
+Law, and his name was well known in the purlieus of Lincoln's Inn
+before he himself had made it famous. He was a persistent refuser
+of invitations, and his acquaintances in the fashionable world were
+comparatively few. Yet every now and then he felt a mild interest in the
+people whom his companion assiduously pointed out to him.
+
+“A fashionable restaurant, Francis, is rather like your Law Courts--it
+levels people up,” the latter remarked. “Louis, the head-waiter, is the
+judge, and the position allotted in the room is the sentence. I wonder
+who is going to have the little table next but one to us. Some favoured
+person, evidently.”
+
+Francis glanced in the direction indicated without curiosity. The
+table in question was laid for two and was distinguished by a wonderful
+cluster of red roses.
+
+“Why is it,” the novelist continued speculatively, “that, whenever we
+take another man's wife out, we think it necessary to order red roses?”
+
+“And why is it,” Francis queried, a little grimly, “that a dear fellow
+like you, Andrew, believes it his duty to talk of trifles for his pal's
+sake, when all the time he is thinking of something else? I know you're
+dying to talk about the Hilditch case, aren't you? Well, go ahead.”
+
+“I'm only interested in this last development,” Wilmore confessed.
+“Of course, I read the newspaper reports. To tell you the truth, for a
+murder trial it seemed to me to rather lack colour.”
+
+“It was a very simple and straightforward case,” Francis said slowly.
+“Oliver Hilditch is the principal partner in an American financial
+company which has recently opened offices in the West End. He seems to
+have arrived in England about two years ago, to have taken a house in
+Hill Street, and to have spent a great deal of money. A month or so ago,
+his partner from New York arrived in London, a man named Jordan of whom
+nothing was known. It has since transpired, however, that his journey
+to Europe was undertaken because he was unable to obtain certain figures
+relating to the business, from Hilditch. Oliver Hilditch met him at
+Southampton, travelled with him to London and found him a room at the
+Savoy. The next day, the whole of the time seems to have been spent in
+the office, and it is certain, from the evidence of the clerk, that
+some disagreement took place between the two men. They dined together,
+however, apparently on good terms, at the Cafe Royal, and parted in
+Regent Street soon after ten. At twelve o'clock, Jordan's body was
+picked up on the pavement in Hill Street, within a few paces of
+Heidrich's door. He had been stabbed through the heart with some
+needle-like weapon, and was quite dead.”
+
+“Was there any vital cause of quarrel between them?” Wilmore enquired.
+
+“Impossible to say,” Francis replied. “The financial position of
+the company depends entirely upon the value of a large quantity of
+speculative bonds, but as there was only one clerk employed, it was
+impossible to get at any figures. Hilditch declared that Jordan had only
+a small share in the business, from which he had drawn a considerable
+income for years, and that he had not the slightest cause for
+complaint.”
+
+“What were Hilditch's movements that evening?” Wilmore asked.
+
+“Not a soul seems to have seen him after he left Regent Street,” was the
+somewhat puzzled answer. “His own story was quite straightforward
+and has never been contradicted. He let himself into his house with a
+latch-key after his return from the Cafe Royal, drank a whisky and
+soda in the library, and went to bed before half-past eleven. The whole
+affair--”
+
+Francis broke off abruptly in the middle of his sentence. He sat with
+his eyes fixed upon the door, silent and speechless.
+
+“What in Heaven's name is the matter, old fellow?” Wilmore demanded,
+gazing at his companion in blank amazement.
+
+The latter pulled himself together with an effort. The sight of the two
+new arrivals talking to Louis on the threshold of the restaurant, seemed
+for the moment to have drawn every scrap of colour from his cheeks.
+Nevertheless, his recovery was almost instantaneous.
+
+“If you want to know any more,” he said calmly, “you had better go and
+ask him to tell you the whole story himself. There he is.”
+
+“And the woman with him?” Wilmore exclaimed under his breath.
+
+“His wife!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+To reach their table, the one concerning which Francis and his friend
+had been speculating, the new arrivals, piloted by Louis, had to pass
+within a few feet of the two men. The woman, serene, coldly beautiful,
+dressed like a Frenchwoman in unrelieved black, with extraordinary
+attention to details, passed them by with a careless glance and subsided
+into the chair which Louis was holding. Her companion, however, as he
+recognised Francis hesitated. His expression of somewhat austere gloom
+was lightened. A pleasant but tentative smile parted his lips. He
+ventured upon a salutation, half a nod, half a more formal bow, a
+salutation which Francis instinctively returned. Andrew Wilmore looked
+on with curiosity.
+
+“So that is Oliver Hilditch,” he murmured.
+
+“That is the man,” Francis observed, “of whom last evening half the
+people in this restaurant were probably asking themselves whether or
+not he was guilty of murder. To-night they will be wondering what he is
+going to order for dinner. It is a strange world.”
+
+“Strange indeed,” Wilmore assented. “This afternoon he was in the dock,
+with his fate in the balance--the condemned cell or a favoured table at
+Claridge's. And your meeting! One can imagine him gripping your hands,
+with tears in his eyes, his voice broken with emotion, sobbing out his
+thanks. And instead you exchange polite bows. I would not have missed
+this situation for anything.”
+
+“Tradesman!” Francis scoffed. “One can guess already at the plot of your
+next novel.”
+
+“He has courage,” Wilmore declared. “He has also a very beautiful
+companion. Were you serious, Francis, when you told me that that was his
+wife?”
+
+“She herself was my informant,” was the quiet reply.
+
+Wilmore was puzzled.
+
+“But she passed you just now without even a glance of recognition, and
+I thought you told me at the club this afternoon that all your knowledge
+of his evil ways came from her. Besides, she looks at least twenty years
+younger than he does.”
+
+Francis, who had been watching his glass filled with champagne, raised
+it to his lips and drank its contents steadily to the last drop.
+
+“I can only tell you what I know, Andrew,” he said, as he set down the
+empty glass. “The woman who is with him now is the woman who spoke to me
+outside the Old Bailey this afternoon. We went to a tea-shop together.
+She told me the story of his career. I have never listened to so
+horrible a recital in my life.”
+
+“And yet they are here together, dining tête-à-tête, on a night when it
+must have needed more than ordinary courage for either of them to have
+been seen in public at all,” Wilmore pointed out.
+
+“It is as astounding to me as it is to you,” Francis confessed. “From
+the way she spoke, I should never have dreamed that they were living
+together.”
+
+“And from his appearance,” Wilmore remarked, as he called the waiter
+to bring some cigarettes, “I should never have imagined that he was
+anything else save a high-principled, well-born, straightforward sort of
+chap. I never saw a less criminal type of face.”
+
+They each in turn glanced at the subject of their discussion. Oliver
+Hilditch's good-looks had been the subject of many press comments during
+the last few days. They were certainly undeniable. His face was a little
+lined but his hair was thick and brown. His features were regular, his
+forehead high and thoughtful, his mouth a trifle thin but straight and
+shapely. Francis gazed at him like a man entranced. The hours seemed to
+have slipped away. He was back in the tea-shop, listening to the woman
+who spoke of terrible things. He felt again his shivering abhorrence of
+her cold, clearly narrated story. Again he shrank from the horrors from
+which with merciless fingers she had stripped the coverings. He seemed
+to see once more the agony in her white face, to hear the eternal pain
+aching and throbbing in her monotonous tone. He rose suddenly to his
+feet.
+
+“Andrew,” he begged, “tell the fellow to bring the bill outside. We'll
+have our coffee and liqueurs there.”
+
+Wilmore acquiesced willingly enough, but even as they turned towards
+the door Francis realised what was in store for him. Oliver Hilditch had
+risen to his feet. With a courteous little gesture he intercepted the
+passer-by. Francis found himself standing side by side with the man for
+whose life he had pleaded that afternoon, within a few feet of the woman
+whose terrible story seemed to have poisoned the very atmosphere he
+breathed, to have shown him a new horror in life, to have temporarily,
+at any rate, undermined every joy and ambition he possessed.
+
+“Mr. Ledsam,” Hilditch said, speaking with quiet dignity, “I hope that
+you will forgive the liberty I take in speaking to you here. I looked
+for you the moment I was free this afternoon, but found that you had
+left the Court. I owe you my good name, probably my life. Thanks are
+poor things but they must be spoken.”
+
+“You owe me nothing at all,” Francis replied, in a tone which even he
+found harsh. “I had a brief before me and a cause to plead. It was a
+chapter out of my daily work.”
+
+“That work can be well done or ill,” the other reminded him gently.
+“In your case, my presence here proves how well it was done. I wish to
+present you to my wife, who shares my gratitude.”
+
+Francis bowed to the woman, who now, at her husband's words, raised her
+eyes. For the first time he saw her smile. It seemed to him that the
+effort made her less beautiful.
+
+“Your pleading was very wonderful, Mr. Ledsam,” she said, a very subtle
+note of mockery faintly apparent in her tone. “We poor mortals find
+it difficult to understand that with you all that show of passionate
+earnestness is merely--what did you call it?--a chapter in your day's
+work? It is a great gift to be able to argue from the brain and plead as
+though from the heart.”
+
+“We will not detain Mr. Ledsam,” Oliver Hilditch interposed, a little
+hastily. “He perhaps does not care to be addressed in public by a client
+who still carries with him the atmosphere of the prison. My wife and I
+wondered, Mr. Ledsam, whether you would be good enough to dine with us
+one night. I think I could interest you by telling you more about
+my case than you know at present, and it would give us a further
+opportunity, and a more seemly one, for expressing our gratitude.”
+
+Francis had recovered himself by this time. He was after all a man of
+parts, and though he still had the feeling that he had been through one
+of the most momentous days of his life, his savoir faire was making its
+inevitable reappearance. He knew very well that the idea of that dinner
+would be horrible to him. He also knew that he would willingly cancel
+every engagement he had rather than miss it.
+
+“You are very kind,” he murmured.
+
+“Are we fortunate enough to find you disengaged,” Hilditch suggested,
+“to-morrow evening?”
+
+“I am quite free,” was the ready response.
+
+“That suits you, Margaret?” Hilditch asked, turning courteously to his
+wife.
+
+For a single moment her eyes were fixed upon those of her prospective
+guest. He read their message which pleaded for his refusal, and he
+denied it.
+
+“To-morrow evening will suit me as well as any other,” she acquiesced,
+after a brief pause.
+
+“At eight o'clock, then--number 10 b, Hill Street,” Hilditch concluded.
+
+Francis bowed and turned away with a murmured word of polite assent.
+Outside, he found Wilmore deep in the discussion of the merits of
+various old brandies with an interested maitre d'hotel.
+
+“Any choice, Francis?” his host enquired.
+
+“None whatever,” was the prompt reply, “only, for God's sake, give me a
+double one quickly!”
+
+The two men were on the point of departure when Oliver Hilditch and his
+wife left the restaurant. As though conscious that they had become
+the subject of discussion, as indeed was the case, thanks to the busy
+whispering of the various waiters, they passed without lingering through
+the lounge into the entrance hall, where Francis and Andrew Wilmore were
+already waiting for a taxicab. Almost as they appeared, a new arrival
+was ushered through the main entrance, followed by porters carrying
+luggage. He brushed past Francis so closely that the latter looked into
+his face, half attracted and half repelled by the waxen-like complexion,
+the piercing eyes, and the dignified carriage of the man whose arrival
+seemed to be creating some stir in the hotel. A reception clerk and a
+deputy manager had already hastened forward. The newcomer waved them
+back for a moment. Bareheaded, he had taken Margaret Hilditch's hands in
+his and raised them to his lips.
+
+“I came as quickly as I could,” he said. “There was the usual delay, of
+course, at Marseilles, and the trains on were terrible. So all has ended
+well.”
+
+Oliver Hilditch, standing by, remained speechless. It seemed for a
+moment as though his self-control were subjected to a severe strain.
+
+“I had the good fortune,” he interposed, in a low tone, “to be
+wonderfully defended. Mr. Ledsam here--”
+
+He glanced around. Francis, with some idea of what was coming, obeyed an
+imaginary summons from the head-porter, touched Andrew Wilmore upon
+the shoulder, and hastened without a backward glance through the
+swing-doors. Wilmore turned up his coat-collar and looked doubtfully up
+at the rain.
+
+“I say, old chap,” he protested, “you don't really mean to walk?”
+
+Francis thrust his hand through his friend's arm and wheeled him round
+into Davies Street.
+
+“I don't care what the mischief we do, Andrew,” he confided, “but
+couldn't you see what was going to happen? Oliver Hilditch was going to
+introduce me as his preserver to the man who had just arrived!”
+
+“Are you afflicted with modesty, all of a sudden?” Wilmore grumbled.
+
+“No, remorse,” was the terse reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Indecision had never been one of Francis Ledsam's faults, but four times
+during the following day he wrote out a carefully worded telegraphic
+message to Mrs. Oliver Hilditch, 10 b, Hill Street, regretting his
+inability to dine that night, and each time he destroyed it. He carried
+the first message around Richmond golf course with him, intending to
+dispatch his caddy with it immediately on the conclusion of the round.
+The fresh air, however, and the concentration required by the game,
+seemed to dispel the nervous apprehensions with which he had anticipâtéd
+his visit, and over an aperitif in the club bar he tore the telegram
+into small pieces and found himself even able to derive a certain
+half-fearful pleasure from the thought of meeting again the woman who,
+together with her terrible story, had never for one moment been out of
+his thoughts. Andrew Wilmore, who had observed his action, spoke of it
+as they settled down to lunch.
+
+“So you are going to keep your engagement tonight, Francis?” he
+observed.
+
+The latter nodded.
+
+“After all, why not?” he asked, a little defiantly. “It ought to be
+interesting.”
+
+“Well, there's nothing of the sordid criminal, at any rate, about Oliver
+Hilditch,” Wilmore declared. “Neither, if one comes to think of it, does
+his wife appear to be the prototype of suffering virtue. I wonder if you
+are wise to go, Francis?”
+
+“Why not?” the man who had asked himself that question a dozen times
+already, demanded.
+
+“Because,” Wilmore replied coolly, “underneath that steely hardness
+of manner for which your profession is responsible, you have a vein
+of sentiment, of chivalrous sentiment, I should say, which some day or
+other is bound to get you into trouble. The woman is beautiful enough
+to turn any one's head. As a matter of fact, I believe that you are more
+than half in love with her already.”
+
+Francis Ledsam sat where the sunlight fell upon his strong, forceful
+face, shone, too, upon the table with its simple but pleasant
+appointments, upon the tankard of beer by his side, upon the plate of
+roast beef to which he was already doing ample justice. He laughed with
+the easy confidence of a man awakened from some haunting nightmare,
+relieved to find his feet once more firm upon the ground.
+
+“I have been a fool to take the whole matter so seriously, Andrew,”
+ he declared. “I expect to walk back to Clarges Street to-night,
+disillusioned. The man will probably present me with a gold pencil-case,
+and the woman--”
+
+“Well, what about the woman?” Wilmore asked, after a brief pause.
+
+“Oh, I don't know!” Francis declared, a little impatiently. “The woman
+is the mystery, of course. Probably my brain was a little over-excited
+when I came out of Court, and what I imagined to be an epic was nothing
+more than a tissue of exaggerations from a disappointed wife. I'm sure
+I'm doing the right thing to go there.... What about a four-ball this
+afternoon, Andrew?”
+
+The four-ball match was played and won in normal fashion. The two men
+returned to town together afterwards, Wilmore to the club and Francis to
+his rooms in Clarges Street to prepare for dinner. At a few minutes to
+eight he rang the bell of number 10 b, Hill Street, and found his host
+and hostess awaiting him in the small drawing-room into which he was
+ushered. It seemed to him that the woman, still colourless, again
+marvellously gowned, greeted him coldly. His host, however, was almost
+too effusive. There was no other guest, but the prompt announcement of
+dinner dispelled what might have been a few moments of embarrassment
+after Oliver Hilditch's almost too cordial greeting. The woman laid her
+fingers upon her guest's coat-sleeve. The trio crossed the little hall
+almost in silence.
+
+Dinner was served in a small white Georgian dining-room, with every
+appurtenance of almost Sybaritic luxury. The only light in the room
+was thrown upon the table by two purple-shaded electric lamps, and the
+servants who waited seemed to pass backwards and forwards like shadows
+in some mysterious twilight--even the faces of the three diners
+themselves were out of the little pool of light until they leaned
+forward. The dinner was chosen with taste and restraint, the wines were
+not only costly but rare. A watchful butler, attended now and then by
+a trim parlour-maid, superintended the service. Only once, when she
+ordered a bowl of flowers removed from the table, did their mistress
+address either of them. Conversation after the first few amenities
+speedily became almost a monologue. One man talked whilst the others
+listened, and the man who talked was Oliver Hilditch. He possessed the
+rare gift of imparting colour and actuality in a few phrases to the
+strange places of which he spoke, of bringing the very thrill of strange
+happenings into the shadowy room. It seemed that there was scarcely a
+country of the world which he had not visited, a country, that is to
+say, where men congregate, for he admitted from the first that he was a
+city worshipper, that the empty places possessed no charm for him.
+
+“I am not even a sportsman,” he confessed once, half apologetically, in
+reply to a question from his guest. “I have passed down the great rivers
+of the world without a thought of salmon, and I have driven through the
+forest lands and across the mountains behind a giant locomotive, without
+a thought of the beasts which might be lurking there, waiting to be
+killed. My only desire has been to reach the next place where men and
+women were.”
+
+“Irrespective of nationality?” Francis queried.
+
+“Absolutely. I have never minded much of what race--I have the trick
+of tongues rather strangely developed--but I like the feeling of human
+beings around me. I like the smell and sound and atmosphere of a great
+city. Then all my senses are awake, but life becomes almost turgid in my
+veins during the dreary hours of passing from one place to another.”
+
+“Do you rule out scenery as well as sport from amongst the joys of
+travel?” Francis enquired.
+
+“I am ashamed to make such a confession,” his host answered, “but I
+have never lingered for a single unnecessary moment to look at the most
+wonderful landscape in the world. On the other hand, I have lounged for
+hours in the narrowest streets of Pekin, in the markets of Shanghai,
+along Broadway in New York, on the boulevards in Paris, outside the
+Auditorium in Chicago. These are the obvious places where humanity
+presses the thickest, but I know of others. Some day we will talk of
+them.”
+
+Francis, too, although that evening, through sheer lack of sympathy,
+he refused to admit it, shared to some extent Hilditch's passionate
+interest in his fellow-creatures, and notwithstanding the strange
+confusion of thought into which he had been thrown during the last
+twenty-four hours, he felt something of the pungency of life, the thrill
+of new and appealing surroundings, as he sat in his high-backed chair,
+sipping his wonderful wine, eating almost mechanically what was set
+before him, fascinated through all his being by his strange company.
+
+For three days he had cast occasional glances at this man, seated in
+the criminal dock with a gaoler on either side of him, his fine,
+nervous features gaining an added distinction from the sordidness of his
+surroundings. Now, in the garb of civilisation, seated amidst luxury to
+which he was obviously accustomed, with a becoming light upon his face
+and this strange, fascinating flow of words proceeding always from his
+lips, the man, from every external point of view, seemed amongst the
+chosen ones of the world. The contrast was in itself amazing. And then
+the woman! Francis looked at her but seldom, and when he did it was with
+a curious sense of mental disturbance; poignant but unanalysable.
+
+It was amazing to see her here, opposite the man of whom she had told
+him that ghastly story, mistress of his house, to all appearance his
+consort, apparently engrossed in his polished conversation, yet with
+that subtle withholding of her real self which Francis rather imagined
+than felt, and which somehow seemed to imply her fierce resentment of
+her husband's re-entry into the arena of life. It was a situation so
+strange that Francis, becoming more and more subject to its influence,
+was inclined to wonder whether he had not met with some accident on
+his way from the Court, and whether this was not one of the heated
+nightmares following unconsciousness.
+
+“Tell me,” he asked his host, during one of the brief pauses in the
+conversation, “have you ever tried to analyse this interest of yours
+in human beings and crowded cities, this hatred of solitude and empty
+spaces?”
+
+Oliver Hilditch smiled thoughtfully, and gazed at a salted almond which
+he was just balancing between the tips of his fingers.
+
+“I think,” he said simply, “it is because I have no soul.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The three diners lingered for only a short time over their dessert.
+Afterwards, they passed together into a very delightful library on the
+other side of the round, stone-paved hall. Hilditch excused himself for
+a moment.
+
+“I have some cigars which I keep in my dressing-room,” he explained,
+“and which I am anxious for you to try. There is an electric stove there
+and I can regulate the temperature.”
+
+He departed, closing the door behind him. Francis came a little further
+into the room. His hostess, who had subsided into an easy-chair and was
+holding a screen between her face and the fire, motioned him to,
+seat himself opposite. He did so without words. He felt curiously and
+ridiculously tongue-tied. He fell to studying the woman instead of
+attempting the banality of pointless speech. From the smooth gloss of
+her burnished hair, to the daintiness of her low, black brocaded shoes,
+she represented, so far as her physical and outward self were concerned,
+absolute perfection. No ornament was amiss, no line or curve of her
+figure other than perfectly graceful. Yet even the fire's glow which
+she had seemed to dread brought no flush of colour to her cheeks. Her
+appearance of complete lifelessness remained. It was as though some sort
+of crust had formed about her being, a condition which her very physical
+perfection seemed to render the more incomprehensible.
+
+“You are surprised to see me here living with my husband, after what
+I told you yesterday afternoon?” she said calmly, breaking at last the
+silence which had reigned between them.
+
+“I am,” he admitted.
+
+“It seems unnatural to you, I suppose?”
+
+“Entirely.”
+
+“You still believe all that I told you?”
+
+“I must.”
+
+She looked at the door and raised her head a little, as though either
+listening or adjudging the time before her husband would return. Then
+she glanced across at him once more.
+
+“Hatred,” she said, “does not always drive away. Sometimes it attracts.
+Sometimes the person who hates can scarcely bear the other out of his
+sight. That is where hate and love are somewhat alike.”
+
+The room was warm but Francis was conscious of shivering. She raised
+her finger warningly. It seemed typical of the woman, somehow, that the
+message could not be conveyed by any glance or gesture.
+
+“He is coming,” she whispered.
+
+Oliver Hilditch reappeared, carrying cigars wrapped in gold foil which
+he had brought with him from Cuba, the tobacco of which was a revelation
+to his guest. The two men smoked and sipped their coffee and brandy. The
+woman sat with half-closed eyes. It was obvious that Hilditch was still
+in the mood for speech.
+
+“I will tell you, Mr. Ledsam,” he said, “why I am so happy to have you
+here this evening. In the first place, I desire to tender you once more
+my thanks for your very brilliant efforts on my behalf. The very fact
+that I am able to offer you hospitality at all is without a doubt due to
+these.”
+
+“I only did what I was paid to do,” Francis insisted, a little harshly.
+“You must remember that these things come in the day's work with us.”
+
+His host nodded.
+
+“Naturally,” he murmured. “There was another reason, too, why I was
+anxious to meet you, Mr. Ledsam,” he continued. “You have gathered
+already that I am something of a crank. I have a profound detestation
+of all sentimentality and affected morals. It is a relief to me to
+come into contact with a man who is free from that bourgeois incubus to
+modern enterprise--a conscience.”
+
+“Is that your estimate of me?” Francis asked.
+
+“Why not? You practise your profession in the criminal courts, do you
+not?”
+
+“That is well-known,” was the brief reply.
+
+“What measure of conscience can a man have,” Oliver Hilditch argued
+blandly, “who pleads for the innocent and guilty alike with the same
+simulated fervour? Confess, now, Mr. Ledsam--there is no object in being
+hypocritical in this matter--have you not often pleaded for the guilty
+as though you believed them innocent?”
+
+“That has sometimes been my duty,” Francis acknowledged.
+
+Hilditch laughed scornfully.
+
+“It is all part of the great hypocrisy of society,” he proclaimed.
+“You have an extra glass of champagne for dinner at night and are
+congratulated by your friends because you have helped some poor devil
+to cheat the law, while all the time you know perfectly well, and so
+do your high-minded friends, that your whole attitude during those two
+hours of eloquence has been a lie. That is what first attracted me to
+you, Mr. Ledsam.”
+
+“I am sorry to hear it,” Francis commented coldly. “The ethics of my
+profession--”
+
+His host stopped him with a little wave of the hand.
+
+“Spare me that,” he begged. “While we are on the subject, though, I have
+a question to ask you. My lawyer told me, directly after he had briefed
+you, that, although it would make no real difference to your pleading,
+it would be just as well for me to keep up my bluff of being innocent,
+even in private conversation with you. Why was that?”
+
+“For the very obvious reason,” Francis told him, “that we are not
+all such rogues and vagabonds as you seem to think. There is more
+satisfaction to me, at any rate, in saving an innocent man's life than a
+guilty one's.”
+
+Hilditch laughed as though amused.
+
+“Come,” he threatened, “I am going to be ill-natured. You have shown
+signs of smugness, a quality which I detest. I am going to rob you of
+some part of your self-satisfaction. Of course I killed Jordan. I killed
+him in the very chair in which you are now sitting.”
+
+There was a moment's intense silence. The woman was still fanning
+herself lazily. Francis leaned forward in his place.
+
+“I do not wish to hear this!” he exclaimed harshly.
+
+“Don't be foolish,” his host replied, rising to his feet and strolling
+across the room. “You know the whole trouble of the prosecution. They
+couldn't discover the weapon, or anything like it, with which the deed
+was done. Now I'll show you something ingenious.”
+
+Francis followed the other's movements with fascinated eyes. The woman
+scarcely turned her head. Hilditch paused at the further end of the
+room, where there were a couple of gun cases, some fishing rods and a
+bag, of golf clubs. From the latter he extracted a very ordinary-looking
+putter, and with it in his hands strolled back to them.
+
+“Do you play golf, Ledsam?” he asked. “What do you think of that?”
+
+Francis took the putter into his hand. It was a very ordinary club,
+which had apparently seen a good deal of service, so much, indeed, that
+the leather wrapping at the top was commencing to unroll. The maker's
+name was on the back of the blade, also the name of the professional
+from whom it had been purchased. Francis swung the implement
+mechanically with his wrists.
+
+“There seems to be nothing extraordinary about the club,” he pronounced.
+“It is very much like a cleek I putt with myself.”
+
+“Yet it contains a secret which would most certainly have hanged me,”
+ Oliver Hilditch declared pleasantly. “See!”
+
+He held the shaft firmly in one hand and bent the blade away from it.
+In a moment or two it yielded and he commenced to unscrew it. A little
+exclamation escaped from Francis' lips. The woman looked on with tired
+eyes.
+
+“The join in the steel,” Hilditch pointed out, “is so fine as to be
+undistinguishable by the naked eye. Yet when the blade comes off, like
+this, you see that although the weight is absolutely adjusted, the
+inside is hollow. The dagger itself is encased in this cotton wool to
+avoid any rattling. I put it away in rather a hurry the last time I used
+it, and as you see I forgot to clean it.”
+
+Francis staggered back and gripped at the mantelpiece. His eyes were
+filled with horror. Very slowly, and with the air of one engaged upon
+some interesting task, Oliver Hilditch had removed the blood-stained
+sheath of cotton wool from around the thin blade of a marvellous-looking
+stiletto, on which was also a long stain of encrusted blood.
+
+“There is a handle,” he went on, “which is perhaps the most ingenious
+thing of all. You touch a spring here, and behold!”
+
+He pressed down two tiny supports which opened upon hinges about four
+inches from the top of the handle. There was now a complete hilt.
+
+“With this little weapon,” he explained, “the point is so sharpened
+and the steel so wonderful that it is not necessary to stab. It has the
+perfection of a surgical instrument. You have only to lean it against
+a certain point in a man's anatomy, lunge ever so little and the whole
+thing is done. Come here, Mr. Ledsam, and I will show you the exact
+spot.”
+
+Francis made no movement. His eyes were fixed upon the weapon.
+
+“If I had only known!” he muttered.
+
+“My dear fellow, if you had,” the other protested soothingly, “you know
+perfectly well that it would not have made the slightest difference.
+Perhaps that little break in your voice would not have come quite so
+naturally, the little sweep of your arm towards me, the man whom a
+moment's thoughtlessness might sweep into Eternity, would have been a
+little stiffer, but what matter? You would still have done your best and
+you would probably still have succeeded. You don't care about trifling
+with Eternity, eh? Very well, I will find the place for you.”
+
+Hilditch's fingers strayed along his shirt-front until he found a
+certain spot. Then he leaned the dagger against it, his forefinger and
+second finger pressed against the hilt. His eyes were fixed upon his
+guest's. He seemed genuinely interested. Francis, glancing away for a
+moment, was suddenly conscious of a new horror. The woman had leaned
+a little forward in her easy-chair until she had attained almost a
+crouching position. Her eyes seemed to be measuring the distance from
+where she sat to that quivering thread of steel.
+
+“You see, Ledsam,” his host went on, “that point driven now at that
+angle would go clean through the vital part of my heart. And it needs no
+force, either--just the slow pressure of these two fingers. What did you
+say, Margaret?” he enquired, breaking off abruptly.
+
+The woman was seated upon the very edge of her chair, her eyes rivetted
+upon the dagger. There was no change in her face, not a tremor in her
+tone.
+
+“I said nothing,” she replied. “I did not speak at all. I was just
+watching.”
+
+Hilditch turned back to his guest.
+
+“These two fingers,” he repeated, “and a flick of the wrist--very little
+more than would be necessary for a thirty yard putt right across the
+green.”
+
+Francis had recovered himself, had found his bearings to a certain
+extent.
+
+“I am sorry that you have told me this, Mr. Hilditch,” he said, a little
+stiffly.
+
+“Why?” was the puzzled reply. “I thought you would be interested.”
+
+“I am interested to this extent,” Francis declared, “I shall accept no
+more cases such as yours unless I am convinced of my client's innocence.
+I look upon your confession to me as being in the worst possible taste,
+and I regret very much my efforts on your behalf.”
+
+The woman was listening intently. Hilditch's expression was one of
+cynical wonder. Francis rose to his feet and moved across to his
+hostess.
+
+“Mrs. Hilditch,” he said, “will you allow me to make my apologies? Your
+husband and I have arrived at an understanding--or perhaps I should
+say a misunderstanding--which renders the acceptance of any further
+hospitality on my part impossible.”
+
+She held out the tips of her fingers.
+
+“I had no idea,” she observed, with gentle sarcasm, “that you barristers
+were such purists morally. I thought you were rather proud of being the
+last hope of the criminal classes.”
+
+“Madam,” Francis replied, “I am not proud of having saved the life of a
+self-confessed murderer, even though that man may be your husband.”
+
+Hilditch was laughing softly to himself as he escorted his departing
+guest to the door.
+
+“You have a quaint sense of humour,” Francis remarked.
+
+“Forgive me,” Oliver Hilditch begged, “but your last few words rather
+appealed to me. You must be a person of very scanty perceptions if you
+could spend the evening here and not understand that my death is the one
+thing in the world which would make my wife happy.”
+
+Francis walked home with these last words ringing in his ears. They
+seemed with him even in that brief period of troubled sleep which came
+to him when he had regained his rooms and turned in. They were there in
+the middle of the night when he was awakened, shivering, by the shrill
+summons of his telephone bell. He stood quaking before the instrument
+in his pajamas. It was the voice which, by reason of some ghastly
+premonition, he had dreaded to hear--level, composed, emotionless.
+
+“Mr. Ledsam?” she enquired.
+
+“I am Francis Ledsam,” he assented. “Who wants me?”
+
+“It is Margaret Hilditch speaking,” she announced. “I felt that I must
+ring up and tell you of a very strange thing which happened after you
+left this evening.”
+
+“Go on,” he begged hoarsely.
+
+“After you left,” she went on, “my husband persisted in playing with
+that curious dagger. He laid it against his heart, and seated himself
+in the chair which Mr. Jordan had occupied, in the same attitude. It was
+what he called a reconstruction. While he was holding it there, I think
+that he must have had a fit, or it may have been remorse, we shall never
+know. He called out and I hurried across the room to him. I tried to
+snatch the dagger away--I did so, in fact--but I must have been too
+late. He had already applied that slight movement of the fingers which
+was necessary. The doctor has just left. He says that death must have
+been instantaneous.”
+
+“But this is horrible!” Francis cried out into the well of darkness.
+
+“A person is on the way from Scotland Yard,” the voice continued,
+without change or tremor. “When he has satisfied himself, I am going to
+bed. He is here now. Good-night!”
+
+Francis tried to speak again but his words beat against a wall of
+silence. He sat upon the edge of the bed, shivering. In that moment
+of agony he seemed to hear again the echo of Oliver Hilditch's mocking
+words:
+
+“My death is the one thing in the world which would make my wife happy!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+There was a good deal of speculation at the Sheridan Club, of which he
+was a popular and much envied member, as to the cause for the complete
+disappearance from their midst of Francis Ledsam since the culmination
+of the Hilditch tragedy.
+
+“Sent back four topping briefs, to my knowledge, last week,” one of the
+legal luminaries of the place announced to a little group of friends and
+fellow-members over a before-dinner cocktail.
+
+“Griggs offered him the defence of William Bull, the Chippenham
+murderer, and he refused it,” another remarked. “Griggs wrote him
+personally, and the reply came from the Brancaster Golf Club! It isn't
+like Ledsam to be taking golfing holidays in the middle of the session.”
+
+“There's nothing wrong with Ledsam,” declared a gruff voice from the
+corner. “And don't gossip, you fellows, at the top of your voices like a
+lot of old women. He'll be calling here for me in a moment or two.”
+
+They all looked around. Andrew Wilmore rose slowly to his feet and
+emerged from behind the sheets of an evening paper. He laid his hand
+upon the shoulder of a friend, and glanced towards the door.
+
+“Ledsam's had a touch of nerves,” he confided. “There's been nothing
+else the matter with him. We've been down at the Dormy House at
+Brancaster and he's as right as a trivet now. That Hilditch affair did
+him in completely.”
+
+“I don't see why,” one of the bystanders observed. “He got Hilditch off
+all right. One of the finest addresses to a jury I ever heard.”
+
+“That's just the point,” Wilmore explained “You see, Ledsam had no idea
+that Hilditch was really guilty, and for two hours that afternoon he
+literally fought for his life, and in the end wrested a verdict from the
+jury, against the judge's summing up, by sheer magnetism or eloquence
+or whatever you fellows like to call it. The very night after, Hilditch
+confesses his guilt and commits suicide.”
+
+“I still don't see where Ledsam's worry comes in,” the legal luminary
+remarked. “The fact that the man was guilty is rather a feather in the
+cap of his counsel. Shows how jolly good his pleading must have been.”
+
+“Just so,” Wilmore agreed, “but Ledsam, as you know, is a very
+conscientious sort of fellow, and very sensitive, too. The whole thing
+was a shock to him.”
+
+“It must have been a queer experience,” a novelist remarked from the
+outskirts of the group, “to dine with a man whose life you have juggled
+away from the law, and then have him explain his crime to you, and
+the exact manner of its accomplishment. Seems to bring one amongst the
+goats, somehow.”
+
+“Bit of a shock, no doubt,” the lawyer assented, “but I still don't
+understand Ledsam's sending back all his briefs. He's not going to chuck
+the profession, is he?”
+
+“Not by any means,” Wilmore declared. “I think he has an idea, though,
+that he doesn't want to accept any briefs unless he is convinced that
+the person whom he has to represent is innocent, and lawyers don't like
+that sort of thing, you know. You can't pick and choose, even when you
+have Ledsam's gifts.”
+
+“The fact of it is,” the novelist commented, “Francis Ledsam isn't
+callous enough to be associated with you money-grubbing dispensers of
+the law. He'd be all right as Public Prosecutor, a sort of Sir Galahad
+waving the banner of virtue, but he hates to stuff his pockets at the
+expense of the criminal classes.”
+
+“Who the mischief are the criminal classes?” a police court magistrate
+demanded. “Personally, I call war profiteering criminal, I call a good
+many Stock Exchange deals criminal, and,” he added, turning to a member
+of the committee who was hovering in the background, “I call it criminal
+to expect us to drink French vermouth like this.”
+
+“There is another point of view,” the latter retorted. “I call it
+a crime to expect a body of intelligent men to administer without
+emolument to the greed of such a crowd of rotters. You'll get the right
+stuff next week.”
+
+The hall-porter approached and addressed Wilmore.
+
+“Mr. Ledsam is outside in a taxi, sir,” he announced.
+
+“Outside in a taxi?” the lawyer repeated. “Why on earth can't he come
+in?”
+
+“I never heard such rot,” another declared. “Let's go and rope him in.”
+
+“Mr. Ledsam desired me to say, sir,” the hall porter continued, “to
+any of his friends who might be here, that he will be in to lunch
+to-morrow.”
+
+“Leave him to me till then,” Wilmore begged. “He'll be all right
+directly. He's simply altering his bearings and taking his time about
+it. If he's promised to lunch here to-morrow, he will. He's as near as
+possible through the wood. Coming up in the train, he suggested a little
+conversation to-night and afterwards the normal life. He means it, too.
+There's nothing neurotic about Ledsam.”
+
+The magistrate nodded.
+
+“Run along, then, my merry Andrew,” he said, “but see that Ledsam keeps
+his word about to-morrow.”
+
+
+Andrew Wilmore plunged boldly into the forbidden subject later on that
+evening, as the two men sat side by side at one of the wall tables in
+Soto's famous club restaurant. They had consumed an excellent dinner.
+An empty champagne bottle had just been removed, double liqueur brandies
+had taken its place. Francis, with an air of complete and even exuberant
+humanity, had lit a huge cigar. The moment seemed propitious.
+
+“Francis,” his friend began, “they say at the club that you refused to
+be briefed in the Chippenham affair.”
+
+“Quite true,” was the calm reply. “I told Griggs that I wouldn't have
+anything to do with it.”
+
+Wilmore knew then that all was well. Francis' old air of strength and
+decision had returned. His voice was firm, his eyes were clear and
+bright. His manner seemed even to invite questioning.
+
+“I think I know why,” Wilmore said, “but I should like you to tell me in
+your own words.”
+
+Francis glanced around as though to be sure that they were not
+overheard.
+
+“Because,” he replied, dropping his voice a little but still speaking
+with great distinctness, “William Bull is a cunning and dangerous
+criminal whom I should prefer to see hanged.”
+
+“You know that?”
+
+“I know that.”
+
+“It would be a great achievement to get him off,” Wilmore persisted.
+“The evidence is very weak in places.”
+
+“I believe that I could get him off,” was the confident reply. “That
+is why I will not touch the brief. I think,” Francis continued, “that
+I have already conveyed it to you indirectly, but here you are in plain
+words, Andrew. I have made up my mind that I will defend no man in
+future unless I am convinced of his innocence.”
+
+“That means--”
+
+“It means practically the end of my career at the bar,” Francis
+admitted. “I realise that absolutely: Fortunately, as you know, I am not
+dependent upon my earnings, and I have had a wonderful ten years.”
+
+“This is all because of the Hilditch affair, I suppose?”
+
+“Entirely.”
+
+Wilmore was still a little puzzled.
+
+“You seem to imagine that you have something on your conscience as
+regards that business,” he said boldly.
+
+“I have,” was the calm reply.
+
+“Come,” Wilmore protested, “I don't quite follow your line of thought.
+Granted that Hilditch was a desperate criminal whom by the exercise
+of your special gifts you saved from the law, surely his tragic death
+balanced the account between you and Society?”
+
+“It might have done,” Francis admitted, “if he had really committed
+suicide.”
+
+Wilmore was genuinely startled. He looked at his companion curiously.
+
+“What the devil do you mean, old chap?” he demanded. “Your own evidence
+at the inquest was practically conclusive as to that.”
+
+Francis glanced around him with apparent indifference but in reality
+with keen and stealthy care. On their right was a glass division,
+through which the sound of their voices could not possibly penetrate.
+On their left was an empty space, and a table beyond was occupied by a
+well-known cinema magnate engaged in testing the attractions in daily
+life of a would-be film star. Nevertheless, Francis' voice was scarcely
+raised above a whisper.
+
+“My evidence at the coroner's inquest,” he confided, “was a subtly
+concocted tissue of lies. I committed perjury freely. That is the real
+reason why I've been a little on the nervy side lately, and why I took
+these few months out of harness.”
+
+“Good God!” Wilmore exclaimed, setting down untasted the glass of brandy
+which he had just raised to his lips.
+
+“I want to finish this matter up,” Francis continued calmly, “by making
+a clean breast of it to you, because from to-night I am starting afresh,
+with new interests in my life, what will practically amount to a new
+career. That is why I preferred not to dine at the club to-night,
+although I am looking forward to seeing them all again. I wanted instead
+to have this conversation with you. I lied at the inquest when I said
+that the relations between Oliver Hilditch and his wife that night
+seemed perfectly normal. I lied when I said that I knew of no cause for
+ill-will between them. I lied when I said that I left them on friendly
+terms. I lied when I said that Oliver Hilditch seemed depressed and
+nervous. I lied when I said that he expressed the deepest remorse for
+what he had done. There was every indication that night, of the hate
+which I happen to know existed between the woman and the man. I have not
+the faintest doubt in my mind but that she murdered him. In my judgment,
+she was perfectly justified in doing so.”
+
+There followed a brief but enforced silence as some late arrivals
+passed their table. The room was well-ventilated but Andrew Wilmore felt
+suddenly hot and choking. A woman, one of the little group of newcomers,
+glanced towards Francis curiously.
+
+“Francis Ledsam, the criminal barrister,” her companion whispered,--“the
+man who got Oliver Hilditch off. The man with him is Andrew Wilmore, the
+novelist. Discussing a case, I expect.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The little party of late diners passed on their way to the further end
+of the room, leaving a wave of artificiality behind, or was it, Andrew
+Wilmore wondered, in a moment of half-dazed speculation, that it was
+they and the rest of the gay company who represented the real things,
+and he and his companion who were playing a sombre part in some unreal
+and gloomier world. Francis' voice, however, when he recommenced his
+diatribe, was calm and matter-of-fact enough.
+
+“You see,” he continued, argumentatively, “I was morally and actually
+responsible for the man's being brought back into Society. And far worse
+than that, I was responsible for his being thrust back again upon his
+wife. Ergo, I was also responsible for what she did that night. The
+matter seems as plain as a pikestaff to me. I did what I could to atone,
+rightly or wrongly it doesn't matter, because it is over and done with.
+There you are, old fellow, now you know what's been making me nervy.
+I've committed wholesale perjury, but I acted according to my conscience
+and I think according to justice. The thing has worried me, I admit, but
+it has passed, and I'm glad it's off my chest. One more liqueur, Andrew,
+and if you want to we'll talk about my plans for the future.”
+
+The brandy was brought. Wilmore studied his friend curiously, not
+without some relief. Francis had lost the harassed and nervous
+appearance upon which his club friends had commented, which had been
+noticeable, even, to a diminishing extent, upon the golf course at
+Brancaster. He was alert and eager. He had the air of a man upon the
+threshold of some enterprise dear to his heart.
+
+“I have been through a queer experience,” Francis continued presently,
+as he sipped his second liqueur. “Not only had I rather less than twelve
+hours to make up my mind whether I should commit a serious offence
+against the law, but a sensation which I always hoped that I might
+experience, has come to me in what I suppose I must call most
+unfortunate fashion.”
+
+“The woman?” Wilmore ventured.
+
+Francis assented gloomily. There was a moment's silence. Wilmore, the
+metaphysician, saw then a strange thing. He saw a light steal across his
+friend's stern face. He saw his eyes for a moment soften, the hard mouth
+relax, something incredible, transforming, shine, as it were, out of
+the man's soul in that moment of self-revelation. It was gone like the
+momentary passing of a strange gleam of sunshine across a leaden sea,
+but those few seconds were sufficient. Wilmore knew well enough what had
+happened.
+
+“Oliver Hilditch's wife,” Francis went on, after a few minutes' pause,
+“presents an enigma which at present I cannot hope to solve. The fact
+that she received her husband back again, knowing what he was and
+what he was capable of, is inexplicable to me. The woman herself is a
+mystery. I do not know what lies behind her extraordinary immobility.
+Feeling she must have, and courage, or she would never have dared to
+have ridded herself of the scourge of her life. But beyond that my
+judgment tells me nothing. I only know that sooner or later I shall seek
+her out. I shall discover all that I want to know, one way or the other.
+It may be for happiness--it may be the end of the things that count.”
+
+“I guessed this,” Wilmore admitted, with a little shiver which he was
+wholly unable to repress.
+
+Francis nodded.
+
+“Then keep it to yourself, my dear fellow,” he begged, “like everything
+else I am telling you tonight. I have come out of my experience changed
+in many ways,” he continued, “but, leaving out that one secret chapter,
+this is the dominant factor which looms up before me. I bring into life
+a new aversion, almost a passion, Andrew, born in a tea-shop in the
+city, and ministered to by all that has happened since. I have lost that
+sort of indifference which my profession engenders towards crime. I am
+at war with the criminal, sometimes, I hope, in the Courts of Justice,
+but forever out of them. I am no longer indifferent as to whether men do
+good or evil so long as they do not cross my path. I am a hunter of
+sin. I am out to destroy. There's a touch of melodrama in this for
+you, Andrew,” he concluded, with a little laugh, “but, my God, I'm in
+earnest!”
+
+“What does this mean so far as regards the routine of your daily life?”
+ Wilmore asked curiously.
+
+“Well, it brings us to the point we discussed down at Brancaster,”
+ Francis replied. “It will affect my work to this extent. I shall not
+accept any brief unless, after reading the evidence, I feel convinced
+that the accused is innocent.”
+
+“That's all very well,” Wilmore observed, “but you know what it will
+mean, don't you? Lawyers aren't likely to single you out for a brief
+without ever feeling sure whether you will accept it or not.”
+
+“That doesn't worry me,” Francis declared. “I don't need the fees,
+fortunately, and I can always pick up enough work to keep me going by
+attending Sessions. One thing I can promise you--I certainly shall not
+sit in my rooms and wait for things to happen. Mine is a militant spirit
+and it needs the outlet of action.”
+
+“Action, yes, but how?” Wilmore queried. “You can't be always hanging
+about the courts, waiting for the chance of defending some poor devil
+who's been wrongfully accused--there aren't enough of them, for one
+thing. On the other hand, you can't walk down Regent Street, brandishing
+a two-edged sword and hunting for pickpockets.”
+
+Francis smiled.
+
+“Nothing so flamboyant, I can assure you, Andrew,” he replied; “nor
+shall I play the amateur detective with his mouth open for mysteries.
+But listen,” he went on earnestly. “I've had some experience, as you
+know, and, notwithstanding the Oliver Hilditch's of the world, I can
+generally tell a criminal when I meet him face to face. There are plenty
+of them about, too, Andrew--as many in this place as any other. I am not
+going to be content with a negative position as regards evildoers. I am
+going to set my heel on as many of the human vermin of this city as I
+can find.”
+
+“A laudable, a most exhilarating and delightful pursuit! `human vermin,'
+too, is excellent. It opens up a new and fascinating vista for the
+modern sportsman. My congratulations!”
+
+It was an interruption of peculiar and wonderful significance, but
+Francis did not for the moment appreciate the fact. Turning his head, he
+simply saw a complete stranger seated unaccountably at the next table,
+who had butted into a private conversation and whose tone of gentle
+sarcasm, therefore, was the more offensive.
+
+“Who the devil are you, sir,” he demanded, “and where did you come
+from?”
+
+The newcomer showed no resentment at Francis' little outburst. He simply
+smiled with deprecating amiability--a tall, spare man, with lean, hard
+face, complexion almost unnaturally white; black hair, plentifully
+besprinkled with grey; a thin, cynical mouth, notwithstanding its
+distinctly humourous curve, and keen, almost brilliant dark eyes. He was
+dressed in ordinary dinner garb; his linen and jewellery was indeed in
+the best possible taste. Francis, at his second glance, was troubled
+with a vague sense of familiarity.
+
+“Let me answer your last question first, sir,” the intruder begged. “I
+was seated alone, several tables away, when the couple next to you went
+out, and having had pointed out to me the other evening at Claridge's
+Hotel, and knowing well by repute, the great barrister, Mr. Francis
+Ledsam, and his friend the world-famed novelist, Mr. Andrew Wilmore,
+I--er--unobtrusively made my way, half a yard at a time, in your
+direction--and here I am. I came stealthily, you may object? Without
+a doubt. If I had come in any other fashion, I should have disturbed a
+conversation in which I was much interested.”
+
+“Could you find it convenient,” Francis asked, with icy politeness, “to
+return to your own table, stealthily or not, as you choose?”
+
+The newcomer showed no signs of moving.
+
+“In after years,” he declared, “you would be the first to regret
+the fact if I did so. This is a momentous meeting. It gives me an
+opportunity of expressing my deep gratitude to you, Mr. Ledsam, for
+the wonderful evidence you tendered at the inquest upon the body of my
+son-in-law, Oliver Hilditch.”
+
+Francis turned in his place and looked steadily at this unsought-for
+companion, learning nothing, however, from the half-mocking smile and
+imperturbable expression.
+
+“Your son-in-law?” he repeated. “Do you mean to say that you are the
+father of--of Oliver Hilditch's wife?”
+
+“Widow,” the other corrected gently. “I have that honour. You
+will understand, therefore, that I feel myself on this, the first
+opportunity, compelled to tender my sincere thanks for evidence so
+chivalrously offered, so flawlessly truthful.”
+
+Francis was a man accustomed to self-control, but he clenched his hands
+so that his finger nails dug into his flesh. He was filled with an
+insane and unreasoning resentment against this man whose words were
+biting into his conscience. Nevertheless, he kept his tone level.
+
+“I do not desire your gratitude,” he said, “nor, if you will permit me
+to say so, your further acquaintance.”
+
+The stranger shook his head regretfully.
+
+“You are wrong,” he protested. “We were bound, in any case, to know one
+another. Shall I tell you why? You have just declared yourself anxious
+to set your heel upon the criminals of the world. I have the distinction
+of being perhaps the most famous patron of that maligned class now
+living--and my neck is at your service.”
+
+“You appear to me,” Francis said suavely, “to be a buffoon.”
+
+It might have been fancy, but Francis could have sworn that he saw the
+glitter of a sovereign malevolence in the other's dark eyes. If so, it
+was but a passing weakness, for a moment later the half good-natured,
+half cynical smile was back again upon the man's lips.
+
+“If so, I am at least a buffoon of parts,” was the prompt rejoinder. “I
+will, if you choose, prove myself.”
+
+There was a moment's silence. Wilmore was leaning forward in his place,
+studying the newcomer earnestly. An impatient invective was somehow
+stifled upon Francis' lips.
+
+“Within a few yards of this place, sometime before the closing hour
+to-night,” the intruder continued, earnestly yet with a curious absence
+of any human quality in his hard tone, “there will be a disturbance,
+and probably what you would call a crime will be committed. Will you use
+your vaunted gifts to hunt down the desperate criminal, and, in your own
+picturesque phraseology, set your heel upon his neck? Success may bring
+you fame, and the trail may lead--well, who knows where?”
+
+Afterwards, both Francis and Andrew Wilmore marvelled at themselves,
+unable at any time to find any reasonable explanation of their conduct,
+for they answered this man neither with ridicule, rudeness nor civility.
+They simply stared at him, impressed with the convincing arrogance
+of his challenge and unable to find words of reply. They received
+his mocking farewell without any form of reciprocation or sign of
+resentment. They watched him leave the room, a dignified, distinguished
+figure, sped on his way with marks of the deepest respect by waiters,
+maitres d'hotels and even the manager himself. They behaved, indeed, as
+they both admitted afterwards, like a couple of moonstruck idiots. When
+he had finally disappeared, however, they looked at one another and the
+spell was broken.
+
+“Well, I'm damned!” Francis exclaimed. “Soto, come here at once.”
+
+The manager hastened smilingly to their table.
+
+“Soto,” Francis invoked, “tell us quickly--tell us the name of the
+gentleman who has just gone out, and who he is?”
+
+Soto was amazed.
+
+“You don't know Sir Timothy Brast, sir?” he exclaimed. “Why, he is
+supposed to be one of the richest men in the world! He spends money like
+water. They say that when he is in England, his place down the river
+alone costs a thousand pounds a week. When he gives a party here, we can
+find nothing good enough. He is our most generous client.”
+
+“Sir Timothy Brast,” Wilmore repeated. “Yes, I have heard of him.”
+
+“Why, everybody knows Sir Timothy,” Soto went on eloquently. “He is
+the greatest living patron of boxing. He found the money for the last
+international fight.”
+
+“Does he often come in alone like this?” Francis asked curiously.
+
+“Either alone,” Soto replied, “or with a very large party. He entertains
+magnificently.”
+
+“I've seen his name in the paper in connection with something or other,
+during the last few weeks,” Wilmore remarked reflectively.
+
+“Probably about two months ago, sir,” Soto suggested. “He gave a
+donation of ten thousand pounds to the Society for the Prevention
+of Cruelty to Animals, and they made him a Vice President.... In one
+moment, sir.”
+
+The manager hurried away to receive a newly-arrived guest. Francis and
+his friend exchanged a wondering glance.
+
+“Father of Oliver Hilditch's wife,” Wilmore observed, “the most
+munificent patron of boxing in the world, Vice President of the
+Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and self-confessed
+arch-criminal! He pulled our legs pretty well!”
+
+“I suppose so,” Francis assented absently.
+
+Wilmore glanced at his watch.
+
+“What about moving on somewhere?” he suggested. “We might go into the
+Alhambra for half-an-hour, if you like. The last act of the show is the
+best.”
+
+Francis shook his head.
+
+“We've got to see this thing out,” he replied. “Have you forgotten that
+our friend promised us a sensation before we left?”
+
+Wilmore began to laugh a little derisively. Then, suddenly aware of
+some lack of sympathy between himself and his friend, he broke off and
+glanced curiously at the latter.
+
+“You're not taking him seriously, are you?” he enquired.
+
+Francis nodded.
+
+“Certainly I am,” he confessed.
+
+“You don't believe that he was getting at us?”
+
+“Not for a moment.”
+
+“You believe that something is going to happen here in this place, or
+quite close?”
+
+“I am convinced of it,” was the calm reply.
+
+Wilmore was silent. For a moment he was troubled with his old fears as
+to his friend's condition. A glance, however, at Francis' set face and
+equable, watchful air, reassured him.
+
+“We must see the thing through, of course, then,” he assented. “Let us
+see if we can spot the actors in the coming drama.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+It happened that the two men, waiting in the vestibule of the restaurant
+for Francis' car to crawl up to the entrance through the fog which
+had unexpectedly rolled up, heard the slight altercation which was
+afterwards referred to as preceding the tragedy. The two young people
+concerned were standing only a few feet away, the girl pretty, a little
+peevish, an ordinary type; her companion, whose boyish features were
+marred with dissipation, a very passable example of the young man about
+town going a little beyond his tether.
+
+“It's no good standing here, Victor!” the girl exclaimed, frowning. “The
+commissionaire's been gone ages already, and there are two others before
+us for taxis.”
+
+“We can't walk,” her escort replied gloomily. “It's a foul night.
+Nothing to do but wait, what? Let's go back and have another drink.”
+
+The girl stamped her satin-shod foot impatiently.
+
+“Don't be silly,” she expostulated. “You know I promised Clara we'd be
+there early.”
+
+“All very well,” the young man grumbled, “but what can we do? We shall
+have to wait our turn.”
+
+“Why can't you slip out and look for a taxi yourself?” she suggested.
+“Do, Victor,” she added, squeezing his arm. “You're so clever at picking
+them up.”
+
+He made a little grimace, but lit a cigarette and turned up his coat
+collar.
+
+“I'll do my best,” he promised. “Don't go on without me.”
+
+“Try up towards Charing Cross Road, not the other way,” she advised
+earnestly.
+
+“Right-oh!” he replied, which illuminative form of assent, a word spoken
+as he plunged unwillingly into the thick obscurity on the other side of
+the revolving doors, was probably the last he ever uttered on earth.
+
+Left alone, the girl began to shiver, as though suddenly cold. She
+turned around and glanced hurriedly back into the restaurant. At that
+moment she met the steady, questioning scrutiny of Francis' eyes. She
+stood as though transfixed. Then came the sound which every one talked
+of for months afterwards, the sound which no one who heard it ever
+forgot--the death cry of Victor Bidlake, followed a second afterwards by
+a muffled report. A strain of frenzied surprise seemed mingled with the
+horror. Afterwards, silence.
+
+There was the sound of some commotion outside, the sound of hurried
+footsteps and agitated voices. Then a terrible little procession
+appeared. Something--it seemed to be a shapeless heap of clothes--was
+carried in and laid upon the floor, in the little space between the
+revolving doors and the inner entrance. Two blue-liveried attendants
+kept back the horrified but curious crowd. Francis, vaguely recognised
+as being somehow or other connected with the law, was one of the
+few people allowed to remain whilst a doctor, fetched out from the
+dancing-room, kneeled over the prostrate form. He felt that he knew
+beforehand the horrible verdict which the latter whispered in his ear
+after his brief examination.
+
+“Quite dead! A ghastly business!”
+
+Francis gazed at the hole in the shirt-front, disfigured also by a
+scorching stain.
+
+“A bullet?” he asked.
+
+The doctor nodded.
+
+“Fired within a foot of the poor fellow's heart,” he whispered. “The
+murderer wasn't taking any chances, whoever he was.”
+
+“Have the police been sent for?”
+
+The head-porter stepped forward.
+
+“There was a policeman within a few yards of the spot, sir,” he replied.
+“He's gone down to keep every one away from the place where we found the
+body. We've telephoned to Scotland Yard for an inspector.”
+
+The doctor rose to his feet.
+
+“Nothing more can be done,” he pronounced. “Keep the people out of here
+whilst I go and fetch my hat and coat. Afterwards, I'll take the body to
+the mortuary when the ambulance arrives.”
+
+An attendant pushed his way through the crowd of people on the inner
+side of the door.
+
+“Miss Daisy Hyslop, young lady who was with Mr. Bidlake, has just
+fainted in the ladies' room, sir,” he announced. “Could you come?”
+
+“I'll be there immediately,” the doctor promised.
+
+The rest of the proceedings followed a normal course. The police
+arrived, took various notes, the ambulance followed a little later, the
+body was removed, and the little crowd of guests, still infected with a
+sort of awed excitement, were allowed to take their leave. Francis and
+Wilmore drove almost in silence to the former's rooms in Clarges Street.
+
+“Come up and have a drink, Andrew,” Francis invited.
+
+“I need it,” was the half-choked response.
+
+Francis led the way in silence up the two flights of stairs into his
+sitting-room, mixed whiskies and sodas from the decanter and syphon
+which stood upon the sideboard, and motioned his friend to an
+easy-chair. Then he gave form to the thought which had been haunting
+them both.
+
+“What about our friend Sir Timothy Brast?” he enquired. “Do you believe
+now that he was pulling our legs?”
+
+Wilmore dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief. It was a chilly
+evening, but there were drops of perspiration still standing there.
+
+“Francis,” he confessed, “it's horrible! I don't think realism like this
+attracts me. It's horrible! What are we going to do?”
+
+“Nothing for the present,” was the brief reply. “If we were to tell our
+story, we should only be laughed at. What there is to be done falls to
+my lot.”
+
+“Had the police anything to say about it?” Wilmore asked.
+
+“Only a few words,” Francis replied. “Shopland has it in hand. A good
+man but unimaginative. I've come across him in one or two cases lately.
+You'll find a little bit like this in the papers to-morrow: 'The murder
+is believed to have been committed by one of the gang of desperadoes who
+have infested the west-end during the last few months.' You remember the
+assault in the Albany Court Yard, and the sandbagging in Shepherd Market
+only last week?”
+
+“That seems to let Sir Timothy out,” Wilmore remarked.
+
+“There are many motives for crime besides robbery,” Francis declared.
+“Don't be afraid, Andrew, that I am going to turn amateur detective and
+make the unravelment of this case all the more difficult for Scotland
+Yard. If I interfere, it will be on a certainty. Andrew, don't think I'm
+mad but I've taken up the challenge our great philanthropist flung at
+me to-night. I've very little interest in who killed this boy Victor
+Bidlake, or why, but I'm convinced of one thing--Brast knew about it,
+and if he is posing as a patron of crime on a great scale, sooner or
+later I shall get him. He may think himself safe, and he may have the
+courage of Beelzebub--he seems rather that type--but if my presentiment
+about him--comes true, his number's up. I can almost divine the meaning
+of his breaking in upon our conversation to-night. He needs an enemy--he
+is thirsting for danger. He has found it!”
+
+Wilmore filled his pipe thoughtfully. At the first whiff of tobacco he
+began to feel more normal.
+
+“After all, Francis,” he said, “aren't we a little overstrung to-night?
+Sir Timothy Brast is no adventurer. He is a prince in the city, a
+persona grata wherever he chooses to go. He isn't a hanger-on in
+Society. He isn't even dependent upon Bohemia for his entertainment.
+You can't seriously imagine that a man with his possessions is likely
+to risk his life and liberty in becoming the inspiration of a band of
+cutthroats?”
+
+Francis smiled. He, too, had lit his pipe and had thrown himself into
+his favourite chair. He smiled confidently across at his friend.
+
+“A millionaire with brains,” he argued, “is just the one person in the
+world likely to weary of all ordinary forms of diversion. I begin to
+remember things about him already. Haven't you heard about his wonderful
+parties down at The Walled House?”
+
+Wilmore struck the table by his side with his clenched fist.
+
+“By George, that's it!” he exclaimed. “Who hasn't!”
+
+“I remember Baker talking about one last year,” Francis continued,
+“never any details, but all kinds of mysterious hints--a sort of mixture
+between a Roman orgy and a chapter from the 'Arabian Nights'--singers
+from Petrograd, dancers from Africa and fighting men from Chicago.”
+
+“The fellow's magnificent, at any rate,” Wilmore remarked.
+
+His host smoked furiously for a moment.
+
+“That's the worst of these multi-millionaires,” he declared. “They think
+they can rule the world, traffic in human souls, buy morals, mock at the
+law. We shall see!”
+
+“Do you know the thing that I found most interesting about him?” Wilmore
+asked.
+
+“His black opals,” the other suggested. “You're by the way of being a
+collector, aren't you?”
+
+Wilmore shook his head.
+
+“The fact that he is the father of Oliver Hilditch's widow.”
+
+Francis sat quite still for a moment. There was a complete change in his
+expression. He looked like a man who has received a shock.
+
+“I forgot that,” he muttered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Francis met Shopland one morning about a week later, on his way from
+Clarges Street to his chambers in the Temple. The detective raised his
+hat and would have passed on, but Francis accosted him.
+
+“Any progress, Mr. Shopland?” he enquired.
+
+The detective fingered his small, sandy moustache. He was an
+insignificant-looking little man, undersized, with thin frame and watery
+eyes. His mouth, however, was hard, and there were some tell-tale little
+lines at its corners.
+
+“None whatever, I am sorry to say, Mr. Ledsam,” he admitted. “At present
+we are quite in the dark.”
+
+“You found the weapon, I hear?”
+
+Shopland nodded.
+
+“It was just an ordinary service revolver, dating from the time of the
+war, exactly like a hundred thousand others. The enquiries we were able
+to make from it came to nothing.”
+
+“Where was it picked up?”
+
+“In the middle of the waste plot of ground next to Soto's. The murderer
+evidently threw it there the moment he had discharged it. He must have
+been wearing rubber-soled shoes, for not a soul heard him go.”
+
+Francis nodded thoughtfully.
+
+“I wonder,” he said, after a slight pause, “whether it ever occurred to
+you to interview Miss Daisy Hyslop, the young lady who was with Bidlake
+on the night of his murder?”
+
+“I called upon her the day afterwards,” the detective answered.
+
+“She had nothing to say?”
+
+“Nothing whatever.”
+
+“Indirectly, of course,” Francis continued, “the poor girl was the cause
+of his death. If she had not insisted upon his going out for a taxicab,
+the man who was loitering about would probably have never got hold of
+him.”
+
+The detective glanced up furtively at the speaker. He seemed to reflect
+for a moment.
+
+“I gathered,” he said, “in conversation with the commissionaire, that
+Miss Hyslop was a little impatient that night. It seems, however,
+that she was anxious to get to a ball which was being given down in
+Kensington.”
+
+“There was a ball, was there?” Francis asked.
+
+“Without a doubt,” the detective replied. “It was given by a Miss Clara
+Bultiwell. She happens to remember urging Miss Hyslop to come on as
+early as possible.”
+
+“So that's that,” Francis observed.
+
+“Just so, Mr. Ledsam,” the detective murmured.
+
+They were walking along the Mall now, eastwards. The detective, who
+seemed to have been just a saunterer, had accommodated himself to
+Francis' destination.
+
+“Let me see, there was nothing stolen from the young man's person, was
+there?” Francis asked presently.
+
+“Apparently nothing at all, sir.”
+
+“And I gather that you have made every possible enquiry as to the young
+man's relations with his friends?”
+
+“So far as one can learn, sir, they seem to have been perfectly
+amicable.”
+
+“Of course,” Francis remarked presently, “this may have been quite a
+purposeless affair. The deed may have been committed by a man who was
+practically a lunatic, without any motive or reason whatever.”
+
+“Precisely so, sir,” the detective agreed.
+
+“But, all the same, I don't think it was.”
+
+“Neither do I, sir.”
+
+Francis smiled slightly.
+
+“Shopland,” he said, “if there is no further external evidence to be
+collected, I suggest that there is only one person likely to prove of
+assistance to you.”
+
+“And that one person, sir?”
+
+“Miss Daisy Hyslop.”
+
+“The young lady whom I have already seen?”
+
+Francis nodded.
+
+“The young lady whom you have already seen,” he assented. “At the
+same time, Mr. Shopland, we must remember this. If Miss Hyslop has any
+knowledge of the facts which are behind Mr. Bidlake's murder, it is more
+likely to be to her interest to keep them to herself, than to give them
+away to the police free gratis and for nothing. Do you follow me?”
+
+“Precisely, sir.”
+
+“That being so,” Francis continued, “I am going to make a proposition
+to you for what it is worth. Where were you going when I met you this
+morning, Shopland?”
+
+“To call upon you in Clarges Street, sir.”
+
+“What for?”
+
+“I was going to ask you if you would be so kind as to call upon Miss
+Daisy Hyslop, sir.”
+
+Francis smiled.
+
+“Great minds,” he murmured. “I will see the young lady this afternoon,
+Shopland.”
+
+The detective raised his hat. They had reached the spot where his
+companion turned off by the Horse Guards Parade.
+
+“I may hope to hear from you, then, sir?”
+
+“Within the course of a day or two, perhaps earlier,” Francis promised.
+
+
+Francis continued his walk along the Embankment to his chambers in the
+Temple. He glanced in the outer office as he passed to his consulting
+room.
+
+“Anything fresh, Angrave?” he asked his head-clerk.
+
+“Nothing whatever, sir,” was the quiet reply.
+
+He passed on to his own den--a bare room with long windows looking out
+over the gardens. He glanced at the two or three letters which lay on
+his desk, none of them of the least interest, and leaning back in
+his chair commenced to fill his pipe. There was a knock at the door.
+Fawsitt, a young beginner at the bar, in whom he had taken some interest
+and who deviled for him, presented himself.
+
+“Can I have a word with you, Mr. Ledsam?” he asked.
+
+“By all means,” was the prompt response. “Sit down.”
+
+Fawsitt seated himself on the other side of the table. He had a long,
+thin face, dark, narrow eyes, unwholesome complexion, a slightly hooked
+nose, and teeth discoloured through constant smoking. His fingers, too,
+bore the tell-tale yellow stains.
+
+“Mr. Ledsam,” he said, “I think, with your permission, I should like to
+leave at the end of my next three months.”
+
+Francis glanced across at him.
+
+“Sorry to hear that, Fawsitt. Are you going to work for any one else?”
+
+“I haven't made arrangements yet, sir,” the young man replied. “I
+thought of offering myself to Mr. Barnes.”
+
+“Why do you want to leave me?” Francis asked.
+
+“There isn't enough for me to do, sir.”
+
+Francis lit his pipe.
+
+“It's probably just a lull, Fawsitt,” he remarked.
+
+“I don't think so, sir.”
+
+“The devil! You've been gossiping with some of these solicitors' clerks,
+Fawsitt.”
+
+“I shouldn't call it gossiping, sir. I am always interested to hear
+anything that may concern our--my future. I have reason to believe, sir,
+that we are being passed over for briefs.”
+
+“The reason being?”
+
+“One can't pick and choose, sir. One shouldn't, anyway.”
+
+Francis smiled.
+
+“You evidently don't approve of any measure of personal choice as to the
+work which one takes up.”
+
+“Certainly I do not, sir, in our profession. The only brief I would
+refuse would be a losing or an ill-paid one. I don't conceive it to be
+our business to prejudge a case.”
+
+“I see,” Francis murmured. “Go on, Fawsitt.”
+
+“There's a rumour about,” the young man continued, “that you are only
+going to plead where the chances are that your client is innocent.”
+
+“There's some truth in that,” Francis admitted.
+
+“If I could leave a little before the three months, sir, I should be
+glad,” Fawsitt said. “I look at the matter from an entirely different
+point of view.”
+
+“You shall leave when you like, of course, Fawsitt, but tell me what
+that point of view is?”
+
+“Just this, sir. The simplest-minded idiot who ever stammered through
+his address, can get an innocent prisoner off if he knows enough of the
+facts and the law. To my mind, the real triumph in our profession is to
+be able to unwind the meshes of damning facts and force a verdict for an
+indubitably guilty client.”
+
+“How does the moral side of that appeal to you?” his senior enquired.
+
+“I didn't become a barrister to study morals, or even to consider them,”
+ was the somewhat caustic reply. “When once a brief is in my mind, it is
+a matter of brain, cunning and resource. The guiltier a man, the greater
+the success if you can get him off.”
+
+“And turn him loose again upon Society?”
+
+“It isn't our job to consider that, sir. The moral question is only
+confusing in the matter. Our job is to make use of the law for the
+benefit of our client. That's what we're paid for. That's the measure of
+our success or failure.”
+
+Francis nodded.
+
+“Very reasonably put, Fawsitt,” he conceded. “I'll give you a letter to
+Barnes whenever you like.”
+
+“I should be glad if you would do so, sir,” the young man said. “I'm
+only wasting my time here....”
+
+Francis wrote a letter of recommendation to Barnes, the great K.C.,
+considered a stray brief which had found its way in, and strolled up
+towards the Milan as the hour approached luncheon-time. In the American
+bar of that palatial hotel he found the young man he was looking for--a
+flaxen-haired youth who was seated upon one of the small tables,
+with his feet upon a chair, laying down the law to a little group of
+acquaintances. He greeted Francis cordially but without that due measure
+of respect which nineteen should accord to thirty-five.
+
+“Cheerio, my elderly relative!” he exclaimed. “Have a cocktail.”
+
+Francis nodded assent.
+
+“Come into this corner with me for a moment, Charles,” he invited. “I
+have a word for your ear.”
+
+The young man rose and sat by his uncle's side on a settee.
+
+“In my declining years,” the latter began, “I find myself reverting to
+the follies of youth. I require a letter of introduction from you to a
+young lady of your acquaintance.”
+
+“The devil! Not one of my own special little pets, I hope?”
+
+“Her name is Miss Daisy Hyslop,” Francis announced.
+
+Lord Charles Southover pursed his lips and whistled. He glanced at
+Francis sideways.
+
+“Is this the beginning of a campaign amongst the butterflies,” he
+enquired, “because, if so, I feel it my duty, uncle, to address to you a
+few words of solemn warning. Miss Daisy Hyslop is hot stuff.”
+
+“Look here, young fellow,” Francis said equably, “I don't know what the
+state of your exchequer is--”
+
+“I owe you forty,” Lord Charles interrupted. “Spring another tenner,
+make it fifty, that is, and the letter of introduction I will write for
+you will bring tears of gratitude to your eyes.”
+
+“I'll spring the tenner,” Francis promised, “but you'll write just what
+I tell you--no more and no less.”
+
+“Anything extra for keeping mum at home?” the young man ventured
+tentatively.
+
+“You're a nice sort of nephew to have!” Francis declared. “Abandon
+these futile attempts at blackmail and just come this way to the
+writing-table.”
+
+“You've got the tenner with you?” the young man asked anxiously.
+
+Francis produced a well-filled pocketbook. His nephew led the way to
+a writing-table, lit a cigarette which he stuck into the corner of his
+mouth, and in painstaking fashion wrote the few lines which Francis
+dictated. The ten pounds changed hands.
+
+“Have one with me for luck?” the young man invited brightly. “No?
+Perhaps you're right,” he added, in valedictory fashion. “You'd better
+keep your head clear for Daisy!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Miss Daisy Hyslop received Francis that afternoon, in the sitting-room
+of her little suite at the Milan. Her welcoming smile was plaintive and
+a little subdued, her manner undeniably gracious. She was dressed in
+black, a wonderful background for her really gorgeous hair, and her
+deportment indicated a recent loss.
+
+“How nice of you to come and see me,” she murmured, with a lingering
+touch of the fingers. “Do take that easy-chair, please, and sit down and
+talk to me. Your roses were beautiful, but whatever made you send them
+to me?”
+
+“Impulse,” he answered.
+
+She laughed softly.
+
+“Then please yield to such impulses as often as you feel them,” she
+begged. “I adore flowers. Just now, too,” she added, with a little sigh,
+“anything is welcome which helps to keep my mind off my own affairs.”
+
+“It was very good of you to let me come,” he declared. “I can quite
+understand that you don't feel like seeing many people just now.”
+
+Francis' manner, although deferential and courteous, had nevertheless
+some quality of aloofness in it to which she was unused and which she
+was quick to recognise. The smile, faded from her face. She seemed
+suddenly not quite so young.
+
+“Haven't I seen you before somewhere quite lately?” she asked, a little
+sharply.
+
+“You saw me at Soto's, the night that Victor Bidlake was murdered,” he
+reminded her. “I stood quite close to you both while you were waiting
+for your taxi.”
+
+The animation evoked by this call from a presumably new admirer,
+suddenly left her. She became nervous and constrained. She glanced again
+at his card.
+
+“Don't tell me,” she begged, “that you have come to ask me any questions
+about that night! I simply could not bear it. The police have been here
+twice, and I had nothing to tell them, absolutely nothing.”
+
+“Quite right,” he assented soothingly. “Police have such a clumsy way of
+expecting valuable information for nothing. I'm always glad to hear of
+their being disappointed.”
+
+She studied her visitor for a moment carefully. Then she turned to the
+table by her side, picked up a note and read it through.
+
+“Lord Southover tells me here,” she said, “that you are just a pal of
+his who wants to make my acquaintance. He doesn't say why.”
+
+“Is that necessary?” Francis asked good-naturedly.
+
+She moved in her chair a little nervously, crossing and uncrossing her
+legs more than once. Her white silk stockings underneath her black
+skirt were exceedingly effective, a fact of which she never lost
+consciousness, although at that moment she was scarcely inspired to play
+the coquette.
+
+“I'd like to think it wasn't,” she admitted frankly.
+
+“I've seen you repeatedly upon the stage,” he told her, “and, though
+musical comedy is rather out of my line, I have always admired you
+immensely.”
+
+She studied him once more almost wistfully.
+
+“You look very nice,” she acknowledged, “but you don't look at all the
+kind of man who admires girls who do the sort of rubbish I do on the
+stage.”
+
+“What do I look like?” he asked, smiling.
+
+“A man with a purpose,” she answered.
+
+“I begin to think,” he ventured, “that we shall get on. You are really a
+very astute young lady.”
+
+“You are quite sure you're not one of these amateur detectives one reads
+about?” she demanded.
+
+“Certainly not,” he assured her. “I will confess that I am interested
+in Victor Bidlake's death, and I should like to discover the truth about
+it, but I have a reason for that which I may tell you some day. It has
+nothing whatever to do with the young man himself. To the best of my
+belief, I never saw or heard of him before in my life. My interest lies
+with another person. You have lost a great friend, I know. If you felt
+disposed to tell me the whole story, it might make such a difference.”
+
+She sighed. Her confidence was returning--also her self-pity. The latter
+at once betrayed itself.
+
+“You see,” she confided, “Victor and I were engaged to be married, so
+naturally I let him help me a little. I shan't be able to stay on here
+now. They are bothering me about their bill already,” she added, with a
+side-glance at an envelope which stood on a table by her side.
+
+He drew a little nearer to her.
+
+“Miss Hyslop--” he began.
+
+“Daisy,” she interrupted.
+
+“Miss Daisy Hyslop, then,” he continued, smiling, “I suggested just now
+that I did not want to come and bother you for information without any
+return. If I can be of any assistance to you in that matter,” he added,
+glancing towards the envelope, “I shall be very pleased.”
+
+She sighed gratefully.
+
+“Just till Victor's people return to town,” she said. “I know that they
+mean to do something for me.”
+
+“How much?” he asked.
+
+“Two hundred pounds would keep me going,” she told him.
+
+He wrote out a cheque. Miss Hyslop drew a sigh of relief as she laid it
+on one side with the envelope. Then she swung round in her chair to face
+him where he sat at the writing-table.
+
+“I am afraid you will think that what I have to tell is very
+insignificant,” she confessed. “Victor was one of those boys who always
+fancied themselves bored. He was bored with polo, bored with motoring,
+bored with the country and bored with town. Then quite suddenly during
+the last few weeks he seemed changed. All that he would tell me was
+that he had found a new interest in life. I don't know what it was but
+I don't think it was a nice one. He seemed to drop all his old friends,
+too, and go about with a new set altogether--not a nice set at all. He
+used to stay out all night, and he quite gave up going to dances
+and places where he could take me. Once or twice he came here in the
+afternoon, dead beat, without having been to bed at all, and before he
+could say half-a-dozen words he was asleep in my easy-chair. He used to
+mutter such horrible things that I had to wake him up.”
+
+“Was he ever short of money?” Francis asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“Not seriously,” she answered. “He was quite well-off, besides what his
+people allowed him. I was going to have a wonderful settlement as soon
+as our engagement was announced. However, to go on with what I was
+telling you, the very night before--it happened--he came in to see me,
+looking like nothing on earth. He cried like a baby, behaved like a
+lunatic, and called himself all manner of names. He had had a great deal
+too much to drink, and I gathered that he had seen something horrible.
+It was then he asked me to dine with him the next night, and told me
+that he was going to break altogether with his new friends. Something in
+connection with them seemed to have given him a terrible fright.”
+
+Francis nodded. He had the tact to abandon his curiosity at this precise
+point.
+
+“The old story,” he declared, “bad company and rotten habits. I suppose
+some one got to know that the young man usually carried a great deal of
+money about with him.”
+
+“It was so foolish of him,” she assented eagerly: “I warned him about it
+so often. The police won't listen to it but I am absolutely certain that
+he was robbed. I noticed when he paid the bill that he had a great wad
+of bank-notes which were never discovered afterwards.”
+
+Francis rose to his feet.
+
+“What are you doing to-night?” he enquired.
+
+“Nothing,” she acknowledged eagerly.
+
+“Then let's dine somewhere and see the show at the Frivolity,” he
+suggested.
+
+“You dear man!” she assented with enthusiasm. “The one thing I wanted to
+do, and the one person I wanted to do it with.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+It was after leaving Miss Daisy Hyslop's flat that the event to which
+Francis Ledsam had been looking forward more than anything else in the
+world, happened. It came about entirely by chance. There were no taxis
+in the Strand. Francis himself had finished work for the day, and
+feeling disinclined for his usual rubber of bridge, he strolled
+homewards along the Mall. At the corner of Green Park, he came face to
+face with the woman who for the last few months had scarcely been out of
+his thoughts. Even in that first moment he realised to his pain that she
+would have avoided him if she could. They met, however, where the path
+narrowed, and he left her no chance to avoid him. That curious impulse
+of conventionality which opens a conversation always with cut and dried
+banalities, saved them perhaps from a certain amount of embarrassment.
+Without any conscious suggestion, they found themselves walking side by
+side.
+
+“I have been wanting to see you very much indeed,” he said. “I even went
+so far as to wonder whether I dared call.”
+
+“Why should you?” she asked. “Our acquaintance began and ended in
+tragedy. There is scarcely any purpose in carrying it further.”
+
+He looked at her for a moment before replying. She was wearing black,
+but scarcely the black of a woman who sorrows. She was still frigidly
+beautiful, redolent, in all the details of her toilette, of that
+almost negative perfection which he had learnt to expect from her. She
+suggested to him still that same sense of aloofness from the actualities
+of life.
+
+“I prefer not to believe that it is ended,” he protested. “Have you so
+many friends that you have no room for one who has never consciously
+done you any harm?”
+
+She looked at him with some faint curiosity in her immobile features.
+
+“Harm? No! On the contrary, I suppose I ought to thank you for your
+evidence at the inquest.”
+
+“Some part of it was the truth,” he replied.
+
+“I suppose so,” she admitted drily. “You told it very cleverly.”
+
+He looked her in the eyes.
+
+“My profession helped me to be a good witness,” he said. “As for the
+gist of my evidence, that was between my conscience and myself.”
+
+“Your conscience?” she repeated. “Are there really men who possess such
+things?”
+
+“I hope you will discover that for yourself some day,” he answered.
+“Tell me your plans? Where are you living?”
+
+“For the present with my father in Curzon Street.”
+
+“With Sir Timothy Brast?”
+
+She assented.
+
+“You know him?” she asked indifferently.
+
+“Very slightly,” Francis replied. “We talked together, some nights ago,
+at Soto's Restaurant. I am afraid that I did not make a very favourable
+impression upon him. I gathered, too, that he has somewhat eccentric
+tastes.”
+
+“I do not see a great deal of my father,” she said. “We met, a few
+months ago, for the first time since my marriage, and things have been a
+little difficult between us--just at first. He really scarcely ever puts
+in an appearance at Curzon Street. I dare say you have heard that he
+makes a hobby of an amazing country house which he has down the river.”
+
+“The Walled House?” he ventured.
+
+She nodded.
+
+“I see you have heard of it. All London, they tell me, gossips about the
+entertainments there.”
+
+“Are they really so wonderful?” he asked.
+
+“I have never been to one,” she replied. “As a matter of fact, I have
+spent scarcely any time in England since my marriage. My husband, as I
+remember he told you, was fond of travelling.”
+
+Notwithstanding the warm spring air he was conscious of a certain
+chilliness. Her level, indifferent tone seemed to him almost abnormally
+callous. A horrible realisation flashed for a moment in his brain. She
+was speaking of the man whom she had killed!
+
+“Your father overheard a remark of mine,” Francis told her. “I was at
+Soto's with a friend--Andrew Wilmore, the novelist--and to tell you the
+truth we were speaking of the shock I experienced when I realised that
+I had been devoting every effort of which I was capable, to saving the
+life of--shall we say a criminal? Your father heard me say, in rather
+a flamboyant manner, perhaps, that in future I declared war against all
+crime and all criminals.”
+
+She smiled very faintly, a smile which had in it no single element of
+joy or humour.
+
+“I can quite understand my father intervening,” she said. “He poses
+as being rather a patron of artistically-perpetrated crime. Sue is his
+favourite author, and I believe that he has exceedingly grim ideas as to
+duelling and fighting generally. He was in prison once for six months
+at New Orleans for killing a man who insulted my mother. Nothing in the
+world would ever have convinced him that he had not done a perfectly
+legitimate thing.”
+
+“I am expecting to find him quite an interesting study, when I know him
+better,” Francis pronounced. “My only fear is that he will count me an
+unfriendly person and refuse to have anything to do with me.”
+
+“I am not at all sure,” she said indifferently, “that it would not be
+very much better for you if he did.”
+
+“I cannot admit that,” he answered, smiling. “I think that our paths
+in life are too far apart for either of us to influence the other. You
+don't share his tastes, do you?”
+
+“Which ones?” she asked, after a moment's silence.
+
+“Well, boxing for one,” he replied. “They tell me that he is the
+greatest living patron of the ring, both here and in America.”
+
+“I have never been to a fight in my life,” she confessed. “I hope that I
+never may.”
+
+“I can't go so far as that,” he declared, “but boxing isn't altogether
+one of my hobbies. Can't we leave your father and his tastes alone for
+the present? I would rather talk about--ourselves. Tell me what you care
+about most in life?”
+
+“Nothing,” she answered listlessly.
+
+“But that is only a phase,” he persisted. “You have had terrible trials,
+I know, and they must have affected your outlook on life, but you are
+still young, and while one is young life is always worth having.”
+
+“I thought so once,” she assented. “I don't now.”
+
+“But there must be--there will be compensations,” he assured her. “I
+know that just now you are suffering from the reaction--after all you
+have gone through. The memory of that will pass.”
+
+“The memory of what I have gone through will never pass,” she answered.
+
+There was a moment's intense silence, a silence pregnant with
+reminiscent drama. The little room rose up before his memory--the
+woman's hopeless, hating eyes, the quivering thread of steel, the dead
+man's mocking words. He seemed at that moment to see into the recesses
+of her mind. Was it remorse that troubled her, he wondered? Did she lack
+strength to realise that in that half-hour at the inquest he had placed
+on record for ever his judgment of her deed? Even to think of it now was
+morbid. Although he would never have confessed it even to himself, there
+was growing daily in his mind some idea of reward. She had never thanked
+him--he hoped that she never would--but he had surely a right to claim
+some measure of her thoughts, some light place in her life.
+
+“Please look at me,” he begged, a little abruptly.
+
+She turned her head in some surprise. Francis was almost handsome in the
+clear Spring sunlight, his face alight with animation, his deep-set
+grey eyes full of amused yet anxious solicitude. Even as she appreciated
+these things and became dimly conscious of his eager interest, her
+perturbation seemed to grow.
+
+“Well?” she ventured.
+
+“Do I look like a person who knew what he was talking about?” he asked.
+
+“On the whole, I should say that you did,” she admitted.
+
+“Very well, then,” he went on cheerfully, “believe me when I say that
+the shadow which depresses you all the time now will pass. I say this
+confidently,” he added, his voice softening, “because I hope to be
+allowed to help. Haven't you guessed that I am very glad indeed to see
+you again?”
+
+She came to a sudden standstill. They had just passed through Lansdowne
+Passage and were in the quiet end of Curzon Street.
+
+“But you must not talk to me like that!” she expostulated.
+
+“Why not?” he demanded. “We have met under strange and untoward
+circumstances, but are you so very different from other women?”
+
+For a single moment she seemed infinitely more human, startled, a
+little nervous, exquisitely sympathetic to an amazing and unexpected
+impression. She seemed to look with glad but terrified eyes towards the
+vision of possible things--and then to realise that it was but a trick
+of the fancy and to come shivering back to the world of actualities.
+
+“I am very different,” she said quietly. “I have lived my life. What I
+lack in years has been made up to me in horror. I have no desire now
+but to get rid of this aftermath of years as smoothly and quickly as
+possible. I do not wish any man, Mr. Ledsam, to talk to me as you are
+doing.”
+
+“You will not accept my friendship?”
+
+“It is impossible,” she replied.
+
+“May I be allowed to call upon you?” he went on, doggedly.
+
+“I do not receive visitors,” she answered.
+
+They were walking slowly up Curzon Street now. She had given him every
+opportunity to leave her, opportunities to which he was persistently
+blind. Her obstinacy had been a shock to him.
+
+“I am sorry,” he said, “but I cannot accept my dismissal like this. I
+shall appeal to your father. However much he may dislike me, he has at
+least common-sense.”
+
+She looked at him with a touch of the old horror in her
+coldly-questioning eyes.
+
+“In your way you have been kind to me,” she admitted. “Let me in return
+give you a word of advice. Let me beg you to have nothing whatever to
+do with my father, in friendship or in enmity. Either might be equally
+disastrous. Either, in the long run, is likely to cost you dear.”
+
+“If that is your opinion of your father, why do you live with him?” he
+asked.
+
+She had become entirely callous again. Her smile, with its mocking
+quality, reminded him for a moment of the man whom they were discussing.
+
+“Because I am a luxury and comfort-loving parasite,” she answered
+deliberately, “because my father gladly pays my accounts at Lucille and
+Worth and Reville, because I have never learnt to do without things.
+And please remember this. My father, so far as I am concerned, has no
+faults. He is a generous and courteous companion. Nevertheless, number
+70 b, Curzon Street is no place for people who desire to lead normal
+lives.”
+
+And with that she was gone. Her gesture of dismissal was so complete
+and final that he had no courage for further argument. He had lost her
+almost as soon as he had found her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Four men were discussing the verdict at the adjourned inquest upon
+Victor Bidlake, at Soto's American Bar about a fortnight later. They
+were Robert Fairfax, a young actor in musical comedy, Peter Jacks, a
+cinema producer, Gerald Morse, a dress designer, and Sidney Voss, a
+musical composer and librettist, all habitues of the place and members
+of the little circle towards which the dead man had seemed, during the
+last few weeks of his life, to have become attracted. At a table a short
+distance away, Francis Ledsam was seated with a cocktail and a dish of
+almonds before him. He seemed to be studying an evening paper and to be
+taking but the scantiest notice of the conversation at the bar.
+
+“It just shows,” Peter Jacks declared, “that crime is the easiest
+game in the world. Given a reasonable amount of intelligence, and a
+murderer's business is about as simple as a sandwich-man's.”
+
+“The police,” Gerald Morse, a pale-faced, anaemic-looking youth,
+declared, “rely upon two things, circumstantial evidence and motive. In
+the present case there is no circumstantial evidence, and as to motive,
+poor old Victor was too big a fool to have an enemy in the world.”
+
+Sidney Voss, who was up for the Sheridan Club and had once been there,
+glanced respectfully across at Francis.
+
+“You ought to know something about crime and criminals, Mr. Ledsam,” he
+said. “Have you any theory about the affair?”
+
+Francis set down the glass from which he had been drinking, and, folding
+up the evening paper, laid it by the side of him.
+
+“As a matter of fact,” he answered calmly, “I have.”
+
+The few words, simply spoken, yet in their way charged with menace,
+thrilled through the little room. Fairfax swung round upon his stool, a
+tall, aggressive-looking youth whose good-looks were half eaten up with
+dissipation. His eyes were unnaturally bright, the cloudy remains in his
+glass indicated absinthe.
+
+“Listen, you fellows!” he exclaimed. “Mr. Francis Ledsam, the great
+criminal barrister, is going to solve the mystery of poor old Victor's
+death for us!”
+
+The three other young men all turned around from the bar. Their eyes and
+whole attention seemed rivetted upon Francis. No one seemed to notice
+the newcomer who passed quietly to a chair in the background, although
+he was a person of some note and interest to all of them. Imperturbable
+and immaculate as ever, Sir Timothy Brast smiled amiably upon the little
+gathering, summoned a waiter and ordered a Dry Martini.
+
+“I can scarcely promise to do that,” Francis said slowly, his eyes
+resting for a second or two upon each of the four faces. “Exact
+solutions are a little out of my line. I think I can promise to give you
+a shock, though, if you're strong enough to stand it.”
+
+There was another of those curiously charged silences. The bartender
+paused with the cocktail shaker still in his hand. Voss began to beat
+nervously upon the counter with his knuckles.
+
+“We can stand anything but suspense,” he declared. “Get on with your
+shock-giving.”
+
+“I believe that the person responsible for the death of Victor Bidlake
+is in this room at the present moment,” Francis declared.
+
+Again the silence, curious, tense and dramatic. Little Jimmy, the
+bartender, who had leaned forward to listen, stood with his mouth
+slightly open and the cocktail-shaker which was in his hand leaked drops
+upon the counter. The first conscious impulse of everybody seemed to be
+to glance suspiciously around the room. The four young men at the bar,
+Jimmy and one waiter, Francis and Sir Timothy Brast, were its only
+occupants.
+
+“I say, you know, that's a bit thick, isn't it?” Sidney Voss stammered
+at last. “I wasn't in the place at all, I was in Manchester, but it's a
+bit rough on these other chaps, Victor's pals.”
+
+“I was dining at the Cafe Royal,” Jacks declared, loudly.
+
+Morse drew a little breath.
+
+“Every one knows that I was at Brighton,” he muttered.
+
+“I went home directly the bar here closed,” Jimmy said, in a still dazed
+tone. “I heard nothing about it till the next morning.”
+
+“Alibis by the bushel,” Fairfax laughed harshly. “As for me, I was doing
+my show--every one knows that. I was never in the place at all.”
+
+“The murder was not committed in the place,” Francis commented calmly.
+
+Fairfax slid off his stool. A spot of colour blazed in his pale cheeks,
+the glass which he was holding snapped in his fingers. He seemed
+suddenly possessed.
+
+“I say, what the hell are you getting at?” he cried. “Are you accusing
+me--or any of us Victor's pals?”
+
+“I accuse no one,” Francis replied, unperturbed. “You invited a
+statement from me and I made it.”
+
+Sir Timothy Brast rose from his place and made his way to the end of the
+counter, next to Fairfax and nearest Francis. He addressed the former.
+There was an inscrutable smile upon his lips, his manner was reassuring.
+
+“Young gentleman,” he begged, “pray do not disturb yourself. I will
+answer for it that neither you nor any of your friends are the objects
+of Mr. Ledsam's suspicion. Without a doubt, it is I to whom his
+somewhat bold statement refers.”
+
+They all stared at him, immersed in another crisis, bereft of speech. He
+tapped a cigarette upon the counter and lit it. Fairfax, whose glass
+had just been refilled by the bartender, was still ghastly pale, shaking
+with nervousness and breathing hoarsely. Francis, tense and alert in his
+chair, watched the speaker but said nothing.
+
+“You see,” Sir Timothy continued, addressing himself to the four young
+men at the bar, “I happen to have two special aversions in life. One is
+sweet champagne and the other amateur detectives--their stories, their
+methods and everything about them. I chanced to sit upstairs in the
+restaurant, within hearing of Mr. Ledsam and his friend Mr. Wilmore,
+the novelist, the other night, and I heard Mr. Ledsam, very much to my
+chagrin, announce his intention of abandoning a career in which he
+has, if he will allow me to say so,”--with a courteous bow to
+Francis--“attained considerable distinction, to indulge in the
+moth-eaten, flamboyant and melodramatic antics of the lesser Sherlock
+Holmes. I fear that I could not resist the opportunity of--I think you
+young men call it--pulling his leg.”
+
+Every one was listening intently, including Shopland, who had just
+drifted into the room and subsided into a chair near Francis.
+
+“I moved my place, therefore,” Sir Timothy continued, “and I whispered
+in Mr. Ledsam's ear some rodomontade to the effect that if he were
+planning to be the giant crime-detector of the world, I was by ambition
+the arch-criminal--or words to that effect. And to give emphasis to my
+words, I wound up by prophesying a crime in the immediate vicinity of
+the place within a few hours.”
+
+“A somewhat significant prophecy, under the circumstances,” Francis
+remarked, reaching out for a dish of salted almonds and drawing them
+towards him.
+
+Sir Timothy shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.
+
+“I will confess,” he admitted, “that I had not in my mind an affair of
+such dimensions. My harmless remark, however, has produced cataclysmic
+effects. The conversation to which I refer took place on the night of
+young Bidlake's murder, and Mr. Ledsam, with my somewhat, I confess,
+bombastic words in his memory, has pitched upon me as the bloodthirsty
+murderer.”
+
+“Hold on for a moment, sir,” Peter Jacks begged, wiping the perspiration
+from his forehead. “We've got to have another drink quick. Poor old
+Bobby here looks knocked all of a heap, and I'm kind of jumpy myself.
+You'll join us, sir?”
+
+“I thank you,” was the courteous reply. “I do not as a rule indulge to
+the extent of more than one cocktail, but I will recognise the present
+as an exceptional occasion. To continue, then,” he went on, after the
+glasses had been filled, “I have during the last few weeks experienced
+the ceaseless and lynx-eyed watch of Mr. Ledsam and presumably his
+myrmidons. I do not know whether you are all acquainted with my name,
+but in case you are not, let me introduce myself. I am Sir Timothy
+Brast, Chairman, as I dare say you know, of the United Transvaal Gold
+Mines, Chairman, also, of two of the principal hospitals in London, Vice
+President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a
+patron of sport in many forms, a traveller in many countries, and a
+recipient of the honour of knighthood from His Majesty, in recognition
+of my services for various philanthropic works. These facts, however,
+have availed me nothing now that the bungling amateur investigator into
+crime has pointed the finger of suspicion towards me. My servants and
+neighbours have alike been plagued to death with cunning questions as to
+my life and habits. I have been watched in the streets and watched in
+my harmless amusements. My simple life has been peered into from
+every perspective and direction. In short, I am suspect. Mr. Ledsam's
+terrifying statement a few minutes ago was directed towards me and me
+only.”
+
+There were murmurs of sympathy from the four young men, who each in his
+own fashion appeared to derive consolation from Sir Timothy's frank and
+somewhat caustic statement. Francis, who had listened unmoved to this
+flow of words, glanced towards the door behind which dark figures seemed
+to be looming.
+
+“That is all you have to say, Sir Timothy?” he asked politely.
+
+“For the present, yes,” was the guarded reply. “I trust that I have
+succeeded in setting these young gentlemen's minds at ease.”
+
+“There is one of them,” Francis said gravely, “whose mind not even your
+soothing words could lighten.”
+
+Shopland had risen unobtrusively to his feet. He laid his hand suddenly
+on Fairfax's shoulder and whispered in his ear. Fairfax, after his first
+start, seemed cool enough. He stretched out his hand towards the glass
+which as yet he had not touched; covered it with his fingers for a
+moment and drained its contents. The gently sarcastic smile left Sir
+Timothy's lips. His eyebrows met in a quick frown, his eyes glittered.
+
+“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded sharply.
+
+A policeman in plain clothes had advanced from the door. The manager
+hovered in the background. Shopland saw that all was well.
+
+“It means,” he announced, “that I have just arrested Mr. Robert Fairfax
+here on a charge of wilful murder. There is a way out through the
+kitchens, I believe. Take his other arm, Holmes. Now, gentlemen, if you
+please.”
+
+There were a few bewildered exclamations--then a dramatic hush. Fairfax
+had fallen forward on his stool. He seemed to have relapsed into a
+comatose state. Every scrap of colour was drained from his sallow
+cheeks, his eyes were covered with a film and he was breathing heavily.
+The detective snatched up the glass from which the young man had been
+drinking, and smelt it.
+
+“I saw him drop a tablet in just now,” Jimmy faltered. “I thought it was
+one of the digestion pills he uses sometimes.”
+
+Shopland and the policeman placed their hands underneath the armpits of
+the unconscious man.
+
+“He's done, sir,” the former whispered to Francis. “We'll try and get
+him to the station if we can.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The greatest tragedies in the world, provided they happen to other
+people, have singularly little effect upon the externals of our own
+lives. There was certainly not a soul in Soto's that night who did
+not know that Bobby Fairfax had been arrested in the bar below for the
+murder of Victor Bidlake, had taken poison and died on the way to the
+police station. Yet the same number of dinners were ordered and eaten,
+the same quantity of wine drunk. The management considered that they had
+shown marvellous delicacy of feeling by restraining the orchestra
+from their usual musical gymnastics until after the service of dinner.
+Conversation, in consequence, buzzed louder than ever. One speculation
+in particular absorbed the attention of every single person in the
+room--why had Bobby Fairfax, at the zenith of a very successful career,
+risked the gallows and actually accepted death for the sake of killing
+Victor Bidlake, a young man with whom, so far as anybody knew, he had
+no cause of quarrel whatever? There were many theories, many people who
+knew the real facts and whispered them into a neighbour's ear, only to
+have them contradicted a few moments later. Yet, curiously enough, the
+two men who knew most about it were the two most silent men in the room,
+for each was dining alone. Francis, who had remained only in the hope
+that something of the sort might happen, was conscious of a queer sense
+of excitement when, with the service of coffee, Sir Timothy, glass in
+hand, moved up from a table lower down and with a word of apology took
+the vacant place by his side. It was what he had desired, and yet he
+felt a thrill almost of fear at Sir Timothy's murmured words. He felt
+that he was in the company of one who, if not an enemy, at any rate had
+no friendly feeling towards him.
+
+“My congratulations, Mr. Ledsam,” Sir Timothy said quietly. “You appear
+to have started your career with a success.”
+
+“Only a partial one,” Francis acknowledged, “and as a matter of fact I
+deny that I have started in any new career. It was easy enough to make
+use of a fluke and direct the intelligence of others towards the right
+person, but when the real significance of the thing still eludes you,
+one can scarcely claim a triumph.”
+
+Sir Timothy gently knocked the ash from the very fine cigar which he was
+smoking.
+
+“Still, your groundwork was good,” he observed.
+
+Francis shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“That,” he admitted, “was due to chance.”
+
+“Shall we exchange notes?” Sir Timothy suggested gently. “It might be
+interesting.”
+
+“As you will,” Francis assented. “There is no particular secret in the
+way I stumbled upon the truth. I was dining here that night, as you
+know, with Andrew Wilmore, and while he was ordering the dinner and
+talking to some friends, I went down to the American Bar to have a
+cocktail. Miss Daisy Hyslop and Fairfax were seated there alone and
+talking confidentially. Fairfax was insisting that Miss Hyslop should do
+something which puzzled her. She consented reluctantly, and Fairfax then
+hurried off to the theatre. Later on, Miss Hyslop and the unfortunate
+young man occupied a table close to ours, and I happened to notice that
+she made a point of leaving the restaurant at a particular time. While
+they were waiting in the vestibule she grew very impatient. I was
+standing behind them and I saw her glance at the clock just before she
+insisted upon her companion's going out himself to look for a taxicab.
+Ergo, one enquires at Fairfax's theatre. For that exact three-quarters
+of an hour he is off the stage. At that point my interest in the matter
+ceases. Scotland Yard was quite capable of the rest.”
+
+“Disappointing,” Sir Timothy murmured. “I thought at first that you were
+over-modest. I find that I was mistaken. It was chance alone which set
+you on the right track.”
+
+“Well, there is my story, at any rate,” Francis declared. “With how much
+of your knowledge of the affair are you going to indulge me?”
+
+Sir Timothy slowly revolved his brandy glass.
+
+“Well,” he said, “I will tell you this. The two young men concerned,
+Bidlake and Fairfax, were both guests of mine recently at my country
+house. They had discovered for one another a very fierce and reasonable
+antipathy. With that recurrence to primitivism with which I have always
+been a hearty sympathiser, they agreed, instead of going round their
+little world making sneering remarks about each other, to fight it out.”
+
+“At your suggestion, I presume?” Francis interposed.
+
+“Precisely,” Sir Timothy assented. “I recommended that course, and I
+offered them facilities for bringing the matter to a crisis. The fight,
+indeed, was to have come off the day after the unfortunate episode which
+anticipâtéd it.”
+
+“Do you mean to tell me that you knew--” Francis began.
+
+Sir Timothy checked him quietly but effectively.
+
+“I knew nothing,” he said, “except this. They were neither of them young
+men of much stomach, and I knew that the one who was the greater coward
+would probably try to anticipâté the matter by attacking the other first
+if he could. I knew that Fairfax was the greater coward--not that there
+was much to choose between them--and I also knew that he was the injured
+person. That is really all there is about it. My somewhat theatrical
+statement to you was based upon probability, and not upon any certain
+foreknowledge. As you see, it came off.”
+
+“And the cause of their quarrel?” Francis asked.
+
+“There might have been a hundred reasons,” Sir Timothy observed. “As a
+matter of fact, it was the eternal one. There is no need to mention a
+woman's name, so we will let it go at that.”
+
+There was a moment's silence--a strange, unforgettable moment for
+Francis Ledsam, who seemed by some curious trick of the imagination to
+have been carried away into an impossible and grotesque world. The
+hum of eager conversation, the popping of corks, the little trills
+of feminine laughter, all blended into one sensual and not unmusical
+chorus, seemed to fade from his ears. He fancied himself in some
+subterranean place of vast dimensions, through the grim galleries of
+which men and women with evil faces crept like animals. And towering
+above them, unreal in size, his scornful face an epitome of sin, the
+knout which he wielded symbolical and ghastly, driving his motley flock
+with the leer of the evil shepherd, was the man from whom he had already
+learnt to recoil with horror. The picture came and went in a flash.
+Francis found himself accepting a courteously offered cigar from his
+companion.
+
+“You see, the story is very much like many others,” Sir Timothy
+murmured, as he lit a fresh Cigar himself and leaned back with the
+obvious enjoyment of the cultivated smoker. “In every country of the
+world, the animal world as well as the human world, the male resents his
+female being taken from him. Directly he ceases to resent it, he becomes
+degenerate. Surely you must agree with me, Mr. Leddam?”
+
+“It comes to this, then,” Francis pronounced deliberately, “that you
+stage-managed the whole affair.”
+
+Sir Timothy smiled.
+
+“It is my belief, Mr. Ledsam,” he said, “that you grow more and more
+intelligent every hour.”
+
+Sir Timothy glanced presently at his thin gold watch and put it back in
+his pocket regretfully.
+
+“Alas!” he sighed, “I fear that I must tear myself away. I particularly
+want to hear the last act of 'Louise.' The new Frenchwoman sings, and my
+daughter is alone. You will excuse me.”
+
+Francis nodded silently. His companion's careless words had brought a
+sudden dazzling vision into his mind. Sir Timothy scrawled his name at
+the foot of his bill.
+
+“It is one of my axioms in life, Mr. Ledsam,” he continued, “that there
+is more pleasure to be derived from the society of one's enemies than
+one's friends. If I thought you sufficiently educated in the outside
+ways of the world to appreciate this, I would ask if you cared to
+accompany me?”
+
+Francis did not hesitate for a moment.
+
+“Sir Timothy,” he said, “I have the greatest detestation for you, and I
+am firmly convinced that you represent all the things in life abhorrent
+to me. On the other hand, I should very much like to hear the last act
+of 'Louise,' and it would give me the greatest pleasure to meet your
+daughter. So long as there is no misunderstanding.”
+
+Sir Timothy laughed.
+
+“Come,” he said, “we will get our hats. I am becoming more and more
+grateful to you, Mr. Ledsam. You are supplying something in my life
+which I have lacked. You appeal alike to my sense of humour and my
+imagination. We will visit the opera together.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The two men left Soto's together, very much in the fashion of two
+ordinary acquaintances sallying out to spend the evening together. Sir
+Timothy's Rolls-Royce limousine was in attendance, and in a few minutes
+they were threading the purlieus of Covent Garden. It was here that an
+incident occurred which afforded Francis considerable food for thought
+during the next few days.
+
+It was a Friday night, and one or two waggons laden with vegetable
+produce were already threading their way through the difficult
+thoroughfares. Suddenly Sir Timothy, who was looking out of the
+window, pressed the button of the car, which was at once brought to a
+standstill. Before the footman could reach the door Sir Timothy was out
+in the street. For the first time Francis saw him angry. His eyes
+were blazing. His voice--Francis had followed him at once into the
+street--shook with passion. His hand had fallen heavily upon the
+shoulder of a huge carter, who, with whip in hand, was belabouring a
+thin scarecrow of a horse.
+
+“What the devil are you doing?” Sir Timothy demanded.
+
+The man stared at his questioner, and the instinctive antagonism of
+race vibrated in his truculent reply. The carter was a beery-faced,
+untidy-looking brute, but powerfully built and with huge shoulders. Sir
+Timothy, straight as a dart, without overcoat or any covering to his
+thin evening clothes, looked like a stripling in front of him.
+
+“I'm whippin' 'er, if yer want to know,” was the carter's reply. “I've
+got to get up the 'ill, 'aven't I? Garn and mind yer own business!”
+
+“This is my business,” Sir Timothy declared, laying his hand upon the
+neck of the horse. “I am an official of the Society for the Prevention
+of Cruelty to Animals. You are laying yourself open to a fine for your
+treatment of this poor brute.”
+
+“I'll lay myself open for a fine for the treatment of something else, if
+you don't quid 'old of my 'oss,” the carter retorted, throwing his whip
+back into the waggon and coming a step nearer. “D'yer 'ear? I don't
+want any swells interferin' with my business. You 'op it. Is that strite
+enough? 'Op it, quick!”
+
+Sir Timothy's anger seemed to have abated. There was even the beginning
+of a smile upon his lips. All the time his hand caressed the neck of the
+horse. Francis noticed with amazement that the poor brute had raised his
+head and seemed to be making some faint effort at reciprocation.
+
+“My good man,” Sir Timothy said, “you seem to be one of those brutal
+persons unfit to be trusted with an animal. However--”
+
+The carter had heard quite enough. Sir Timothy's tone seemed to madden
+him. He clenched his fist and rushed in.
+
+“You take that for interferin', you big toff!” he shouted.
+
+The result of the man's effort at pugilism was almost ridiculous. His
+arms appeared to go round like windmills beating the air. It really
+seemed as though he had rushed upon the point of Sir Timothy's knuckles,
+which had suddenly shot out like the piston of an engine. The carter lay
+on his back for a moment. Then he staggered viciously to his feet.
+
+“Don't,” Sir Timothy begged, as he saw signs of another attack. “I don't
+want to hurt you. I have been amateur champion of two countries. Not
+quite fair, is it?”
+
+“Wot d'yer want to come interferin' with a chap's business for?” the man
+growled, dabbing his cheek with a filthy handkerchief but keeping at a
+respectful distance.
+
+“It happens to be my business also,” Sir Timothy replied, “to interfere
+whenever I see animals ill-treated. Now I don't want to be unreasonable.
+That animal has done all the work it ought to do in this world. How much
+is she worth to you?”
+
+Through the man's beer-clogged brain a gleam of cunning began to find
+its way. He looked at the Rolls-Royce, with the two motionless servants
+on the box, at Francis standing by, at Sir Timothy, even to his thick
+understanding the very prototype of a “toff.”
+
+“That 'oss,” he said, “ain't what she was, it's true, but there's a lot
+of work in 'er yet. She may not be much to look at but she's worth forty
+quid to me--ay, and one to spit on!”
+
+Sir Timothy counted out some notes from the pocketbook which he had
+produced, and handed them to the man.
+
+“Here are fifty pounds,” he said. “The mare is mine. Johnson!”
+
+The second man sprang from his seat and came round.
+
+“Unharness that mare,” his master ordered, “help the man push his
+trolley back out of the way, then lead the animal to the mews in Curzon
+Street. See that she is well bedded down and has a good feed of corn.
+To-morrow I shall send her down to the country, but I will come and have
+a look at her first.”
+
+The man touched his hat and hastened to commence his task. The carter,
+who had been busy counting the notes, thrust them into his pocket with a
+grin.
+
+“Good luck to yer, guvnor!” he shouted out, in valedictory fashion.
+“'Ope I meets yer again when I've an old crock on the go.”
+
+Sir Timothy turned his head.
+
+“If ever I happen to meet you, my good man,” he threatened, “using your
+whip upon a poor beast who's doing his best, I promise you you won't get
+up in two minutes, or twenty.... We might walk the last few yards, Mr.
+Ledsam.”
+
+The latter acquiesced at once, and in a moment or two they were
+underneath the portico of the Opera House. Sir Timothy had begun to talk
+about the opera but Francis was a little distrait. His companion glanced
+at him curiously.
+
+“You are puzzled, Mr. Ledsam?” he remarked.
+
+“Very,” was the prompt response.
+
+Sir Timothy smiled.
+
+“You are one of these primitive Anglo-Saxons,” he said, “who can see
+the simple things with big eyes, but who are terribly worried at an
+unfamiliar constituent. You have summed me up in your mind as a hardened
+brute, a criminal by predilection, a patron of murderers. Ergo, you ask
+yourself why should I trouble to save a poor beast of a horse from being
+chastised, and go out of my way to provide her with a safe asylum for
+the rest of her life? Shall I help you, Mr. Ledsam?”
+
+“I wish you would,” Francis confessed.
+
+They had passed now through the entrance to the Opera House and were in
+the corridor leading to the grand tier boxes. On every side Sir Timothy
+had been received with marks of deep respect. Two bowing attendants were
+preceding them. Sir Timothy leaned towards his companion.
+
+“Because,” he whispered, “I like animals better than human beings.”
+
+Margaret Hilditch, her chair pushed back into the recesses of the box,
+scarcely turned her head at her father's entrance.
+
+“I have brought an acquaintance of yours, Margaret,” the latter
+announced, as he hung up his hat. “You remember Mr. Ledsam?”
+
+Francis drew a little breath of relief as he bowed over her hand. For
+the second time her inordinate composure had been assailed. She was her
+usual calm and indifferent self almost immediately, but the gleam of
+surprise, and he fancied not unpleasant surprise, had been unmistakable.
+
+“Are you a devotee, Mr. Ledsam?” she asked.
+
+“I am fond of music,” Francis answered, “especially this opera.”
+
+She motioned to the chair in the front of the box, facing the stage.
+
+“You must sit there,” she insisted. “I prefer always to remain here, and
+my father always likes to face the audience. I really believe,” she went
+on, “that he likes to catch the eye of the journalist who writes little
+gossipy items, and to see his name in print.”
+
+“But you yourself?” Francis ventured.
+
+“I fancy that my reasons for preferring seclusion should be obvious
+enough,” she replied, a little bitterly.
+
+“My daughter is inclined, I fear, to be a little morbid,” Sir Timothy
+said, settling down in his place.
+
+Francis made no reply. A triangular conversation of this sort was almost
+impossible. The members of the orchestra were already climbing up to
+their places, in preparation for the overture to the last act. Sir
+Timothy rose to his feet.
+
+“You will excuse me for a moment,” he begged. “I see a lady to whom I
+must pay my respects.”
+
+Francis drew a sigh of relief at his departure. He turned at once to his
+companion.
+
+“Did you mind my coming?” he asked.
+
+“Mind it?” she repeated, with almost insolent nonchalance. “Why should
+it affect me in any way? My father's friends come and go. I have no
+interest in any of them.”
+
+“But,” he protested, “I want you to be interested in me.”
+
+She moved a little uneasily in her place. Her tone, nevertheless,
+remained icy.
+
+“Could you possibly manage to avoid personalities in your conversation,
+Mr. Ledsam?” she begged.
+
+“I have tried already to tell you how I feel about such things.”
+
+She was certainly difficult. Francis realised that with a little sigh.
+
+“Were you surprised to see me with your father?” he asked, a little
+inanely.
+
+“I cannot conceive what you two have found in common,” she admitted.
+
+“Perhaps our interest in you,” he replied. “By-the-bye, I have just
+seen him perform a quixotic but a very fine action,” Francis said. “He
+stopped a carter from thrashing his horse; knocked him down, bought the
+horse from him and sent it home.”
+
+She was mildly interested.
+
+“An amiable side of my father's character which no one would suspect,”
+ she remarked. “The entire park of his country house at Hatch End is
+given over to broken-down animals.”
+
+“I am one of those,” he confessed, “who find this trait amazing.”
+
+“And I am another,” she remarked coolly. “If any one settled down
+seriously to try and understand my father, he would need the spectacles
+of a De Quincey, the outlook of a Voltaire, and the callousness of
+a Borgia. You see, he doesn't lend himself to any of the recognised
+standards.”
+
+“Neither do you,” he said boldly.
+
+She looked away from him across the House, to where Sir Timothy was
+talking to a man and woman in one of the ground-floor boxes. Francis
+recognised them with some surprise--an agricultural Duke and his
+daughter, Lady Cynthia Milton, one of the most, beautiful and famous
+young women in London.
+
+“Your father goes far afield for his friends,” Francis remarked.
+
+“My father has no friends,” she replied. “He has many acquaintances. I
+doubt whether he has a single confidant. I expect Cynthia is trying to
+persuade him to invite her to his next party at The Walled House.”
+
+“I should think she would fail, won't she?” he asked.
+
+“Why should you think that?”
+
+Francis shrugged his shoulders slightly.
+
+“Your father's entertainments have the reputation of being somewhat
+unique,” he remarked. “You do not, by-the-bye, attend them yourself.”
+
+“You must remember that I have had very few opportunities so far,” she
+observed. “Besides, Cynthia has tastes which I do not share.”
+
+“As, for instance?”
+
+“She goes to the National Sporting Club. She once travelled, I know,
+over a hundred miles to go to a bull fight.”
+
+“On the whole,” Francis said, “I am glad that you do not share her
+tastes.”
+
+“You know her?” Margaret enquired.
+
+“Indifferently well,” Francis replied. “I knew her when she was a child,
+and we seem to come together every now and then at long intervals. As a
+debutante she was charming. Lately it seems to me that she has got into
+the wrong set.”
+
+“What do you call the wrong set?”
+
+He hesitated for a moment.
+
+“Please don't think that I am laying down the law,” he said. “I have
+been out so little, the last few years, that I ought not, perhaps, to
+criticise. Lady Cynthia, however, seems to me to belong to the extreme
+section of the younger generation, the section who have a sort of craze
+for the unusual, whose taste in art and living is distorted and
+bizarre. You know what I mean, don't you--black drawing-rooms,
+futurist wall-papers, opium dens and a cocaine box! It's to some extent
+affectation, of course, but it's a folly that claims its victims.”
+
+She studied him for a moment attentively. His leanness was the leanness
+of muscular strength and condition, his face was full of vigour and
+determination.
+
+“You at least have escaped the abnormal,” she remarked. “I am not quite
+sure how the entertainments at The Walled House would appeal to you, but
+if my father should invite you there, I should advise you not to go.”
+
+“Why not?” he asked.
+
+She hesitated for a moment.
+
+“I really don't know why I should trouble to give you advice,” she said.
+“As a matter of fact, I don't care whether you go or not. In any case,
+you are scarcely likely to be asked.”
+
+“I am not sure that I agree with you,” he protested. “Your father seems
+to have taken quite a fancy to me.”
+
+“And you?” she murmured.
+
+“Well, I like the way he bought that horse,” Francis admitted. “And I am
+beginning to realise that there may be something in the theory which
+he advanced when he invited me to accompany him here this evening--that
+there is a certain piquancy in one's intercourse with an enemy, which
+friendship lacks. There may be complexities in his character which as
+yet I have not appreciated.”
+
+The curtain had gone up and the last act of the opera had commenced.
+She leaned back in her chair. Without a word or even a gesture, he
+understood that a curtain had been let down between them. He obeyed her
+unspoken wish and relapsed into silence. Her very absorption, after all,
+was a hopeful sign. She would have him believe that she felt nothing,
+that she was living outside all the passion and sentiment of life.
+Yet she was absorbed in the music.... Sir Timothy came back and seated
+himself silently. It was not until the tumult of applause which broke
+out after the great song of the French ouvrier, that a word passed
+between them.
+
+“Cavalisti is better,” Sir Timothy commented. “This man has not the
+breadth of passion. At times he is merely peevish.”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“Cavalisti would be too egotistical for the part,” she said quietly. “It
+is difficult.”
+
+Not another word was spoken until the curtain fell. Francis lingered
+for a moment over the arrangement of her cloak. Sir Timothy was already
+outside, talking to some acquaintances.
+
+“It has been a great pleasure to see you like this unexpectedly,” he
+said, a little wistfully.
+
+“I cannot imagine why,” she answered, with an undernote of trouble in
+her tone. “Remember the advice I gave you before. No good can come of
+any friendship between my father and you.”
+
+“There is this much of good in it, at any rate,” he answered, as he
+held open the door for her. “It might give me the chance of seeing you
+sometimes.”
+
+“That is not a matter worth considering,” she replied.
+
+“I find it very much worth considering,” he whispered, losing his head
+for a moment as they stood close together in the dim light of the box,
+and a sudden sense of the sweetness of her thrilled his pulses. “There
+isn't anything in the world I want so much as to see you oftener--to
+have my chance.”
+
+There was a momentary glow in her eyes. Her lips quivered. The few words
+which he saw framed there--he fancied of reproof--remained unspoken. Sir
+Timothy was waiting for them at the entrance.
+
+“I have been asking Mrs. Hilditch's permission to call in Curzon
+Street,” Francis said boldly.
+
+“I am sure my daughter will be delighted,” was the cold but courteous
+reply.
+
+Margaret herself made no comment. The car drew up and she stepped into
+it--a tall, slim figure, wonderfully graceful in her unrelieved black,
+her hair gleaming as though with some sort of burnish, as she passed
+underneath the electric light. She looked back at him with a smile of
+farewell as he stood bareheaded upon the steps, a smile which reminded
+him somehow of her father, a little sardonic, a little tender, having in
+it some faintly challenging quality. The car rolled away. People around
+were gossiping--rather freely.
+
+“The wife of that man Oliver Hilditch,” he heard a woman say, “the man
+who was tried for murder, and committed suicide the night after his
+acquittal. Why, that can't be much more than three months ago.”
+
+“If you are the daughter of a millionaire,” her escort observed, “you
+can defy convention.”
+
+“Yes, that was Sir Timothy Brast,” another man was saying. “He's
+supposed to be worth a cool five millions.”
+
+“If the truth about him were known,” his companion confided, dropping
+his voice, “it would cost him all that to keep out of the Old Bailey.
+They say that his orgies at Hatch End--Our taxi. Come on, Sharpe.”
+
+Francis strolled thoughtfully homewards.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Francis Ledsam was himself again, the lightest-hearted and most popular
+member of his club, still a brilliant figure in the courts, although his
+appearances there were less frequent, still devoting the greater portion
+of his time, to his profession, although his work in connection with
+it had become less spectacular. One morning, at the corner of Clarges
+Street and Curzon Street, about three weeks after his visit to the
+Opera, he came face to face with Sir Timothy Brast.
+
+“Well, my altruistic peerer into other people's affairs, how goes it?”
+ the latter enquired pleasantly.
+
+“How does it seem, my arch-criminal, to be still breathing God's fresh
+air?” Francis retorted in the same vein. “Make the most of it. It may
+not last for ever.”
+
+Sir Timothy smiled. He was looking exceedingly well that morning, the
+very prototype of a man contented with life and his part in it. He was
+wearing a morning coat and silk hat, his pâtént boots were faultlessly
+polished, his trousers pressed to perfection, his grey silk tie neat and
+fashionable. Notwithstanding his waxenlike pallor, his slim figure and
+lithe, athletic walk seemed to speak of good health.
+
+“You may catch the minnow,” he murmured. “The big fish swim on.
+By-the-bye,” he added, “I do not notice that your sledge-hammer blows at
+crime are having much effect. Two undetected murders last week, and one
+the week before. What are you about, my astute friend?”
+
+“Those are matters for Scotland Yard,” Francis replied, with an
+indifferent little wave of the hand which held his cigarette. “Details
+are for the professional. I seek that corner in Hell where the thunders
+are welded and the poison gases mixed. In other words, I seek for the
+brains of crime.”
+
+“Believe me, we do not see enough of one another, my young friend,” Sir
+Timothy said earnestly. “You interest me more and more every time we
+meet. I like your allegories, I like your confidence, which in any one
+except a genius would seem blatant. When can we dine together and talk
+about crime?”
+
+“The sooner the better,” Francis replied promptly. “Invite me, and I
+will cancel any other engagement I might happen to have.”
+
+Sir Timothy considered for a moment. The June sunshine was streaming
+down upon them and the atmosphere was a little oppressive.
+
+“Will you dine with me at Hatch End to-night?” he asked. “My daughter
+and I will be alone.”
+
+“I should be delighted,” Francis replied promptly. “I ought to tell you,
+perhaps, that I have called three times upon your daughter but have not
+been fortunate enough to find her at home.”
+
+Sir Timothy was politely apologetic.
+
+“I fear that my daughter is a little inclined to be morbid,” he
+confessed. “Society is good for her. I will undertake that you are a
+welcome guest.”
+
+“At what time do I come and how shall I find your house?” Francis
+enquired.
+
+“You motor down, I suppose?” Sir Timothy observed. “Good! In Hatch End
+any one will direct you. We dine at eight. You had better come down as
+soon as you have finished your day's work. Bring a suitcase and spend
+the night.”
+
+“I shall be delighted,” Francis replied.
+
+“Do not,” Sir Timothy continued, “court disappointment by
+over-anticipation. You have without doubt heard of my little gatherings
+at Hatch End. They are viewed, I am told, with grave suspicion, alike by
+the moralists of the City and, I fear, the police. I am not inviting you
+to one of those gatherings. They are for people with other tastes.
+My daughter and I have been spending a few days alone in the little
+bungalow by the side of my larger house. That is where you will find
+us--The Sanctuary, we call it.”
+
+“Some day,” Francis ventured, “I shall hope to be asked to one of your
+more notorious gatherings. For the present occasion I much prefer the
+entertainment you offer.”
+
+“Then we are both content,” Sir Timothy said, smiling. “Au revoir!”
+
+
+Francis walked across Green Park, along the Mall, down Horse Guards
+Parade, along the Embankment to his rooms on the fringe of the Temple.
+Here he found his clerk awaiting his arrival in some disturbance of
+spirit.
+
+“There is a young gentleman here to see you, sir,” he announced. “Mr.
+Reginald Wilmore his name is, I think.”
+
+“Wilmore?” Francis repeated. “What have you done with him?”
+
+“He is in your room, sir. He seems very impatient. He has been out two
+or three times to know how long I thought you would be.”
+
+Francis passed down the stone passage and entered his room, a large,
+shady apartment at the back of the building. To his surprise it was
+empty. He was on the point of calling to his clerk when he saw that the
+writing-paper on his desk had been disturbed. He went over and read a
+few lines written in a boy's hasty writing:
+
+DEAR Mr. LEDSAM:
+
+I am in a very strange predicament and I have come to ask your advice.
+You know my brother Andrew well, and you may remember playing tennis
+with me last year. I am compelled--
+
+At that point the letter terminated abruptly. There was a blot and a
+smudge. The pen lay where it seemed to have rolled--on the floor. The
+ink was not yet dry. Francis called to his clerk.
+
+“Angrave,” he said, “Mr. Wilmore is not here.”
+
+The clerk looked around in obvious surprise.
+
+“It isn't five minutes since he came out to my office, sir!” he
+exclaimed. “I heard him go back again afterwards.”
+
+Francis shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Perhaps he decided not to wait and you didn't hear him go by.”
+
+Angrave shook his head.
+
+“I do not see how he could have left the place without my hearing him,
+sir,” he declared. “The door of my office has been open all the time,
+and I sit opposite to it. Besides, on these stone floors one can hear
+any one so distinctly.”
+
+“Then what,” Francis asked, “has become of him?”
+
+The clerk shook his head.
+
+“I haven't any idea, sir,” he confessed.
+
+Francis plunged into his work and forgot all about the matter. He
+was reminded of it, however, at luncheon-time, when, on entering the
+dining-room of the club, he saw Andrew Wilmore seated alone at one of
+the small tables near the wall. He went over to him at once.
+
+“Hullo, Andrew,” he greeted him, “what are you doing here by yourself?”
+
+“Bit hipped, old fellow,” was the depressed reply. “Sit down, will you?”
+
+Francis sat down and ordered his lunch.
+
+“By-the-bye,” he said, “I had rather a mysterious visit this morning
+from your brother Reggie.”
+
+Wilmore stared at him for a moment, half in relief, half in amazement.
+
+“Good God, Francis, you don't say so!” he exclaimed. “How was he? What
+did he want? Tell me about it at once? We've been worried to death about
+the boy.”
+
+“Well, as a matter of fact, I didn't see him,” Francis explained.
+“He arrived before I reached my rooms--as you know, I don't live
+there--waited some time, began to write me this note,”--drawing the
+sheet of paper from his pocket--“and when I got there had disappeared
+without leaving a message or anything.”
+
+Wilmore adjusted his pince nez with trembling fingers. Then he read the
+few lines through.
+
+“Francis,” he said, when he had finished them, “do you know that this is
+the first word we've heard of him for three days?”
+
+“Great heavens!” Francis exclaimed. “He was living with his mother,
+wasn't he?”
+
+“Down at Kensington, but he hasn't been there since Monday,” Andrew
+replied. “His mother is in a terrible state. And now this, I don't
+understand it at all.”
+
+“Was the boy hard up?”
+
+“Not more than most young fellows are,” was the puzzled reply. “His
+allowance was due in a few days, too. He had money in the bank, I feel
+sure. He was saving up for a motorcar.”
+
+“Haven't I seen him once or twice at restaurants lately?” Francis
+enquired. “Soto's, for instance?”
+
+“Very likely,” his brother assented. “Why not? He's fond of dancing, and
+we none of us ever encouraged him to be a stay-at-home.”
+
+“Any particular girl was he interested in?”
+
+“Not that we know of. Like most young fellows of his age, he was rather
+keen on young women with some connection with the stage, but I don't
+believe there was any one in particular. Reggie was too fond of games to
+waste much time that way. He's at the gymnasium three evenings a week.”
+
+“I wish I'd been at the office a few minutes earlier this morning,”
+ Francis observed. “I tell you what, Andrew. I have some pals down at
+Scotland Yard, and I'll go down and see them this afternoon. They'll
+want a photograph, and to ask a few questions, I dare say, but I
+shouldn't talk about the matter too much.”
+
+“You're very kind, Francis,” his friend replied, “but it isn't so easy
+to sit tight. I was going to the police myself this afternoon.”
+
+“Take my advice and leave it to me,” Francis begged. “I have a
+particular pal down at Scotland Yard who I know will be interested, and
+I want him to take up the case.”
+
+“You haven't any theory, I suppose?” Wilmore asked, a little wistfully.
+
+Francis shook his head.
+
+“Not the ghost of one,” he admitted. “The reason I am advising you to
+keep as quiet as possible, though, is just this. If you create a lot of
+interest in a disappearance, you have to satisfy the public curiosity
+when the mystery is solved.”
+
+“I see,” Wilmore murmured. “All the same, I can't imagine Reggie getting
+mixed up in anything discreditable.”
+
+“Neither can I, from what I remember of the boy,” Francis agreed. “Let
+me see, what was he doing in the City?”
+
+“He was with Jameson & Scott, the stockbrokers,” Wilmore replied. “He
+was only learning the business and he had no responsibilities. Curiously
+enough, though, when I went to see Mr. Jameson he pointed out one or two
+little matters that Reggie had attended to, which looked as though he
+were clearing up, somehow or other.”
+
+“He left no message there, I suppose?”
+
+“Not a line or a word. He gave the porter five shillings, though, on the
+afternoon before he disappeared--a man who has done some odd jobs for
+him.”
+
+“Well, a voluntary disappearance is better than an involuntary one,”
+ Francis remarked. “What was his usual programme when he left the
+office?”
+
+“He either went to Queen's and played racquets, or he went straight to
+his gymnasium in the Holborn. I telephoned to Queen's. He didn't call
+there on the Wednesday night, anyhow.”
+
+“Where's the gymnasium?”
+
+“At 147 a Holborn. A lot of city young men go there late in the evening,
+but Reggie got off earlier than most of them and used to have the place
+pretty well to himself. I think that's why he stuck to it.”
+
+Francis made a note of the address.
+
+“I'll get Shopland to step down there some time,” he said. “Or better
+still, finish your lunch and we'll take a taxi there ourselves. I'm
+going to the country later on, but I've half-an-hour to spare. We can go
+without our coffee and be there in ten minutes.”
+
+“A great idea,” Wilmore acquiesced. “It's probably the last place Reggie
+visited, anyway.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+The gymnasium itself was a source of immense surprise to both Francis
+and Wilmore. It stretched along the entire top storey of a long block of
+buildings, and was elaborately fitted with bathrooms, a restaurant and a
+reading-room. The trapezes, bars, and all the usual appointments were of
+the best possible quality. The manager, a powerful-looking man dressed
+with the precision of the prosperous city magnate, came out of his
+office to greet them.
+
+“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” he enquired.
+
+“First of all,” Francis replied, “accept our heartiest congratulations
+upon your wonderful gymnasium.”
+
+The man bowed.
+
+“It is the best appointed in the country, sir,” he said proudly.
+“Absolutely no expense has been spared in fitting it up. Every one of
+our appliances is of the latest possible description, and our bathrooms
+are an exact copy of those in a famous Philadelphia club.”
+
+“What is the subscription?” Wilmore asked.
+
+“Five shillings a year.”
+
+“And how many members?”
+
+“Two thousand.”
+
+The manager smiled as he saw his two visitors exchange puzzled glances.
+
+“Needless to say, sir,” he added, “we are not self-supporting. We have
+very generous patrons.”
+
+“I lave heard my brother speak of this place as being quite wonderful,”
+ Wilmore remarked, “but I had no idea that it was upon this scale.”
+
+“Is your brother a member?” the man asked.
+
+“He is. To tell you the truth, we came here to ask you a question about
+him.”
+
+“What is his name?”
+
+“Reginald Wilmore. He was here, I think, last Wednesday night.”
+
+While Wilmore talked, Francis watched. He was conscious of a curious
+change in the man's deportment at the mention of Reginald Wilmore's
+name. From being full of bumptious, almost condescending good-nature,
+his expression had changed into one of stony incivility. There was
+something almost sinister in the tightly-closed lips and the suspicious
+gleam in his eyes.
+
+“What questions did you wish to ask?” he demanded.
+
+“Mr. Reginald Wilmore has disappeared,” Francis explained simply. “He
+came here on leaving the office last Monday. He has not been seen or
+heard of since.”
+
+“Well?” the manager asked.
+
+“We came to ask whether you happen to remember his being here on that
+evening, and whether he gave any one here any indication of his future
+movements. We thought, perhaps, that the instructor who was with him
+might have some information.”
+
+“Not a chance,” was the uncompromising reply. “I remember Mr. Wilmore
+being here perfectly. He was doing double turns on the high bar. I saw
+more of him myself than any one. I was with him when he went down to
+have his swim.”
+
+“Did he seem in his usual spirits?” Wilmore ventured.
+
+“I don't notice what spirits my pupils are in,” the man answered, a
+little insolently. “There was nothing the matter with him so far as I
+know.”
+
+“He didn't say anything about going away?”
+
+“Not a word. You'll excuse me, gentlemen--”
+
+“One moment,” Francis interrupted. “We came here ourselves sooner than
+send a detective. Enquiries are bound to be made as to the young man's
+disappearance, and we have reason to know that this is the last place at
+which he was heard of. It is not unreasonable, therefore, is it, that we
+should come to you for information?”
+
+“Reasonable or unreasonable, I haven't got any,” the man declared
+gruffly. “If Mr. Wilmore's cleared out, he's cleared out for some reason
+of his own. It's not my business and I don't know anything about it.”
+
+“You understand,” Francis persisted, “that our interest in young Mr.
+Wilmore is entirely a friendly one?”
+
+“I don't care whether it's friendly or unfriendly. I tell you I don't
+know anything about him. And,” he added, pressing his thumb upon the
+button for the lift, “I'll wish you two gentlemen good afternoon. I've
+business to attend to.”
+
+Francis looked at him curiously.
+
+“Haven't I seen you somewhere before?” he asked, a little abruptly.
+
+“I can't say. My name is John Maclane.”
+
+“Heavy-weight champion about seven years ago?”
+
+“I was,” the man acknowledged. “You may have seen me in the ring. Now,
+gentlemen, if you please.”
+
+The lift had stopped opposite to them. The manager's gesture of
+dismissal was final.
+
+“I am sorry, Mr. Maclane, if we have annoyed you with our questions,”
+ Francis said. “I wish you could remember a little more of Mr. Wilmore's
+last visit.”
+
+“Well, I can't, and that's all there is to it,” was the blunt reply. “As
+to being annoyed, I am only annoyed when my time's wasted. Take these
+gents down, Jim. Good afternoon!”
+
+The door was slammed to and they shot downwards. Francis turned to the
+lift man.
+
+“Do you know a Mr. Wilmore who comes here sometimes?” he asked.
+
+“Not likely!” the man scoffed. “They're comin' and goin' all the time
+from four o'clock in the afternoon till eleven at night. If I heard a
+name I shouldn't remember it. This way out, gentlemen.”
+
+Wilmore's hand was in his pocket but the man turned deliberately away.
+They walked out into the street.
+
+“For downright incivility,” the former observed, “commend me to the
+attendants of a young men's gymnasium!”
+
+Francis smiled.
+
+“All the same, old fellow,” he said, “if you worry for another five
+minutes about Reggie, you're an ass.”
+
+At six o'clock that evening Francis turned his two-seater into a winding
+drive bordered with rhododendrons, and pulled up before the porch of
+a charming two-storied bungalow, covered with creepers, and with
+French-windows opening from every room onto the lawns. A man-servant who
+had heard the approach of the car was already standing in the porch. Sir
+Timothy, in white flannels and a panama hat, strolled across the lawn to
+greet his approaching guest.
+
+“Excellently timed, my young friend,” he said. “You will have time for
+your first cocktail before you change. My daughter you know, of course.
+Lady Cynthia Milton I think you also know.”
+
+Francis shook hands with the two girls who were lying under the cedar
+tree. Margaret Hilditch seemed to him more wonderful than ever in her
+white serge boating clothes. Lady Cynthia, who had apparently just
+arrived from some function in town, was still wearing muslin and a large
+hat.
+
+“I am always afraid that Mr. Ledsam will have forgotten me,” she
+observed, as she gave him her hand. “The last time I met you was at the
+Old Bailey, when you had been cheating the gallows of a very respectable
+wife murderer. Poynings, I think his name was.”
+
+“I remember it perfectly,” Francis assented. “We danced together
+that night, I remember, at your aunt's, Mrs. Malcolm's, and you were
+intensely curious to know how Poynings had spent his evening.”
+
+“Lady Cynthia's reminder is perhaps a little unfortunate,” Sir Timothy
+observed. “Mr. Ledsam is no longer the last hope of the enterprising
+criminal. He has turned over a new leaf. To secure the services of his
+silver tongue, you have to lay at his feet no longer the bags of gold
+from your ill-gotten gains but the white flower of the blameless life.”
+
+“This is all in the worst possible taste,” Margaret Hilditch declared,
+in her cold, expressionless tone. “You might consider my feelings.”
+
+Lady Cynthia only laughed.
+
+“My dear Margaret,” she said, “if I thought that you had any, I should
+never believe that you were your father's daughter. Here's to them,
+anyway,” she added, accepting the cocktail from the tray which the
+butler had just brought out. “Mr. Ledsam, are you going to attach
+yourself to me, or has Margaret annexed you?”
+
+“I have offered myself to Mrs. Hilditch,” Francis rejoined promptly,
+“but so far I have made no impression.”
+
+“Try her with a punt and a concertina after dinner,” Lady Cynthia
+suggested. “After all, I came down here to better my acquaintance with
+my host. You flirted with me disgracefully when I was a debutante, and
+have never taken any notice of me since. I hate infidelity in a man. Sir
+Timothy, I shall devote myself to you. Can you play a concertina?”
+
+“Where the higher forms of music are concerned,” he replied, “I have no
+technical ability. I should prefer to sit at your feet.”
+
+“While I punt, I suppose?”
+
+“There are backwaters,” he suggested.
+
+Lady Cynthia sipped her cocktail appreciatively.
+
+“I wonder how it is,” she observed, “that in these days, although
+we have become callous to everything else in life, cocktails and
+flirtations still attract us. You shall take me to a backwater after
+dinner, Sir Timothy. I shall wear my silver-grey and take an armful of
+those black cushions from the drawing-room. In that half light, there is
+no telling what success I may not achieve.”
+
+Sir Timothy sighed.
+
+“Alas!” he said, “before dinner is over you will probably have changed
+your mind.”
+
+“Perhaps so,” she admitted, “but you must remember that Mr. Ledsam is
+my only alternative, and I am not at all sure that he likes me. I am not
+sufficiently Victorian for his taste.”
+
+The dressing-bell rang. Sir Timothy passed his arm through Francis'.
+
+“The sentimental side of my domain;” he said, “the others may show you.
+My rose garden across the stream has been very much admired. I am
+now going to give you a glimpse of The Walled House, an edifice the
+possession of which has made me more or less famous.”
+
+He led the way through a little shrubbery, across a further strip of
+garden and through a door in a high wall, which he opened with a key
+attached to his watch-chain. They were in an open park now, studded
+with magnificent trees, in the further corner of which stood an
+imposing mansion, with a great domed roof in the centre, and broad stone
+terraces, one of which led down to the river. The house itself was an
+amazingly blended mixture of old and new, with great wings supported by
+pillars thrown out on either side. It seemed to have been built without
+regard to any definite period of architecture, and yet to have attained
+a certain coherency--a far-reaching structure, with long lines of
+outbuildings. In the park itself were a score or more of horses, and in
+the distance beyond a long line of loose boxes with open doors. Even as
+they stood there, a grey sorrel mare had trotted up to their side
+and laid her head against Sir Timothy's shoulder. He caressed her
+surreptitiously, affecting not to notice the approach of other animals
+from all quarters.
+
+“Let me introduce you to The Walled House,” its owner observed, “so
+called, I imagine, because this wall, which is a great deal older than
+you or I, completely encloses the estate. Of course, you remember the
+old house, The Walled Palace, they called it? It belonged for many years
+to the Lynton family, and afterwards to the Crown.”
+
+“I remember reading of your purchase,” Francis said, “and of course
+I remember the old mansion. You seem to have wiped it out pretty
+effectually.”
+
+“I was obliged to play the vandal,” his host confessed. “In its previous
+state, the house was picturesque but uninhabitable. As you see it now,
+it is an exact reproduction of the country home of one of the lesser
+known of the Borgias--Sodina, I believe the lady's name was. You will
+find inside some beautiful arches, and a sense of space which all modern
+houses lack. It cost me a great deal of money, and it is inhabited, when
+I am in Europe, about once a fortnight. You know the river name for it?
+'Timothy's Folly!”'
+
+“But what on earth made you build it, so long as you don't care to live
+there?” Francis enquired.
+
+Sir Timothy smiled reflectively.
+
+“Well,” he explained, “I like sometimes to entertain, and I like to
+entertain, when I do, on a grand scale. In London, if I give a
+party, the invitations are almost automatic. I become there a very
+insignificant link in the chain of what is known as Society, and Society
+practically helps itself to my entertainment, and sees that everything
+is done according to rule. Down here things are entirely different. An
+invitation to The Walled House is a personal matter. Society has nothing
+whatever to do with my functions here. The reception-rooms, too, are
+arranged according to my own ideas. I have, as you may have heard, the
+finest private gymnasium in England. The ballroom and music-room and
+private theatre, too, are famous.”
+
+“And do you mean to say that you keep that huge place empty?” Francis
+asked curiously.
+
+“I have a suite of rooms there which I occasionally occupy,” Sir Timothy
+replied, “and there are always thirty or forty servants and attendants
+of different sorts who have their quarters there. I suppose that my
+daughter and I would be there at the present moment but for the fact
+that we own this cottage. Both she and I, for residential purposes,
+prefer the atmosphere there.”
+
+“I scarcely wonder at it,” Francis agreed.
+
+They were surrounded now by various quadrupeds. As well as the horses,
+half-a-dozen of which were standing patiently by Sir Timothy's side,
+several dogs had made their appearance and after a little preliminary
+enthusiasm had settled down at his feet. He leaned over and whispered
+something in the ear of the mare who had come first. She trotted off,
+and the others followed suit in a curious little procession. Sir Timothy
+watched them, keeping his head turned away from Francis.
+
+“You recognise the mare the third from the end?” he pointed out. “That
+is the animal I bought in Covent Garden. You see how she has filled
+out?”
+
+“I should never have recognised her,” the other confessed.
+
+“Even Nero had his weaknesses,” Sir Timothy remarked, waving the dogs
+away. “My animals' quarters are well worth a visit, if you have time.
+There is a small hospital, too, which is quite up to date.”
+
+“Do any of the horses work at all?” Francis asked.
+
+Sir Timothy smiled.
+
+“I will tell you a very human thing about my favourites,” he said. “In
+the gardens on the other side of the house we have very extensive lawns,
+and my head groom thought he would make use of one of a my horses who
+had recovered from a serious accident and was really quite a strong
+beast, for one of the machines. He found the idea quite a success, and
+now he no sooner appears in the park with a halter than, instead of
+stampeding, practically every one of those horses comes cantering up
+with the true volunteering spirit. The one which he selects, arches his
+neck and goes off to work with a whole string of the others following.
+Dodsley--that is my groom's name--tells me that he does a great deal
+more mowing now than he need, simply because they worry him for the
+work. Gratitude, you see, Mr. Ledsam, sheer gratitude. If you were to
+provide a dozen alms-houses for your poor dependants, I wonder how many
+of them would be anxious to mow your lawn.... Come, let me show you your
+room now.”
+
+They passed back through the postern-gate into the gardens of The
+Sanctuary. Sir Timothy led the way towards the house.
+
+“I am glad that you decided to spend the night, Mr. Ledsam,” he said.
+“The river sounds a terribly hackneyed place to the Londoner, but it has
+beauties which only those who live with it can discover. Mind your head.
+My ceilings are low.”
+
+Francis followed his host along many passages, up and down stairs, until
+he reached a little suite of rooms at the extreme end of the building.
+The man-servant who had unpacked his bag stood waiting. Sir Timothy
+glanced around critically.
+
+“Small but compact,” he remarked. “There is a little sitting-room down
+that stair, and a bathroom beyond. If the flowers annoy you, throw them
+out of the window. And if you prefer to bathe in the river to-morrow
+morning, Brooks here will show you the diving pool. I am wearing a short
+coat myself to-night, but do as you please. We dine at half-past eight.”
+
+Sir Timothy disappeared with a courteous little inclination of the head.
+Francis dismissed the manservant at once as being out of keeping with
+his quaint and fascinating surroundings. The tiny room with its flowers,
+its perfume of lavender, its old-fashioned chintzes, and its fragrant
+linen, might still have been a room in a cottage. The sitting-room,
+with its veranda looking down upon the river, was provided with
+cigars, whisky and soda and cigarettes; a bookcase, with a rare copy of
+Rabelais, an original Surtees, a large paper Decameron, and a few other
+classics. Down another couple of steps was a perfectly white bathroom,
+with shower and plunge. Francis wandered from room to room, and finally
+threw himself into a chair on the veranda to smoke a cigarette. From the
+river below him came now and then the sound of voices. Through the trees
+on his right he could catch a glimpse, here and there, of the strange
+pillars and green domed roof of the Borghese villa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+It was one of those faultless June evenings when the only mission of
+the faintly stirring breeze seems to be to carry perfumes from garden
+to garden and to make the lightest of music amongst the rustling leaves.
+The dinner-table had been set out of doors, underneath the odorous
+cedar-tree. Above, the sky was an arc of the deepest blue through which
+the web of stars had scarcely yet found its way. Every now and then came
+the sound of the splash of oars from the river; more rarely still, the
+murmur of light voices as a punt passed up the stream. The little party
+at The Sanctuary sat over their coffee and liqueurs long after the fall
+of the first twilight, till the points of their cigarettes glowed like
+little specks of fire through the enveloping darkness. Conversation had
+been from the first curiously desultory, edited, in a way, Francis
+felt, for his benefit. There was an atmosphere about his host and Lady
+Cynthia, shared in a negative way by Margaret Hilditch, which baffled
+Francis. It seemed to establish more than a lack of sympathy--to
+suggest, even, a life lived upon a different plane. Yet every now and
+then their references to everyday happenings were trite enough. Sir
+Timothy had assailed the recent craze for drugs, a diatribe to which
+Lady Cynthia had listened in silence for reasons which Francis could
+surmise.
+
+“If one must soothe the senses,” Sir Timothy declared, “for the purpose
+of forgetting a distasteful or painful present, I cannot see why the
+average mind does not turn to the contemplation of beauty in some shape
+or other. A night like to-night is surely sedative enough. Watch these
+lights, drink in these perfumes, listen to the fall and flow of the
+water long enough, and you would arrive at precisely the same mental
+inertia as though you had taken a dose of cocaine, with far less harmful
+an aftermath.”
+
+Lady Cynthia shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“Cocaine is in one's dressing-room,” she objected, “and beauty is hard
+to seek in Grosvenor Square.”
+
+“The common mistake of all men,” Sir Timothy continued, “and women, too,
+for the matter of that, is that we will persist in formulating doctrines
+for other people. Every man or woman is an entity of humanity, with a
+separate heaven and a separate hell. No two people can breathe the same
+air in the same way, or see the same picture with the same eyes.”
+
+Lady Cynthia rose to her feet and shook out the folds of her diaphanous
+gown, daring alike in its shapelessness and scantiness. She lit a
+cigarette and laid her hand upon Sir Timothy's arm.
+
+“Come,” she said, “must I remind you of your promise? You are to show me
+the stables at The Walled House before it is dark.”
+
+“You would see them better in the morning,” he reminded her, rising with
+some reluctance to his feet.
+
+“Perhaps,” she answered, “but I have a fancy to see them now.”
+
+Sir Timothy looked back at the table.
+
+“Margaret,” he said, “will you look after Mr. Ledsam for a little time?
+You will excuse us, Ledsam? We shall not be gone long.”
+
+They moved away together towards the shrubbery and the door in the wall
+behind. Francis resumed his seat.
+
+“Are you not also curious to penetrate the mysteries behind the wall,
+Mr. Ledsam?” Margaret asked.
+
+“Not so curious but that I would much prefer to remain here,” he
+answered.
+
+“With me?”
+
+“With you.”
+
+She knocked the ash from her cigarette. She was looking directly at
+him, and he fancied that there was a gleam of curiosity in her beautiful
+eyes. There was certainly a little more abandon about her attitude. She
+was leaning back in a corner of her high-backed chair, and her gown,
+although it lacked the daring of Lady Cynthia's, seemed to rest about
+her like a cloud of blue-grey smoke.
+
+“What a curious meal!” she murmured. “Can you solve a puzzle for me, Mr.
+Ledsam?”
+
+“I would do anything for you that I could,” he answered.
+
+“Tell me, then, why my father asked you here to-night? I can understand
+his bringing you to the opera, that was just a whim of the moment,
+but an invitation down here savours of deliberation. Studiously polite
+though you are to one another, one is conscious all the time of the
+hostility beneath the surface.”
+
+“I think that so far as your father is concerned, it is part of his
+peculiar disposition,” Francis replied. “You remember he once said that
+he was tired of entertaining his friends--that there was more pleasure
+in having an enemy at the board.”
+
+“Are you an enemy, Mr. Ledsam?” she asked curiously.
+
+He rose a little abruptly to his feet, ignoring her question. There were
+servants hovering in the background.
+
+“Will you walk with me in the gardens?” he begged. “Or may I take you
+upon the river?”
+
+She rose to her feet. For a moment she seemed to hesitate.
+
+“The river, I think,” she decided. “Will you wait for three minutes
+while I get a wrap. You will find some punts moored to the landing-stage
+there in the stream. I like the very largest and most comfortable.”
+
+Francis strolled to the edge of the stream, and made his choice of
+punts. Soon a servant appeared with his arms full of cushions, and a
+moment or two later, Margaret herself, wrapped in an ermine cloak. She
+smiled a little deprecatingly as she picked her way across the lawn.
+
+“Don't laugh at me for being such a chilly mortal, please,” she
+enjoined. “And don't be afraid that I am going to propose a long
+expedition. I want to go to a little backwater in the next stream.”
+
+She settled herself in the stern and they glided down the narrow
+thoroughfare. The rose bushes from the garden almost lapped the water
+as they passed. Behind, the long low cottage, the deserted dinner-table,
+the smooth lawn with its beds of scarlet geraniums and drooping lilac
+shrubs in the background, seemed like a scene from fairyland, to attain
+a perfection of detail unreal, almost theatrical.
+
+“To the right when you reach the river, please,” she directed. “You will
+find there is scarcely any current. We turn up the next stream.”
+
+There was something almost mysterious, a little impressive, about the
+broad expanse of river into which they presently turned. Opposite were
+woods and then a sloping lawn. From a house hidden in the distance they
+heard the sound of a woman singing. They even caught the murmurs
+of applause as she concluded. Then there was silence, only the soft
+gurgling of the water cloven by the punt pole. They glided past the
+front of the great unlit house, past another strip of woodland, and then
+up a narrow stream.
+
+“To the left here,” she directed, “and then stop.”
+
+They bumped against the bank. The little backwater into which they had
+turned seemed to terminate in a bed of lilies whose faint fragrance
+almost enveloped them. The trees on either side made a little arch of
+darkness.
+
+“Please ship your pole and listen,” Margaret said dreamily. “Make
+yourself as comfortable as you can. There are plenty of cushions behind
+you. This is where I come for silence.”
+
+Francis obeyed her orders without remark. For a few moments, speech
+seemed impossible. The darkness was so intense that although he was
+acutely conscious of her presence there, only a few feet away, nothing
+but the barest outline of her form was visible. The silence which she
+had brought him to seek was all around them. There was just the faintest
+splash of water from the spot where the stream and the river met,
+the distant barking of a dog, the occasional croaking of a frog from
+somewhere in the midst of the bed of lilies. Otherwise the silence and
+the darkness were like a shroud. Francis leaned forward in his place.
+His hands, which gripped the sides of the punt, were hot. The serenity
+of the night mocked him.
+
+“So this is your paradise,” he said, a little hoarsely.
+
+She made no answer. Her silence seemed to him more thrilling than words.
+He leaned forward. His hands fell upon the soft fur which encompassed
+her. They rested there. Still she did not speak. He tightened his grasp,
+moved further forward, the passion surging through his veins, his breath
+almost failing him. He was so near now that he heard her breathing,
+saw her face, as pale as ever. Her lips were a little parted, her eyes
+looked out, as it seemed to him, half in fear, half in hope. He bent
+lower still. She neither shrank away nor invited him.
+
+“Dear!” he whispered.
+
+Her arms stole from underneath the cloak, her fingers rested upon his
+shoulders. He scarcely knew whether it was a caress or whether she were
+holding him from her. In any case it was too late. With a little sob of
+passion his lips were pressed to hers. Even as she closed her eyes, the
+scent of the lilies seemed to intoxicate him.
+
+He was back in his place without conscious movement. His pulses were
+quivering, the passion singing in his blood, the joy of her faint caress
+living proudly in his memory. It had been the moment of his life, and
+yet even now he felt sick at heart with fears, with the torment of her
+passiveness. She had lain there in his arms, he had felt the thrill of
+her body, some quaint inspiration had told him that she had sought
+for joy in that moment and had not wholly failed. Yet his anxiety was
+tumultuous, overwhelming. Then she spoke, and his heart leaped again.
+Her voice was more natural. It was not a voice which he had ever heard
+before.
+
+“Give me a cigarette, please--and I want to go back.”
+
+He leaned over her again, struck a match with trembling fingers and gave
+her the cigarette. She smiled at him very faintly.
+
+“Please go back now,” she begged. “Smoke yourself, take me home slowly
+and say nothing.”
+
+He obeyed, but his knees were shaking when he stood up. Slowly, a foot
+at a time, they passed from the mesh of the lilies out into the broad
+stream. Almost as they did so, the yellow rim of the moon came up over
+the low hills. As they turned into their own stream, the light was
+strong enough for him to see her face. She lay there like a ghost, her
+eyes half closed, the only touch of colour in the shining strands of
+her beautiful hair. She roused herself a little as they swung around. He
+paused, leaning upon the pole.
+
+“You are not angry?” he asked.
+
+“No, I am not angry,” she answered. “Why should I be? But I cannot talk
+to you about it tonight.”
+
+They glided to the edge of the landing-stage. A servant appeared and
+secured the punt.
+
+“Is Sir Timothy back yet?” Margaret enquired.
+
+“Not yet, madam.”
+
+She turned to Francis.
+
+“Please go and have a whisky and soda in the smoking-room,” she said,
+pointing to the open French windows. “I am going to my favourite seat.
+You will find me just across the bridge there.”
+
+He hesitated, filled with a passionate disinclination to leave her side
+even for a moment. She seemed to understand but she pointed once more to
+the room.
+
+“I should like very much,” she added, “to be alone for five minutes. If
+you will come and find me then--please!”
+
+Francis stepped through the French windows into the smoking-room,
+where all the paraphernalia for satisfying thirst were set out upon the
+sideboard. He helped himself to whisky and soda and drank it absently,
+with his eyes fixed upon the clock. In five minutes he stepped once more
+back into the gardens, soft and brilliant now in the moonlight. As he
+did so, he heard the click of the gate in the wall, and footsteps. His
+host, with Lady Cynthia upon his arm, came into sight and crossed
+the lawn towards him. Francis, filled though his mind was with other
+thoughts, paused for a moment and glanced towards them curiously. Lady
+Cynthia seemed for a moment to have lost all her weariness. Her eyes
+were very bright, she walked with a new spring in her movements. Even
+her voice, as she addressed Francis, seemed altered.
+
+“Sir Timothy has been showing me some of the wonders of his villa--do
+you call it a villa or a palace?” she asked.
+
+“It is certainly not a palace,” Sir Timothy protested, “and I fear that
+it has scarcely the atmosphere of a villa. It is an attempt to combine
+certain ideas of my own with the requirements of modern entertainment.
+Come and have a drink with us, Ledsam.”
+
+“I have just had one,” Francis replied. “Mrs. Hilditch is in the rose
+garden and I am on my way to join her.”
+
+He passed on and the two moved towards the open French windows. He
+crossed the rustic bridge that led into the flower garden, turned
+down the pergola and came to a sudden standstill before the seat
+which Margaret had indicated. It was empty, but in the corner lay the
+long-stalked lily which she had picked in the backwater. He stood there
+for a moment, transfixed. There were other seats and chairs in the
+garden, but he knew before he started his search that it was in vain.
+She had gone. The flower, drooping a little now though the stalk
+was still wet with the moisture of the river, seemed to him like her
+farewell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Francis was surprised, when he descended for breakfast the next morning,
+to find the table laid for one only. The butler who was waiting, handed
+him the daily papers and wheeled the electric heater to his side.
+
+“Is no one else breakfasting?” Francis asked.
+
+“Sir Timothy and Mrs. Hilditch are always served in their rooms, sir.
+Her ladyship is taking her coffee upstairs.”
+
+Francis ate his breakfast, glanced through the Times, lit a cigarette
+and went round to the garage for his car. The butler met him as he drove
+up before the porch.
+
+“Sir Timothy begs you to excuse him this morning, sir,” he announced.
+“His secretary has arrived from town with a very large correspondence
+which they are now engaged upon.”
+
+“And Mrs. Hilditch?” Francis ventured.
+
+“I have not seen her maid this morning, sir,” the man replied, “but Mrs.
+Hilditch never rises before midday. Sir Timothy hopes that you slept
+well, sir, and would like you to sign the visitors' book.”
+
+Francis signed his name mechanically, and was turning away when Lady
+Cynthia called to him from the stairs. She was dressed for travelling
+and followed by a maid, carrying her dressing-case.
+
+“Will you take me up to town, Mr. Ledsam?” she asked.
+
+“Delighted,” he answered.
+
+Their dressing-cases were strapped together behind and Lady Cynthia sank
+into the cushions by his side. They drove away from the house, Francis
+with a backward glance of regret. The striped sun-blinds had been
+lowered over all the windows, thrushes and blackbirds were twittering on
+the lawn, the air was sweet with the perfume of flowers, a boatman was
+busy with the boats. Out beyond, through the trees, the river wound its
+placid way.
+
+“Quite a little paradise,” Lady Cynthia murmured.
+
+“Delightful,” her companion assented. “I suppose great wealth has its
+obligations, but why any human being should rear such a structure as
+what he calls his Borghese villa, when he has a charming place like that
+to live in, I can't imagine.”
+
+Her silence was significant, almost purposeful. She unwound the veil
+from her motoring turban, took it off altogether and attached it to the
+cushions of the car with a hatpin.
+
+“There,” she said, leaning back, “you can now gaze upon a horrible
+example to the young women of to-day. You can see the ravages which late
+hours, innumerable cocktails, a thirst for excitement, a contempt of the
+simple pleasures of life, have worked upon my once comely features. I
+was quite good-looking, you know, in the days you first knew me.”
+
+“You were the most beautiful debutante of your season,” he agreed.
+
+“What do you think of me now?” she asked.
+
+She met his gaze without flinching. Her face was unnaturally thin, with
+disfiguring hollows underneath her cheekbones; her lips lacked colour;
+even her eyes were lustreless. Her hair seemed to lack brilliancy.
+Only her silken eyebrows remained unimpaired, and a certain charm of
+expression which nothing seemed able to destroy.
+
+“You look tired,” he said.
+
+“Be honest, my dear man,” she rejoined drily. “I am a physical wreck,
+dependent upon cosmetics for the looks which I am still clever enough to
+palm off on the uninitiated.”
+
+“Why don't you lead a quieter life?” he asked. “A month or so in the
+country would put you all right.”
+
+She laughed a little hardly. Then for a moment she looked at him
+appraisingly.
+
+“I was going to speak to you of nerves,” she said, “but how would you
+ever understand? You look as though you had not a nerve in your body.
+I can't think how you manage it, living in London. I suppose you do
+exercises and take care of what you eat and drink.”
+
+“I do nothing of the sort,” he assured her indignantly. “I eat and
+drink whatever I fancy. I have always had a direct object in life--my
+work--and I believe that has kept me fit and well. Nerve troubles come
+as a rule, I think, from the under-used brain.”
+
+“I must have been born with a butterfly disposition,” she said. “I am
+quite sure that mine come because I find it so hard to be amused. I am
+sure I am most enterprising. I try whatever comes along, but nothing
+satisfies me.”
+
+“Why not try being in love with one of these men who've been in love
+with you all their lives?”
+
+She laughed bitterly.
+
+“The men who have cared for me and have been worth caring about,” she
+said, “gave me up years ago. I mocked at them when they were in earnest,
+scoffed at sentiment, and told them frankly that when I married it would
+only be to find a refuge for broader life. The right sort wouldn't have
+anything to say to me after that, and I do not blame them. And here is
+the torture of it. I can't stand the wrong sort near me--physically, I
+mean. Mind, I believe I'm attracted towards people with criminal tastes
+and propensities. I believe that is what first led me towards Sir
+Timothy. Every taste I ever had in life seems to have become besmirched.
+I'm all the time full of the craving to do horrible things, but all the
+same I can't bear to be touched. That's the torment of it. I wonder if
+you can understand?”
+
+“I think I can,” he answered. “Your trouble lies in having the wrong
+friends and in lack of self-discipline. If you were my sister, I'd take
+you away for a fortnight and put you on the road to being cured.”
+
+“Then I wish I were your sister,” she sighed.
+
+“Don't think I'm unsympathetic,” he went on, “because I'm not. Wait till
+we've got into the main road here and I'll try and explain.”
+
+They were passing along a country lane, so narrow that twigs from the
+hedges, wreathed here and there in wild roses, brushed almost against
+their cheeks. On their left was the sound of a reaping-machine and the
+perfume of new-mown hay. The sun was growing stronger at every moment. A
+transitory gleam of pleasure softened her face.
+
+“It is ages since I smelt honeysuckle,” she confessed, “except in a
+perfumer's shop. I was wondering what it reminded me of.”
+
+“That,” he said, as they turned out into the broad main road, with its
+long vista of telegraph poles, “is because you have been neglecting the
+real for the sham, flowers themselves for their artificially distilled
+perfume. What I was going to try and put into words without sounding too
+priggish, Lady Cynthia,” he went on, “is this. It is just you people who
+are cursed with a restless brain who are in the most dangerous position,
+nowadays. The things which keep us healthy and normal physically--games,
+farces, dinner-parties of young people, fresh air and exercise--are
+the very things which after a time fail to satisfy the person with
+imagination. You want more out of life, always the something you don't
+understand, the something beyond. And so you keep on trying new things,
+and for every new thing you try, you drop an old one. Isn't it something
+like that?”
+
+“I suppose it is,” she admitted wearily.
+
+“Drugs take the place of wholesome wine,” he went on, warming to his
+subject. “The hideous fascination of flirting with the uncouth or the
+impossible some way or another, stimulates a passion which simple means
+have ceased to gratify. You seek for the unusual in every way--in food,
+in the substitution of absinthe for your harmless Martini, of cocaine
+for your stimulating champagne. There is a horrible wave of all this
+sort of thing going on to-day in many places, and I am afraid,” he
+concluded, “that a great many of our very nicest young women are caught
+up in it.”
+
+“Guilty,” she confessed. “Now cure me.”
+
+“I could point out the promised land, but how, could I lead you to it?”
+ he answered.
+
+“You don't like me well enough,” she sighed.
+
+“I like you better than you believe,” he assured her, slackening his
+speed a little. “We have met, I suppose, a dozen times in our lives. I
+have danced with you here and there, talked nonsense once, I remember,
+at a musical reception--”
+
+“I tried to flirt with you then,” she interrupted.
+
+He nodded.
+
+“I was in the midst of a great case,” he said, “and everything that
+happened to me outside it was swept out of my mind day by day. What I
+was going to say is that I have always liked you, from the moment when
+your mother presented me to you at your first dance.”
+
+“I wish you'd told me so,” she murmured.
+
+“It wouldn't have made any difference,” he declared. “I wasn't in a
+position to think of a duke's daughter, in those days. I don't suppose I
+am now.”
+
+“Try,” she begged hopefully.
+
+He smiled back at her. The reawakening of her sense of humour was
+something.
+
+“Too late,” he regretted. “During the last month or so the thing has
+come to me which we all look forward to, only I don't think fate has
+treated me kindly. I have always loved normal ways and normal people,
+and the woman I care for is different.”
+
+“Tell me about her?” she insisted.
+
+“You will be very surprised when I tell you her name,” he said. “It is
+Margaret Hilditch.”
+
+She looked at him for a moment in blank astonishment.
+
+“Heavens!” she exclaimed. “Oliver Hilditch's wife!”
+
+“I can't help that,” he declared, a little doggedly. “She's had a
+miserable time, I know. She was married to a scamp. I'm not quite
+sure that her father isn't as bad a one. Those things don't make any
+difference.”
+
+“They wouldn't with you,” she said softly. “Tell me, did you say
+anything to her last night?”
+
+“I did,” he replied. “I began when we were out alone together. She gave
+me no encouragement to speak of, but at any rate she knows.”
+
+Lady Cynthia leaned a little forward in her place.
+
+“Do you know where she is now?”
+
+He was a little startled.
+
+“Down at the cottage, I suppose. The butler told me that she never rose
+before midday.”
+
+“Then for once the butler was mistaken,” his companion told him.
+“Margaret Hilditch left at six o'clock this morning. I saw her in
+travelling clothes get into the car and drive away.”
+
+“She left the cottage this morning before us?” Francis repeated, amazed.
+
+“I can assure you that she did,” Lady Cynthia insisted. “I never sleep,
+amongst my other peculiarities,” she went on bitterly, “and I was lying
+on a couch by the side of the open window when the car came for her. She
+stopped it at the bend of the avenue--so that it shouldn't wake us up, I
+suppose. I saw her get in and drive away.”
+
+Francis was silent for several moments. Lady Cynthia watched him
+curiously.
+
+“At any rate,” she observed, “in whatever mood she went away this
+morning, you have evidently succeeded in doing what I have never seen
+any one else do--breaking through her indifference. I shouldn't
+have thought that anything short of an earthquake would have stirred
+Margaret, these days.”
+
+“These days?” he repeated quickly. “How long have you known her?”
+
+“We were at school together for a short time,” she told him. “It was
+while her father was in South America. Margaret was a very different
+person in those days.”
+
+“However was she induced to marry a person like Oliver Hilditch?”
+ Francis speculated.
+
+His companion shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“Who knows?” she answered indifferently. “Are you going to drop me?”
+
+“Wherever you like.”
+
+“Take me on to Grosvenor Square, if you will, then,” she begged, “and
+deposit me at the ancestral mansion. I am really rather annoyed about
+Margaret,” she went on, rearranging her veil. “I had begun to have hopes
+that you might have revived my taste for normal things.”
+
+“If I had had the slightest intimation--” he murmured.
+
+“It would have made no difference,” she interrupted dolefully. “Now I
+come to think of it, the Margaret whom I used to know--and there must be
+plenty of her left yet--is just the right type of woman for you.”
+
+They drew up outside the house in Grosvenor Square. Lady Cynthia held
+out her hand.
+
+“Come and see me one afternoon, will you?” she invited.
+
+“I'd like to very much,” he replied.
+
+She lingered on the steps and waved her hand to him--a graceful,
+somewhat insolent gesture.
+
+“All the same, I think I shall do my best to make you forget Margaret,”
+ she called out. “Thanks for the lift up. A bientôt!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Francis drove direct from Grosvenor Square to his chambers in the
+Temple, and found Shopland, his friend from Scotland Yard, awaiting his
+arrival.
+
+“Any news?” Francis enquired.
+
+“Nothing definite, I am sorry, to say,” was the other's reluctant
+admission.
+
+Francis hung up his hat, threw himself into his easy-chair and lit a
+cigarette.
+
+“The lad's brother is one of my oldest friends, Shopland,” he said. “He
+is naturally in a state of great distress.”
+
+The detective scratched his chin thoughtfully.
+
+“I said 'nothing definite' just now, sir,” he observed. “As a rule,
+I never mention suspicions, but with you it is a different matter. I
+haven't discovered the slightest trace of Mr. Reginald Wilmore, or
+the slightest reason for his disappearance. He seems to have been a
+well-conducted young gentleman, a little extravagant, perhaps, but able
+to pay his way and with nothing whatever against him. Nothing whatever,
+that is to say, except one almost insignificant thing.”
+
+“And that?”
+
+“A slight tendency towards bad company, sir. I have heard of his being
+about with one or two whom we are keeping our eye upon.”
+
+“Bobby Fairfax's lot, by any chance?”
+
+Shopland nodded.
+
+“He was with Jacks and Miss Daisy Hyslop, a night or two before he
+disappeared. I am not sure that a young man named Morse wasn't of the
+party, too.”
+
+“What do you make of that lot?” Francis asked curiously. “Are they
+gamesters, dope fiends, or simply vicious?”
+
+The detective was silent. He was gazing intently at his rather
+square-toed shoes.
+
+“There are rumours, sir,” he said, presently, “of things going on in the
+West End which want looking into very badly--very badly indeed. You will
+remember speaking to me of Sir Timothy Brast?”
+
+“I remember quite well,” Francis acknowledged.
+
+“I've nothing to go on,” the other continued. “I am working almost on
+your own lines, Mr. Ledsam, groping in the dark to find a clue, as it
+were, but I'm beginning to have ideas about Sir Timothy Brast, just
+ideas.”
+
+“As, for instance?”
+
+“Well, he stands on rather queer terms with some of his acquaintances,
+sir. Now you saw, down at Soto's Bar, the night we arrested Mr. Fairfax,
+that not one of those young men there spoke to Sir Timothy as though
+they were acquainted, nor he to them. Yet I happened to find out that
+every one of them, including Mr. Fairfax himself, was present at a
+party Sir Timothy Brast gave at his house down the river a week or two
+before.”
+
+“I'm afraid there isn't much in that,” Francis declared. “Sir Timothy
+has the name of being an eccentric person everywhere, especially in this
+respect--he never notices acquaintances. I heard, only the other day,
+that while he was wonderfully hospitable and charming to all his guests,
+he never remembered them outside his house.”
+
+Shopland nodded.
+
+“A convenient eccentricity,” he remarked, a little drily. “I have heard
+the same thing myself. You spent the night at his country cottage, did
+you not, Mr. Ledsam? Did he offer to show you over The Walled House?”
+
+“How the dickens did you know I was down there?” Francis demanded, with
+some surprise. “I was just thinking as I drove up that I hadn't left my
+address either here or at Clarges Street.”
+
+“Next time you visit Sir Timothy,” the detective observed, “I should
+advise you to do so. I knew you were there, Mr. Ledsam, because I was
+in the neighbourhood myself. I have been doing a little fishing, and
+keeping my eye on that wonderful estate of Sir Timothy's.”
+
+Francis was interested.
+
+“Shopland,” he said, “I believe that our intelligences, such as they
+are, are akin.”
+
+“What do you suspect Sir Timothy of?” the detective asked bluntly.
+
+“I suspect him of nothing,” Francis replied. “He is simply, to my mind,
+an incomprehensible, somewhat sinister figure, who might be capable of
+anything. He may have very excellent qualities which he contrives to
+conceal, or he may be an arch-criminal. His personality absolutely
+puzzles me.”
+
+There was a knock at the door and Angrave appeared. Apparently he had
+forgotten Shopland's presence, for he ushered in another visitor.
+
+“Sir Timothy Brast to see you, sir,” he announced.
+
+The moment was one of trial to every one, admirably borne. Shopland
+remained in his chair, with only a casual glance at the newcomer.
+Francis rose to his feet with a half-stifled expression of anger at the
+clumsiness of his clerk. Sir Timothy, well-shaven and groomed, attired
+in a perfectly-fitting suit of grey flannel, nodded to Francis in
+friendly fashion and laid his Homburg hat upon the table with the air of
+a familiar.
+
+“My dear Ledsam,” he said, “I do hope that you will excuse this early
+call. I could only have been an hour behind you on the road. I dare
+say you can guess what I have come to see you about. Can we have a word
+together?”
+
+“Certainly,” was the ready reply. “You remember my friend Shopland, Sir
+Timothy? It was Mr. Shopland who arrested young Fairfax that night at
+Soto's.”
+
+“I remember him perfectly,” Sir Timothy declared. “I fancied, directly I
+entered, that your face was familiar,” he added, turning to Shopland.
+“I am rather ashamed of myself about that night. My little outburst
+must have sounded almost ridiculous to you two. To tell you the truth,
+I quite failed at that time to give Mr. Ledsam credit for gifts which I
+have since discovered him to possess.”
+
+“Mr. Shopland and I are now discussing another matter,” Francis went on,
+pushing a box of cigarettes towards Sir Timothy, who was leaning against
+the table in an easy attitude. “Don't go, Shopland, for a minute. We
+were consulting together about the disappearance of a young man, Reggie
+Wilmore, the brother of a friend of mine--Andrew Wilmore, the novelist.”
+
+“Disappearance?” Sir Timothy repeated, as he lit a cigarette. “That is
+rather a vague term.”
+
+“The young man has been missing from home for over a week,” Francis
+said, “and left no trace whatever of his whereabouts. He was not in
+financial trouble, he does not seem to have been entangled with any
+young woman, he had not quarrelled with his people, and he seems to have
+been on the best of terms with the principal at the house of business
+where he was employed. His disappearance, therefore, is, to say the
+least of it, mysterious.”
+
+Sir Timothy assented gravely.
+
+“The lack of motive to which you allude,” he pointed out, “makes the
+case interesting. Still, one must remember that London is certainly the
+city of modern mysteries. If a new 'Arabian Nights' were written, it
+might well be about London. I dare say Mr. Shopland will agree with
+me,” he continued, turning courteously towards the detective,
+“that disappearances of this sort are not nearly so uncommon as the
+uninitiated would believe. For one that is reported in the papers,
+there are half-a-dozen which are not. Your late Chief Commissioner,
+by-the-bye,” he added meditatively, “once a very intimate friend of
+mine, was my informant.”
+
+“Where do you suppose they disappear to?” Francis enquired.
+
+“Who can tell?” was the speculative reply. “For an adventurous youth
+there are a thousand doors which lead to romance. Besides, the lives of
+none of us are quite so simple as they seem. Even youth has its
+secret chapters. This young man, for instance, might be on his way to
+Australia, happy in the knowledge that he has escaped from some murky
+chapter of life which will now never be known. He may write to his
+friends, giving them a hint. The whole thing will blow over.”
+
+“There may be cases such as you suggest, Sir Timothy,” the detective
+said quietly. “Our investigations, so far as regards the young man in
+question, however, do not point that way.”
+
+Sir Timothy turned over his cigarette to look at the name of the maker.
+
+“Excellent tobacco,” he murmured. “By-the-bye, what did you say the
+young man's name was?”
+
+“Reginald Wilmore,” Francis told him.
+
+“A good name,” Sir Timothy murmured. “I am sure I wish you both every
+good fortune in your quest. Would it be too much to ask you now, Mr.
+Ledsam, for that single minute alone?”
+
+“By no means,” Francis answered.
+
+“I'll wait in the office, if I may,” Shopland suggested, rising to his
+feet. “I want to have another word with you before I go.”
+
+“My business with Mr. Ledsam is of a family nature,” Sir Timothy said
+apologetically, as Shopland passed out. “I will not keep him for more
+than a moment.”
+
+Shopland closed the door behind him. Sir Timothy waited until he heard
+his departing footsteps. Then he turned back to Francis.
+
+“Mr. Ledsam,” he said, “I have come to ask you if you know anything of
+my daughter's whereabouts?”
+
+“Nothing whatever,” Francis replied. “I was on the point of ringing you
+up to ask you the same question.”
+
+“Did she tell you that she was leaving The Sanctuary?”
+
+“She gave me not the slightest intimation of it,” Francis assured his
+questioner, “in fact she invited me to meet her in the rose garden last
+night. When I arrived there, she was gone. I have heard nothing from her
+since.”
+
+“You spent the evening with her?”
+
+“To my great content.”
+
+“What happened between you?”
+
+“Nothing happened. I took the opportunity, however, of letting your
+daughter understand the nature of my feelings for her.”
+
+“Dear me! May I ask what they are?”
+
+“I will translate them into facts,” Francis replied. “I wish your
+daughter to become my wife.”
+
+“You amaze me!” Sir Timothy exclaimed, with the old mocking smile at his
+lips. “How can you possibly contemplate association with the daughter of
+a man whom you suspect and distrust as you do me?”
+
+“If I suspect and distrust you, it is your own fault,” Francis reminded
+him. “You have declared yourself to be a criminal and a friend of
+criminals. I am inclined to believe that you have spoken the truth. I
+care for that fact just as little as I care for the fact that you are a
+millionaire, or that Margaret has been married to a murderer. I intend
+her to become my wife.”
+
+“Did you encourage her to leave me?”
+
+“I did not. I had not the slightest idea that she had left The Sanctuary
+until Lady Cynthia told me, halfway to London this morning.”
+
+Sir Timothy was silent for several moments.
+
+“Have you any idea in your own mind,” he persisted, “as to where she has
+gone and for what purpose?”
+
+“Not the slightest in the world,” Francis declared. “I am just as
+anxious to hear from her; and to know where she is, as you seem to be.”
+
+Sir Timothy sighed.
+
+“I am disappointed,” he admitted. “I had hoped to obtain some
+information from you. I must try in another direction.”
+
+“Since you are here, Sir Timothy,” Francis said, as his visitor prepared
+to depart, “may I ask whether you have any objection to my marrying your
+daughter?”
+
+Sir Timothy frowned.
+
+“The question places me in a somewhat difficult position,” he replied
+coldly. “In a certain sense I have a liking for you. You are not quite
+the ingenuous nincompoop I took you for on the night of our first
+meeting. On the other hand, you have prejudices against me. My harmless
+confession of sympathy with criminals and their ways seems to have
+stirred up a cloud of suspicion in your mind. You even employ a
+detective to show the world what a fool he can look, sitting in a punt
+attempting to fish, with one eye on the supposed abode of crime.”
+
+“I have nothing whatever to do with the details of Shopland's
+investigations,” Francis protested. “He is in search of Reggie Wilmore.”
+
+“Does he think I have secret dungeons in my new abode,” Sir Timothy
+demanded, “or oubliettes in which I keep and starve brainless youths for
+some nameless purpose? Be reasonable, Mr. Ledsam. What the devil benefit
+could accrue to me from abducting or imprisoning or in any way laying my
+criminal hand upon this young man?”
+
+“None whatever that we have been able to discover as yet,” Francis
+admitted.
+
+“A leaning towards melodrama, admirable in its way, needs the leaven of
+a well-balanced discretion and a sense of humour,” Sir Timothy observed.
+“The latter quality is as a rule singularly absent amongst the myrmidons
+of Scotland Yard. I do not think that Mr. Shopland will catch even fish
+in the neighbourhood of The Walled House. As regards your matrimonial
+proposal, let us waive that until my daughter returns.”
+
+“As you will,” Francis agreed. “I will be frank to this extent, at any
+rate. If I can persuade your daughter to marry me, your consent will not
+affect the matter.”
+
+“I can leave Margaret a matter of two million pounds,” Sir Timothy said
+pensively.
+
+“I have enough money to support my wife myself,” Francis observed.
+
+“Utopian but foolish,” Sir Timothy declared. “All the same, Mr. Ledsam,
+let me tell you this. You have a curious attraction for me. When I was
+asked why I had invited you to The Sanctuary last night, I frankly could
+not answer the question. I didn't know. I don't know. Your dislike of me
+doesn't seem to affect the question. I was glad to have you there last
+night. It pleases me to hear you talk, to hear your views of things. I
+feel that I shall have to be very careful, Mr. Ledsam, or--”
+
+“Or what?” Francis demanded.
+
+“Or I shall even welcome the idea of having you for a son-in-law,” Sir
+Timothy concluded reluctantly. “Make my excuses to Mr. Shopland. Au
+revoir!”
+
+Shopland came in as the door closed behind the departing visitor. He
+listened to all that Francis had to say, without comment.
+
+“If The Walled House,” he said at last, “is so carefully guarded that
+Sir Timothy has been informed of my watching the place and has been made
+aware of my mild questionings, it must be because there is something to
+conceal. I may or may not be on the track of Mr. Reginald Wilmore, but,”
+ the detective concluded, “of one thing I am becoming convinced--The
+Walled House will pay for watching.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+It was a day when chance was kind to Francis. After leaving his rooms
+at the Temple, he made a call at one of the great clubs in Pall Mall, to
+enquire as to the whereabouts of a friend. On his way back towards the
+Sheridan, he came face to face with Margaret Hilditch, issuing from the
+doors of one of the great steamship companies. For a moment he almost
+failed to recognise her. She reminded him more of the woman of the
+tea-shop. Her costume, neat and correct though it was, was studiously
+unobtrusive. Her motoring veil, too, was obviously worn to assist her in
+escaping notice.
+
+She, too, came to a standstill at seeing him. Her first ejaculations
+betrayed a surprise which bordered on consternation. Then Francis,
+with a sudden inspiration, pointed to the long envelope which she was
+carrying in her hand.
+
+“You have been to book a passage somewhere!” he exclaimed.
+
+“Well?”
+
+The monosyllable was in her usual level tone. Nevertheless, he could see
+that she was shaken:
+
+“You were going away without seeing me again?”' he asked reproachfully.
+
+“Yes!” she admitted.
+
+“Why?”
+
+She looked up and down a little helplessly.
+
+“I owe you no explanation for my conduct,” she said. “Please let me
+pass.”
+
+“Could we talk for a few minutes, please?” he begged. “Tell me where you
+were going?”
+
+“Oh, back to lunch, I suppose,” she answered.
+
+“Your father has been up, looking for you,” he told her.
+
+“I telephoned to The Sanctuary,” she replied. “He had just left.”
+
+“I am very anxious,” he continued, “not to distress you, but I cannot
+let you go away like this. Will you come to my rooms and let us talk for
+a little time?”
+
+She made no answer. Somehow, he realised that speech just then was
+difficult. He called a taxi and handed her in. They drove to Clarges
+Street in silence. He led the way up the stairs, gave some quick
+orders to his servant whom he met coming down, ushered her into his
+sitting-room and saw her ensconced in an easy-chair.
+
+“Please take off that terrible veil,” he begged.
+
+“It is pinned on to my hat,” she told him.
+
+“Then off with both,” he insisted. “You can't eat luncheon like that.
+I'm not going to try and bully you. If you've booked your passage to
+Timbuctoo and you really want to go--why, you must. I only want the
+chance of letting you know that I am coming after you.”
+
+She took off her hat and veil and threw them on to the sofa, glancing
+sideways at a mirror let into the door of a cabinet.
+
+“My hair is awful,” she declared:
+
+He laughed gaily, and turned around from the sideboard, where he was
+busy mixing cocktails.
+
+“Thank heavens for that touch of humanity!” he exclaimed. “A woman who
+can bother about her hair when she takes her hat off, is never past
+praying for. Please drink this.”
+
+She obeyed. He took the empty glass away from her. Then he came over to
+the hearthrug by her side.
+
+“Do you know that I kissed you last night?” he reminded her.
+
+“I do,” she answered. “That is why I have just paid eighty-four pounds
+for a passage to Buenos Ayres.”
+
+“I should have enjoyed the trip,” he said. “Still, I'm glad I haven't to
+go.”
+
+“Do you really mean that you would have come after me?” she asked
+curiously.
+
+“Of course I should,” he assured her. “Believe me, there isn't such
+an obstinate person in the world as the man of early middle-age who
+suddenly discovers the woman he means to marry.”
+
+“But you can't marry me,” she protested.
+
+“Why not?” he asked.
+
+“Because I was Oliver Hilditch's wife, for one thing.”
+
+“Look here,” he said, “if you had been Beelzebub's wife, it wouldn't
+make the least difference to me. You haven't given me much of a chance
+to tell you so yet, Margaret, but I love you.”
+
+She sat a little forward in her chair. Her eyes were fixed upon his
+wonderingly.
+
+“But how can you?” she exclaimed. “You know, nothing of me except my
+associations, and they have been horrible. What is there to love in me?
+I am a frozen-up woman. Everything is dead here,” she went on, clasping
+her hand to her heart. “I have no sentiment, no passion, nothing but an
+animal desire to live my life luxuriously and quickly.”
+
+He smiled confidently. Then, with very little warning, he sank on one
+knee, drew her face to his, kissed her lips and then her eyes.
+
+“Are you so sure of all these things, Margaret?” he whispered. “Don't
+you think it is, perhaps, because there has been no one to care for you
+as I do--as I shall--to the end of my days? The lily you left on your
+chair last night was like you--fair and stately and beautiful, but a
+little bruised. You will come back as it has done, come back to the
+world. My love will bring you. My care. Believe it, please!”
+
+Then he saw the first signs of change in her face. There was the
+faintest shade of almost shell-like pink underneath the creamy-white of
+her cheeks. Her lips were trembling a little, her eyes were misty. With
+a sudden passionate little impulse, her arms were around his neck, her
+lips sought his of their own accord.
+
+“Let me forget,” she sobbed. “Kiss me let me forget!”
+
+Francis' servant was both heavy-footed and discreet. When he entered the
+room with a tray, his master was standing at the sideboard.
+
+“I've done the best I could, sir,” he announced, a little
+apologetically. “Shall I lay the cloth?”
+
+“Leave everything on the tray, Brooks,” Francis directed. “We will help
+ourselves. In an hour's time bring coffee.”
+
+The man glanced around the room.
+
+“There are glasses on the sideboard, sir, and the corkscrew is here. I
+think you will have everything you want.”
+
+He departed, closing the door behind him. Francis held out his hands to
+Margaret. She rose slowly to her feet, looked in the glass helplessly
+and then back at him. She was very beautiful but a little dazed.
+
+“Are we going to have luncheon?” she asked.
+
+“Of course,” he answered. “Did you think I meant to starve you?”
+
+He picked up the long envelope which she had dropped upon the carpet,
+and threw it on to the sofa. Then he drew up two chairs to the table,
+and opened a small bottle of champagne.
+
+“I hope you won't mind a picnic,” he said. “Really, Brooks hasn't done
+so badly--pâté de foie gras, hot toast and Devonshire butter. Let me
+spread some for you. A cold chicken afterwards, and some strawberries.
+Please be hungry, Margaret.”
+
+She laughed at him. It occurred to him suddenly, with a little pang,
+that he had never heard her laugh before. It was like music.
+
+“I'm too happy,” she murmured.
+
+“Believe me,” he assured her, as he buttered a piece of toast,
+“happiness and hunger might well be twins. They go so well together.
+Misery can take away one's appetite. Happiness, when one gets over the
+gulpiness of it, is the best tonic in the world. And I never saw any
+one, dear, with whom happiness agreed so well,” he added, pausing in his
+task to bend over and kiss her. “Do you know you are the most beautiful
+thing on earth? It is a lucky thing we are going to live in England,
+and that these are sober, matter-of-fact days, or I should find myself
+committed to fighting duels all the time.”
+
+She had a momentary relapse. A look of terror suddenly altered her face.
+She caught at his wrist.
+
+“Don't!” she cried. “Don't talk about such things!”
+
+He was a little bewildered. The moment passed. She laughed almost
+apologetically.
+
+“Forgive me,” she begged, “but I hate the thought of fighting of any
+sort. Some day I'll explain.”
+
+“Clumsy ass I was!” he declared, completing his task and setting the
+result before her. “Now how's that for a first course? Drink a little of
+your wine.”
+
+He leaned his glass against hers.
+
+“My love,” he whispered, “my love now, dear, and always, and you'll
+find it quite strong enough,” he went on, “to keep you from all the ugly
+things. And now away with sentiment. I had a very excellent but solitary
+breakfast this morning, and it seems a long time ago.”
+
+“It seems amazing to think that you spent last night at The Sanctuary,”
+ she reflected.
+
+“And that you and I were in a punt,” he reminded her, “in the pool of
+darkness where the trees met, and the lilies leaned over to us.”
+
+“And you nearly upset the punt.”
+
+“Nothing of the sort! As a matter of fact, I was very careful. But,” he
+proceeded, with a sudden wave of memory, “I don't think my heart will
+ever beat normally again. It seemed as though it would tear its way out
+of my side when I leaned towards you, and you knew, and you lay still.”
+
+She laughed.
+
+“You surely didn't expect I was going to get up? It was quite
+encouragement enough to remain passive. As a matter of fact,” she went
+on, “I couldn't have moved. I couldn't have uttered a sound. I suppose
+I must have been like one of those poor birds you read about, when some
+devouring animal crouches for its last spring.”
+
+“Compliments already!” he remarked. “You won't forget that my name is
+Francis, will you? Try and practise it while I carve the chicken.”
+
+“You carve very badly, Francis,” she told him demurely.
+
+“My dear,” he said, “thank heavens we shall be able to afford a butler!
+By-the-bye, I told your father this morning that I was going to marry
+you, and he didn't seem to think it possible because he had two million
+pounds.”
+
+“Braggart!” she murmured. “When did you see my father?”
+
+“He came to my rooms in the Temple soon after I arrived this morning. He
+seemed to think I might know where you were. I dare say he won't like me
+for a son-in-law,” Francis continued with a smile. “I can't help that.
+He shouldn't have let me go out with you in a punt.”
+
+There was a discreet knock at the door. Brooks made his apologetic and
+somewhat troubled entrance.
+
+“Sir Timothy Brast is here to see you, sir,” he announced. “I ventured
+to say that you were not at home--”
+
+“But I happened to know otherwise,” a still voice remarked from outside.
+“May I come in, Mr. Ledsam?”
+
+Sir Timothy stepped past the servant, who at a sign from Francis
+disappeared, closing the door behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+After his first glance at Sir Timothy, Francis' only thought was for
+Margaret. To his intense relief, she showed no signs whatever of terror,
+or of any relapse to her former state. She was entirely mistress of
+herself and the occasion. Sir Timothy's face was cold and terrible.
+
+“I must apologise for this second intrusion, Mr. Ledsam,” he said
+cuttingly. “I think you will admit that the circumstances warrant it. Am
+I to understand that you lied to me this morning?”
+
+“You are to understand nothing of the sort,” Francis answered. “I told
+you everything I knew at that time of your daughter's movements.”
+
+“Indeed!” Sir Timothy murmured. “This little banquet, then, was
+unpremeditated?”
+
+“Entirely,” Francis replied. “Here is the exact truth, so far as I am
+concerned. I met your daughter little more than an hour ago, coming out
+of a steamship office, where she had booked a passage to Buenos Ayres
+to get away from me. I was fortunate enough to induce her to change
+her mind. She has consented instead to remain in England as my wife. We
+were, as you see, celebrating the occasion.”
+
+Sir Timothy laid his hat upon the sideboard and slowly removed his
+gloves.
+
+“I trust,” he said, “that this pint bottle does not represent your
+cellar. I will drink a glass of wine with you, and with your permission
+make myself a pâté sandwich. I was just sitting down to luncheon when I
+received the information which brought me here.”
+
+Francis produced another bottle of wine from the sideboard and filled
+his visitor's glass.
+
+“You will drink, I hope, to our happiness,” he said.
+
+“I shall do nothing of the sort,” Sir Timothy declared, helping himself
+with care to the pâté. “I have no superstitions about breaking bread
+with an enemy, or I should not have asked you to visit me at The
+Sanctuary, Mr. Ledsam. I object to your marriage with my daughter, and I
+shall take what steps I can to prevent it.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+Sir Timothy did not at once reply. He seemed to be enjoying his
+sandwich; he also appreciated the flavour of his wine.
+
+“Your question,” he said, “strikes me as being a little ingenuous. You
+are at the present moment suspecting me of crimes beyond number. You
+encourage Scotland Yard detectives to make asses of themselves in my
+stream. Your myrmidons scramble on to the top of my walls and try to
+bribe my servants to disclose the mysteries of my household. You have
+accepted to the fullest extent my volunteered statement that I am a
+patron of crime. You are, in short--forgive me if I help myself to a
+little more of this pâté--engaged in a strenuous attempt to bring me to
+justice.”
+
+“None of these things affects your daughter,” Francis pointed out.
+
+“Pardon me,” Sir Timothy objected. “You are a great and shining light of
+the English law. People speak of you as a future Chancellor. How can you
+contemplate an alliance with the widow of one criminal and the daughter
+of another?”
+
+“As to Margaret being Oliver Hilditch's widow,” Francis replied, “you
+were responsible for that, and no one else. He was your protegé; you
+gave your consent to the marriage. As to your being her father, that
+again is not Margaret's fault. I should marry her if Oliver Hilditch had
+been three times the villain he was, and if you were the Devil himself.”
+
+“I am getting quite to like you, Mr. Ledsam,” Sir Timothy declared,
+helping himself to another piece of toast and commencing to butter it.
+“Margaret, what have you to say about all this?”
+
+“I have nothing to say,” she answered. “Francis is speaking for me. I
+never dreamed that after what I have gone through I should be able to
+care for any one again in this world. I do care, and I am very happy
+about it. All last night I lay awake, making up my mind to run away,
+and this morning I actually booked my passage to Buenos Ayres. Then we
+met--just outside the steamship office--and I knew at once that I was
+making a mistake. I shall marry Francis exactly when he wants me to.”
+
+Sir Timothy passed his glass towards his proposed son-in-law.
+
+“Might one suggest,” he began--“thank you very much. This is of course
+very upsetting to me. I seem to be set completely at defiance. It is a
+very excellent wine, this, and a wonderful vintage.”
+
+Francis bent over Margaret.
+
+“Please finish your lunch, dear,” he begged. “It is perhaps just as well
+that your father came. We shall know exactly where we are.”
+
+“Just so,” Sir Timothy agreed.
+
+There was a queer constrained silence for several moments. Then Sir
+Timothy leaned back in his chair and with a word of apology lit a
+cigarette.
+
+“Let us,” he said, “consider the situation. Margaret is my daughter. You
+wish to marry her. Margaret is of age and has been married before. She
+is at liberty, therefore, to make her own choice. You agree with me so
+far?”
+
+“Entirely,” Francis assented.
+
+“It happens,” Sir Timothy went on, “that I disapprove of her choice. She
+desires to marry a young man who belongs to a profession which I detest,
+and whose efforts in life are directed towards the extermination of a
+class of people for whom I have every sympathy. To me he represents
+the smug as against the human, the artificially moral as against the
+freethinker. He is also my personal enemy. I am therefore naturally
+desirous that my daughter should not marry this young man.”
+
+“We will let it go at that,” Francis commented, “but I should like to
+point out to you that the antagonism between us is in no way personal.
+You have declared yourself for forces with which I am at enmity, like
+any other decent-living citizen. Your declaration might at any time be
+amended.”
+
+Sir Timothy bowed.
+
+“The situation is stated,” he said. “I will ask you this question as a
+matter of form. Do you recognise my right to forbid your marriage with
+my daughter, Mr. Ledsam?”
+
+“I most certainly do not,” was the forcible reply.
+
+“Have I any rights at all?” Sir Timothy asked. “Margaret has lived under
+my roof whenever it has suited her to do so. Since she has taken up her
+residence at Curzon Street, she has been her own mistress, her banking
+account has known no limit whatsoever. I may be a person of evil
+disposition, but I have shown no unkindness to her.”
+
+“It is quite true,” Margaret admitted, turning a little pale. “Since I
+have been alone, you have been kindness itself.”
+
+“Then let me repeat my question,” Sir Timothy went on, “have I the right
+to any consideration at all?”
+
+“Yes,” Francis replied. “Short of keeping us apart, you have the
+ordinary rights of a parent.”
+
+“Then I ask you to delay the announcement of your engagement, or taking
+any further steps concerning it, for fourteen days,” Sir Timothy said.
+“I place no restrictions on your movements during that time. Such
+hospitality as you, Mr. Ledsam, care to accept at my hands, is at your
+disposal. I am Bohemian enough, indeed, to find nothing to complain of
+in such little celebrations as you are at present indulging in--most
+excellent pâté, that. But I request that no announcement of your
+engagement be made, or any further arrangements made concerning it, for
+that fourteen days.”
+
+“I am quite willing, father,” Margaret acquiesced.
+
+“And I, sir,” Francis echoed.
+
+“In which case,” Sir Timothy concluded, rising to his feet, lighting a
+cigarette and taking up his hat and gloves, “I shall go peaceably away.
+You will admit, I trust,” he added, with that peculiar smile at the
+corner of his lips, “that I have not in any way tried to come the heavy
+father? I can even command a certain amount of respect, Margaret, for a
+young man who is able to inaugurate his engagement by an impromptu meal
+of such perfection. I wish you both good morning. Any invitation which
+Margaret extends, Ledsam, please consider as confirmed by me.”
+
+He closed the door softly. They heard his footsteps descending the
+stairs. Francis leaned once more over Margaret. She seemed still dazed,
+confused with new thoughts. She responded, however, readily to his
+touch, yielded to his caress with an almost pathetic eagerness.
+
+“Francis,” she murmured, as his arms closed around her, “I want to
+forget.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+There followed a brief period of time, the most wonderful of his life,
+the happiest of hers. They took advantage of Sir Timothy's absolute
+license, and spent long days at The Sanctuary, ideal lovers' days, with
+their punt moored at night amongst the lilies, where her kisses seemed
+to come to him with an aroma and wonder born of the spot. Then there
+came a morning when he found a cloud on her face. She was looking at
+the great wall, and away at the minaret beyond. They had heard from
+the butler that Sir Timothy had spent the night at the villa, and that
+preparations were on hand for another of his wonderful parties. Francis,
+who was swift to read her thoughts, led her away into the rose garden
+where once she had failed him.
+
+“You have been looking over the wall, Margaret,” he said reproachfully.
+
+She looked at him with a little twitch at the corners of her lips.
+
+“Francis dear,” she confessed, “I am afraid you are right. I cannot even
+look towards The Walled House without wondering why it was built--or
+catch a glimpse of that dome without stupid guesses as to what may go on
+underneath.”
+
+“I think very likely,” he said soothingly, “we have both exaggerated the
+seriousness of your father's hobbies. We know that he has a wonderful
+gymnasium there, but the only definite rumour I have ever heard about
+the place is that men fight there who have a grudge against one another,
+and that they are not too particular about the weight of the gloves.
+That doesn't appeal to us, you know, Margaret, but it isn't criminal.”
+
+“If that were all!” she murmured.
+
+“I dare say it is,” he declared. “London, as you know, is a hot-bed of
+gossip. Everything that goes on is ridiculously exaggerated, and I think
+that it rather appeals to your father's curious sense of humour to pose
+as the law-breaker.”
+
+She pressed his arm a little. The day was overcast, a slight rain was
+beginning to fall.
+
+“Francis,” she whispered, “we had a perfect day here yesterday. Now the
+sun has gone and I am shivery.”
+
+He understood in a moment.
+
+“We'll lunch at Ranelagh,” he suggested. “It is almost on the way up.
+Then we can see what the weather is like. If it is bad, we can dine in
+town tonight and do a theatre.”
+
+“You are a dear,” she told him fervently. “I am going in to get ready.”
+
+Francis went round to the garage for his car, and brought it to the
+front. While he was sitting there, Sir Timothy came through the door
+in the wall. He was smoking a cigar and he was holding an umbrella to
+protect his white flannel suit. He was as usual wonderfully groomed and
+turned out, but he walked as though he were tired, and his smile, as he
+greeted Francis, lacked a little of its usual light-hearted mockery.
+
+“Are you going up to town?” he enquired.
+
+Francis pointed to the grey skies.
+
+“Just for the day,” he answered. “Lady Cynthia went by the early train.
+We missed you last night.”
+
+“I came down late,” Sir Timothy explained, “and I found it more
+convenient to stay at The Walled House. I hope you find that Grover
+looks after you while I am away? He has carte blanche so far as regards
+my cellar.”
+
+“We have been wonderfully served,” Francis assured him.
+
+In the distance they could hear the sound of hammering on the other side
+of the wall. Francis moved his head in that direction.
+
+“I hear that they are preparing for another of your wonderful
+entertainments over there,” he remarked.
+
+“On Thursday,” Sir Timothy assented. “I shall have something to say to
+you about it later on.”
+
+“Am I to take it that I am likely to receive an invitation?” Francis
+asked.
+
+“I should think it possible,” was the calm reply.
+
+“What about Margaret?”
+
+“My entertainment would not appeal to her,” Sir Timothy declared.
+“The women whom I have been in the habit of asking are not women of
+Margaret's type.”
+
+“And Lady Cynthia?”
+
+Sir Timothy frowned slightly.
+
+“I find myself in some difficulty as regards Lady Cynthia,” he admitted.
+“I am the guardian of nobody's morals, nor am I the censor of their
+tastes, but my entertainments are for men. The women whom I have
+hitherto asked have been women in whom I have taken no personal
+interest. They are necessary to form a picturesque background for my
+rooms, in the same way that I look to the gardeners to supply the
+floral decorations. Lady Cynthia's instincts, however, are somewhat
+adventurous. She would scarcely be content to remain a decoration.”
+
+“The issuing of your invitations,” Francis remarked, “is of course a
+matter which concerns nobody else except yourself. If you do decide to
+favour me with one, I shall be delighted to come, provided Margaret has
+no objection.”
+
+“Such a reservation promises well for the future,” Sir Timothy observed,
+with gentle sarcasm. “Here comes Margaret, looking very well, I am glad
+to see.”
+
+Margaret came forward to greet her father before stepping into the car.
+They exchanged only a few sentences, but Francis, whose interest in
+their relations was almost abnormally keen, fancied that he could detect
+signs of some change in their demeanour towards one another. The cold
+propriety of deportment which had characterised her former attitude
+towards her father, seemed to have given place to something more
+uncertain, to something less formal, something which left room even for
+a measure of cordiality. She looked at him differently. It was as though
+some evil thought which lived in her heart concerning him had perished.
+
+“You are busy over there, father?” she asked.
+
+“In a way,” he replied. “We are preparing for some festivities on
+Thursday.”
+
+Her face fell.
+
+“Another party?”
+
+“One more,” he replied. “Perhaps the last--for the present, at any
+rate.”
+
+She waited as though expecting him to explain. He changed the subject,
+however.
+
+“I think you are wise to run up to town this morning,” he said,
+glancing up at the grey skies. “By-the-bye, if you dine at Curzon
+Street to-night, do ask Hedges to serve you some of the '99 Cliquot. A
+marvellous wine, as you doubtless know, Ledsam, but it should be drunk.
+Au revoir!”
+
+
+Francis, after a pleasant lunch at Ranelagh, and having arranged with
+Margaret to dine with her in Curzon Street, spent an hour or two that
+afternoon at his chambers. As he was leaving, just before five, he came
+face to face with Shopland descending from a taxi.
+
+“Are you busy, Mr. Ledsam?” the latter enquired. “Can you spare me
+half-an-hour?”
+
+“An hour, if you like,” Francis assented.
+
+Shopland gave the driver an address and the two men seated themselves in
+the taxicab.
+
+“Any news?” Francis asked curiously.
+
+“Not yet,” was the cautious reply. “It will not be long, however.”
+
+“Before you discover Reggie Wilmore?”
+
+The detective smiled in a superior way.
+
+“I am no longer particularly interested in Mr. Reginald Wilmore,” he
+declared. “I have come to the conclusion that his disappearance is not a
+serious affair.”
+
+“It's serious enough for his relatives,” Francis objected.
+
+“Not if they understood the situation,” the detective rejoined. “Assure
+them from me that nothing of consequence has happened to that young
+man. I have made enquiries at the gymnasium in Holborn, and in other
+directions. I am convinced that his absence from home is voluntary, and
+that there is no cause for alarm as to his welfare.”
+
+“Then the sooner you make your way down to Kensington and tell his
+mother so, the better,” Francis said, a little severely. “Don't forget
+that I put you on to this.”
+
+“Quite right, sir,” the detective acquiesced, “and I am grateful to
+you. The fact of it is that in making my preliminary investigations
+with regard to the disappearance of Mr. Wilmore, I have stumbled upon a
+bigger thing. Before many weeks are past, I hope to be able to unearth
+one of the greatest scandals of modern times.”
+
+“The devil!” Francis muttered.
+
+He looked thoughtfully, almost anxiously at his companion. Shopland's
+face reflected to the full his usual confidence. He had the air of a man
+buoyant with hope and with stifled self-satisfaction.
+
+“I am engaged,” he continued, “upon a study of the methods and habits of
+one whom I believe to be a great criminal. I think that when I place my
+prisoner in the bar, Wainwright and these other great artists in crime
+will fade from the memory.”
+
+“Is Sir Timothy Brast your man?” Francis asked quietly.
+
+His companion frowned portentously.
+
+“No names,” he begged.
+
+“Considering that it was I who first put you on to him,” Francis
+expostulated, “I don't think you need be so sparing of your confidence.”
+
+“Mr. Ledsam,” the detective assured him, “I shall tell you everything
+that is possible. At the same time, I will be frank with you. You are
+right when you say that it was you who first directed my attention
+towards Sir Timothy Brast. Since that time, however, your own relations
+with him, to an onlooker, have become a little puzzling.”
+
+“I see,” Francis murmured. “You've been spying on me?”
+
+Shopland shook his head in deprecating fashion.
+
+“A study of Sir Timothy during the last month,” he said, “has brought
+you many a time into the focus.”
+
+“Where are we going to now?” Francis asked, a little abruptly.
+
+“Just a side show, sir. It's one of those outside things I have come
+across which give light and shade to the whole affair. We get out here,
+if you please.”
+
+The two men stepped on to the pavement. They were in a street a little
+north of Wardour Street, where the shops for the most part were of a
+miscellaneous variety. Exactly in front of them, the space behind a
+large plate-glass window had been transformed into a sort of show-place
+for dogs. There were twenty or thirty of them there, of all breeds and
+varieties.
+
+“What the mischief is this?” Francis demanded.
+
+“Come in and make enquiries,” Shopland replied. “I can promise that you
+will find it interesting. It's a sort of dog's home.”
+
+Francis followed his companion into the place. A pleasant-looking,
+middle-aged woman came forward and greeted the latter.
+
+“Do you mind telling my friend what you told me the other day?” he
+asked.
+
+“Certainly, sir,” she replied. “We collect stray animals here, sir,”
+ she continued, turning to Francis. “Every one who has a dog or a cat he
+can't afford to keep, or which he wants to get rid of, may bring it to
+us. We have agents all the time in the streets, and if any official of
+the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals brings us news of
+a dog or a cat being ill-treated, we either purchase it or acquire it in
+some way or other and keep it here.”
+
+“But your dogs in the window,” Francis observed, “all seem to be in
+wonderful condition.”
+
+The woman smiled.
+
+“We have a large dog and cat hospital behind,” she explained, “and a
+veterinary surgeon who is always in attendance. The animals are treated
+there as they are brought in, and fed up if they are out of condition.
+When they are ready to sell, we show them.”
+
+“But is this a commercial undertaking,” Francis enquired carefully, “or
+is it a branch of the S.P.C.A.?”
+
+“It's quite a private affair, sir,” the woman told him. “We charge only
+five shillings for the dogs and half-a-crown for the cats, but every one
+who has one must sign our book, promising to give it a good home,
+and has to be either known to us or to produce references. We do not
+attempt, of course, to snake a profit.”
+
+“Who on earth is responsible for the upkeep?”
+
+“We are not allowed to mention any names here, sir, but as a matter of
+fact I think that your friend knows. He met the gentleman in here one
+day. Would you care to have a look at the hospital, sir?”
+
+Francis spent a quarter of an hour wandering around. When they left the
+place, Shopland turned to him with a smile.
+
+“Now, sir,” he said, “shall I tell you at whose expense that place is
+run?”
+
+“I think I can guess,” Francis replied. “I should say that Sir Timothy
+Brast was responsible for it.”
+
+The detective nodded. He was a little disappointed.
+
+“You know about his collection of broken-down horses in the park at The
+Walled House, too, then, I suppose? They come whinnying after him like a
+flock of sheep whenever he shows himself.”
+
+“I know about them, too,” Francis admitted. “I was present once when he
+got out of his car, knocked a carter down who was ill-treating a horse,
+bought it on the spot and sent it home.”
+
+Shopland smiled, inscrutably yet with the air of one vastly pleased.
+
+“These little side-shows,” he said, “are what help to make this, which I
+believe will be the greatest case of my life, so supremely interesting.
+Any one of my fraternity,” he continued, with an air of satisfaction,
+“can take hold of a thread and follow it step by step, and wind up with
+the handcuffs, as I did myself with the young man Fairfax. But a case
+like this, which includes a study of temperament, requires something
+more.”
+
+They were seated once more in the taxicab, on their way westward.
+Francis for the first time was conscious of an utterly new sensation
+with regard to his companion. He watched him through half-closed
+eyes--an insignificant-looking little man whose clothes, though neat,
+were ill-chosen, and whose tie was an offense. There was nothing in the
+face to denote unusual intelligence, but the eyes were small and cunning
+and the mouth dogged. Francis looked away out of the window. A sudden
+flash of realisation had come to him, a wave of unreasoning but positive
+dislike.
+
+“When do you hope to bring your case to an end?” he asked.
+
+The man smiled once more, and the very smile irritated his companion.
+
+“Within the course of the next few days, sir,” he replied.
+
+“And the charge?”
+
+The detective turned around.
+
+“Mr. Ledsam,” he said, “we have been old friends, if you will allow me
+to use the word, ever since I was promoted to my present position in
+the Force. You have trusted me with a good many cases, and I acknowledge
+myself your debtor, but in the matter of Sir Timothy Brast, you will
+forgive my saying with all respect, sir, that our ways seem to lie a
+little apart.”
+
+“Will you tell me why you have arrived at that conclusion?” Francis
+asked. “It was I who first incited you to set a watch upon Sir Timothy.
+It was to you I first mentioned certain suspicions I myself had with
+regard to him. I treated you with every confidence. Why do you now
+withhold yours from me?”
+
+“It is quite true, Mr. Ledsam,” Shopland admitted, “that it was you who
+first pointed out Sir Timothy as an interesting study for my profession,
+but that was a matter of months ago. If you will forgive my saying so,
+your relations with Sir Timothy have altered since then. You have been
+his guest at The Sanctuary, and there is a rumour, sir--you will pardon
+me if I seem to be taking a liberty--that you are engaged to be married
+to his daughter, Oliver Hilditch's widow.”
+
+“You seem to be tolerably well informed as to my affairs, Shopland,”
+ Francis remarked.
+
+“Only so far as regards your associations with Sir Timothy,” was the
+deprecating reply. “If you will excuse me, sir, this is where I should
+like to descend.”
+
+“You have no message for Mr. Wilmore, then?” Francis asked.
+
+“Nothing definite, sir, but you can assure him of this. His brother
+is not likely to come to any particular harm. I have no absolute
+information to offer, but it is my impression that Mr. Reginald Wilmore
+will be home before a week is past. Good afternoon, sir.”
+
+Shopland stepped out of the taxicab and, raising his hat, walked quickly
+away. Francis directed the man to drive to Clarges Street. As they drove
+off, he was conscious of a folded piece of paper in the corner where
+his late companion had been seated. He picked it up, opened it, realised
+that it was a letter from a firm of lawyers, addressed to Shopland, and
+deliberately read it through. It was dated from a small town not far
+from Hatch End:
+
+
+  DEAR SIR:
+
+  Mr. John Phillips of this firm, who is coroner for the
+district, has desired me to answer the enquiry contained in your
+official letter of the 13th. The number of inquests held upon bodies
+recovered from the Thames in the neighbourhood to which you allude,
+during the present year has been seven. Four of these have been
+identified. Concerning the remaining three nothing has ever been heard.
+Such particulars as are on our file will be available to any accredited
+representative of the police at any time.
+
+                    Faithfully yours,
+                                    PHILLIPS & SON.
+
+
+The taxicab came to a sudden stop. Francis glanced up. Very breathless,
+Shopland put his head in at the window.
+
+“I dropped a letter,” he gasped.
+
+Francis folded it up and handed it to him.
+
+“What about these three unidentified people, Shopland?” he asked,
+looking at him intently.
+
+The man frowned angrily. There was a note of defiance in his tone as he
+stowed the letter away in his pocketbook.
+
+“There were two men and one woman,” he replied, “all three of the
+upper classes. The bodies were recovered from Wilson's lock, some three
+hundred yards from The Walled House.”
+
+“Do they form part of your case?” Francis persisted.
+
+Shopland stepped back.
+
+“Mr. Ledsam,” he said, “I told you, some little time ago, that so far
+as this particular case was concerned I had no confidences to share with
+you. I am sorry that you saw that letter. Since you did, however, I hope
+you will not take it as a liberty from one in my position if I advise
+you most strenuously to do nothing which might impede the course of the
+law. Good day, sir!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Francis, in that pleasant half-hour before dinner which he spent in
+Margaret's sitting-room, told her of the dogs' home near Wardour Street.
+She listened sympathetically to his description of the place.
+
+“I had never heard of it,” she acknowledged, “but I am not in anyway
+surprised. My father spends at least an hour of every day, when he is
+down at Hatch End, amongst the horses, and every time a fresh crock is
+brought down, he is as interested as though it were a new toy.”
+
+“It is a remarkable trait in a very remarkable character,” Francis
+commented.
+
+“I could tell you many things that would surprise you,” Margaret
+continued. “One night, for instance, when we were staying at The
+Sanctuary, he and I were going out to dine with some neighbours and he
+heard a cat mewing in the hedge somewhere. He stopped the car, got out
+himself, found that the cat had been caught in a trap, released it, and
+sent me on to the dinner alone whilst he took the animal back to the
+veterinary surgeon at The Walled House. He was simply white with fury
+whilst he was tying up the poor thing's leg. I couldn't help asking him
+what he would have done if he could have found the farmer who set the
+trap. He looked up at me and I was almost frightened. 'I should have
+killed him,' he said,--and I believe he meant it. And, Francis, the very
+next day we were motoring to London and saw a terrible accident. A
+motor bicyclist came down a side road at full speed and ran into a
+motor-lorry. My father got out of the car, helped them lift the body
+from under the wheels of the lorry, and came back absolutely unmoved.
+'Serve the silly young fool right!' was his only remark. He was so
+horribly callous that I could scarcely bear to sit by his side. Do you
+understand that?”
+
+“It isn't easy,” he admitted.
+
+There was a knock at the door. Margaret glanced at the clock.
+
+“Surely dinner can't be served already!” she exclaimed. “Come in.”
+
+Very much to their surprise, it was Sir Timothy himself who entered. He
+was in evening dress and wearing several orders, one of which Francis
+noted with surprise.
+
+“My apologies,” he said. “Hedges told me that there were cocktails
+here, and as I am on my way to a rather weary dinner, I thought I might
+inflict myself upon you for a moment.”
+
+Margaret rose at once to her feet.
+
+“I am a shocking hostess,” she declared. “Hedges brought the things in
+twenty minutes ago.”
+
+She took up the silver receptacle, shook it vigorously and filled three
+glasses. Sir Timothy accepted his and bowed to them both.
+
+“My best wishes,” he said. “Really, when one comes to think of it,
+however much it may be against my inclinations I scarcely see how I
+shall be able to withhold my consent. I believe that you both have at
+heart the flair for domesticity. This little picture, and the thought of
+your tete-a-tete dinner, almost touches me.”
+
+“Don't make fun of us, father,” Margaret begged. “Tell us where you are
+going in all that splendour?”
+
+Sir Timothy shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“A month or so ago,” he explained, “I was chosen to induct a scion of
+Royalty into the understanding of fighting as it is indulged in at the
+National Sporting Club. This, I suppose, is my reward--an invitation to
+something in the nature of a State dinner, which, to tell you the truth,
+I had forgotten until my secretary pointed it out to me this afternoon.
+I have grave fears of being bored or of misbehaving myself. I have, as
+Ledsam here knows, a distressing habit of truthfulness, especially
+to new acquaintances. However, we must hope for the best. By-the-bye,
+Ledsam, in case you should have forgotten, I have spoken to Hedges about
+the '99 Cliquot.”
+
+“Shall we see you here later?” Margaret asked, after Francis had
+murmured his thanks.
+
+“I shall probably return direct to Hatch End,” Sir Timothy replied.
+“There are various little matters down there which are interesting me
+just now preparations for my party. Au revoir! A delicious cocktail, but
+I am inclined to resent the Angostura.”
+
+He sauntered out, after a glance at the clock. They heard his footsteps
+as he descended the stairs.
+
+“Tell me, what manner of a man is your father?” Francis asked
+impulsively.
+
+“I am his daughter and I do not know,” Margaret answered. “Before he
+came, I was going to speak to you of a strange misunderstanding which
+has existed between us and which has just been removed. Now I have a
+fancy to leave it until later. You will not mind?”
+
+“When you choose,” Francis assented. “Nothing will make any difference.
+We are past the days when fathers or even mothers count seriously in
+the things that exist between two people like you and me, who have felt
+life. Whatever your father may be, whatever he may turn out to be, you
+are the woman I love--you are the woman who is going to be my wife.”
+
+She leaned towards him for a moment.
+
+“You have an amazing gift,” she whispered, “of saying just the thing one
+loves to hear in the way that convinces.”
+
+Dinner was served to them in the smaller of the two dining-rooms, an
+exquisite meal, made more wonderful still by the wine, which Hedges
+himself dispensed with jealous care. The presence of servants, with its
+restraining influence upon conversation, was not altogether unwelcome
+to Francis. He and Margaret had had so little opportunity for general
+conversation that to discuss other than personal subjects in this
+pleasant, leisurely way had its charm. They spoke of music, of which
+she knew far more than he; of foreign travel, where they met on common
+ground, for each had only the tourist's knowledge of Europe, and each
+was anxious for a more individual acquaintance with it. She had tastes
+in books which delighted him, a knowledge of games which promised a
+common resource. It was only whilst they were talking that he realised
+with a shock how young she was, how few the years that lay between her
+serene school-days and the tempestuous years of her married life. Her
+school-days in Naples were most redolent of delightful memories. She
+broke off once or twice into the language, and he listened with delight
+to her soft accent. Finally the time came when dessert was set upon the
+table.
+
+“I have ordered coffee up in the little sitting-room again,” she said, a
+little shyly. “Do you mind, or would you rather have it here?”
+
+“I much prefer it there,” he assured her.
+
+They sat before an open window, looking out upon some elm trees in the
+boughs of which town sparrows twittered, and with a background of roofs
+and chimneys. Margaret's coffee was untasted, even her cigarette lay
+unlit by her side. There was a touch of the old horror upon her face.
+The fingers which he drew into his were as cold as ice.
+
+“You must have wondered sometimes,” she began, “why I ever married
+Oliver Hilditch.”
+
+“You were very young,” he reminded her, with a little shiver, “and very
+inexperienced. I suppose he appealed to you in some way or another.”
+
+“It wasn't that,” she replied. “He came to visit, me at Eastbourne,
+and he certainly knew all the tricks of making himself attractive and
+agreeable. But he never won my heart--he never even seriously took my
+fancy. I married him because I believed that by doing so I was obeying
+my father's wishes.”
+
+“Where was your father at the time, then?” Francis asked.
+
+“In South America. Oliver Hilditch was nothing more than a discharged
+employé of his, discharged for dishonesty. He had to leave South
+America; within a week to escape prosecution, and on the way to Europe
+he concocted the plot which very nearly ruined my life. He forged a
+letter from my father, begging me, if I found it in any way possible, to
+listen to Oliver Hilditch's proposals, and hinting guardedly at a very
+serious financial crisis which it was in his power to avert. It never
+occurred to me or to my chaperon to question his bona fides. He had
+lived under the same roof as my father, and knew all the intimate
+details of his life. He was very clever and I suppose I was a fool. I
+remember thinking I was doing quite a heroic action when I went to the
+registrar with him. What it led to you know.”
+
+There was a moment's throbbing silence. Francis, notwithstanding his
+deep pity, was conscious of an overwhelming sensation of relief. She had
+never cared for Oliver Hilditch! She had never pretended to! He put the
+thought into words.
+
+“You never cared for him, then?”
+
+“I tried to,” she replied simply, “but I found it impossible. Within a
+week of our marriage I hated him.”
+
+Francis leaned back, his eyes half closed. In his ears was the sonorous
+roar of Piccadilly, the hooting of motor-cars, close at hand the
+rustling of a faint wind in the elm trees. It was a wonderful moment.
+The nightmare with which he had grappled so fiercely, which he had
+overthrown, but whose ghost still sometimes walked by his side, had
+lost its chief and most poignant terror. She had been tricked into the
+marriage. She had never cared or pretended to care. The primal horror
+of that tragedy which he had figured so often to himself, seemed to have
+departed with the thought. Its shadow must always remain, but in time
+his conscience would acquiesce in the pronouncement of his reason. It
+was the hand of justice, not any human hand, which had slain Oliver
+Hilditch.
+
+“What did your father say when he discovered the truth?” he asked.
+
+“He did not know it until he came to England--on the day that Oliver
+Hilditch was acquitted. My husband always pretended that he had a
+special mail bag going out to South America, so he took away all the
+letters I wrote to my father, and he took care that I received none
+except one or two which I know now were forgeries. He had friends
+in South America himself who helped him--one a typist in my father's
+office, of whom I discovered afterwards--but that really doesn't matter.
+He was a wonderful master of deceit.”
+
+Francis suddenly took her hands. He had an overwhelming desire to
+escape from the miasma of those ugly days, with their train of attendant
+thoughts and speculations.
+
+“Let us talk about ourselves,” he whispered.
+
+After that, the evening glided away incoherently, with no sustained
+conversation, but with an increasing sense of well-being, of soothed
+nerves and happiness, flaming seconds of passion, sign-posts of the
+wonderful world which lay before them. They sat in the cool silence
+until the lights of the returning taxicabs and motor-cars became more
+frequent, until the stars crept into the sky and the yellow arc of
+the moon stole up over the tops of the houses. Presently they saw Sir
+Timothy's Rolls-Royce glide up to the front door below and Sir Timothy
+himself enter the house, followed by another man whose appearance was
+somehow familiar.
+
+“Your father has changed his mind,” Francis observed.
+
+“Perhaps he has called for something,” she suggested, “or he may want to
+change his clothes before he goes down to the country.”
+
+Presently, however, there was a knock at the door. Hedges made his
+diffident appearance.
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir,” he began, addressing Francis. “Sir Timothy has
+been asking if you are still here. He would be very glad if you could
+spare him a moment in the library.”
+
+Francis rose at once to his feet.
+
+“I was just leaving,” he said. “I will look in at the library and see
+Sir Timothy on my way out.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+Sir Timothy was standing upon the hearthrug of the very wonderful
+apartment which he called his library. By his side, on a black marble
+pedestal, stood a small statue by Rodin. Behind him, lit by a shielded
+electric light, was a Vandyck, “A Portrait of a Gentleman Unknown,” and
+Francis, as he hesitated for a moment upon the threshold, was struck
+by a sudden quaint likeness between the face of the man in the picture,
+with his sunken cheeks, his supercilious smile, his narrowed but
+powerful eyes, to the face of Sir Timothy himself. There was something
+of the same spirit there--the lawless buccaneer, perhaps the criminal.
+
+“You asked for me, Sir Timothy,” Francis said.
+
+Sir Timothy smiled.
+
+“I was fortunate to find that you had not left,” he answered. “I want
+you to be present at this forthcoming interview. You are to a certain
+extent in the game. I thought it might amuse you.”
+
+Francis for the first time was aware that his host was not alone. The
+room, with its odd splashes of light, was full of shadows, and he saw
+now that in an easy-chair a little distance away from Sir Timothy, a
+girl was seated. Behind her, still standing, with his hat in his hand,
+was a man. Francis recognised them both with surprise.
+
+“Miss Hyslop!” he exclaimed.
+
+She nodded a little defiantly. Sir Timothy smiled. “Ah!” he said. “You
+know the young lady, without a doubt. Mr. Shopland, your coadjutor in
+various works of philanthropy, you recognise, of course? I do not mind
+confessing to you, Ledsam, that I am very much afraid of Mr. Shopland.
+I am not at all sure that he has not a warrant for my arrest in his
+pocket.”
+
+The detective came a little further into the light. He was attired in
+an ill-fitting dinner suit, a soft-fronted shirt of unpleasing design,
+a collar of the wrong shape, and a badly arranged tie. He seemed,
+nevertheless, very pleased with himself.
+
+“I came on here, Mr. Ledsam, at Sir Timothy's desire,” he said. “I
+should like you to understand,” he added, with a covert glance of
+warning, “that I have been devoting every effort, during the last few
+days, to the discovery of your friend's brother, Mr. Reginald Wilmore.”
+
+“I am very glad to hear it,” Francis replied shortly. “The boy's brother
+is one of my greatest friends.”
+
+“I have come to the conclusion,” the detective pronounced, “that the
+young man has been abducted, and is being detained at The Walled House
+against his will for some illegal purpose.”
+
+“In other respects,” Sir Timothy said, stretching out his hand towards
+a cedar-wood box of cigarettes and selecting one, “this man seems quite
+sane. I have watched him very closely on the way here, but I could see
+no signs of mental aberration. I do not think, at any rate, that he is
+dangerous.”
+
+“Sir Timothy,” Shopland explained, with some anger in his tone,
+“declines to take me seriously. I can of course apply for a search
+warrant, as I shall do, but it occurred to me to be one of those
+cases which could be better dealt with, up to a certain point, without
+recourse to the extremities of the law.”
+
+Sir Timothy, who had lit his cigarette, presented a wholly undisturbed
+front.
+
+“What I cannot quite understand,” he said, “is the exact meaning of
+that word 'abduction.' Why should I be suspected of forcibly removing
+a harmless and worthy young man from his regular avocation, and, as
+you term it, abducting him, which I presume means keeping him bound and
+gagged and imprisoned? I do not eat young men. I do not even care for
+the society of young men. I am not naturally a gregarious person, but I
+think I would go so far,” he added, with a bow towards Miss Hyslop, “as
+to say that I prefer the society of young women. Satisfy my curiosity,
+therefore, I beg of you. For what reason do you suppose that I have been
+concerned in the disappearance of this Mr. Reginald Wilmore?”
+
+Francis opened his lips, but Shopland, with a warning glance,
+intervened.
+
+“I work sometimes as a private person, sir,” he said, “but it is not to
+be forgotten that I am an officer of the law. It is not for us to state
+motives or even to afford explanations for our behaviour. I have watched
+your house at Hatch End, Sir Timothy, and I have come to the conclusion
+that unless you are willing to discuss this matter with me in a
+different spirit, I am justified in asking the magistrates for a search
+warrant.”
+
+Sir Timothy sighed.
+
+“Mr. Ledsam,” he said, “I think, after all, that yours is the most
+interesting end of this espionage business. It is you who search for
+motives, is it not, and pass them on to our more automatic friend, who
+does the rest. May I ask, have you supplied the motive in the present
+case?”
+
+“I have failed to discover any motive at all for Reginald Wilmore's
+disappearance,” Francis admitted, “nor have I at any time been able to
+connect you with it. Mr. Shopland's efforts, however, although he has
+not seen well to take me into his entire confidence, have my warmest
+approval and sympathy. Although I have accepted your very generous
+hospitality, Sir Timothy, I think there has been no misunderstanding
+between us on this matter.”
+
+“Most correct,” Sir Timothy murmured. “The trouble seems to be, so
+far as I am concerned, that no one will tell me exactly of what I am
+suspected? I am to give Mr. Shopland the run of my house, or he will
+make his appearance in the magistrate's court and the evening papers
+will have placards with marvellous headlines at my expense. How will it
+run, Mr. Shopland--
+
+  “'MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN.
+    MILLIONAIRE'S HOUSE TO BE SEARCHED.'”
+
+“We do not necessarily acquaint the press with our procedure,” Shopland
+rejoined.
+
+“Nevertheless,” Sir Timothy continued, “I have known awkward
+consequences arise from a search warrant too rashly applied for or
+granted. However, we are scarcely being polite. So far, Miss Hyslop has
+had very little to say.”
+
+The young lady was not altogether at her ease.
+
+“I have had very little to say,” she repeated, “because I did not expect
+an audience.”
+
+Sir Timothy drew a letter from his pocket, opened it and adjusted his
+eyeglass.
+
+“Here we are,” he said. “After leaving my dinner-party tonight, I called
+at the club and found this note. Quite an inviting little affair, you
+see young lady's writing, faint but very delicate perfume, excellent
+stationery, Milan Court--the home of adventures!”
+
+  “DEAR SIR TIMOTHY BRAST:
+
+  “Although I am not known to you personally, there is a
+certain matter concerning which information has come into my possession,
+which I should like to discuss with you. Will you call and see me as
+soon as possible?”                              Sincerely yours,
+                                 “DAISY HYSLOP.”
+
+“On receipt of this note,” Sir Timothy continued, folding it up, “I
+telephoned to the young lady and as I was fortunate enough to find her
+at home I asked her to come here. I then took the liberty of introducing
+myself to Mr. Shopland, whose interest in my evening has been unvarying,
+and whose uninvited company I have been compelled to bear with, and
+suggested that, as I was on my way back to Curzon Street, he had better
+come in and have a drink and tell me what it was all about. I arranged
+that he should find Miss Hyslop here, and for a person of observation,
+which I flatter myself to be, it was easy to discover the interesting
+fact that Mr. Shopland and Miss Daisy Hyslop were not strangers.
+
+“Now tell me, young lady,” Sir Timothy went on. “You see, I have placed
+myself entirely in your hands. Never mind the presence of these two
+gentlemen. Tell me exactly what you wanted to say to me?”
+
+“The matter is of no great importance,” Miss Hyslop declared, “in any
+case I should not discuss it before these two gentlemen.”
+
+“Don't go for a moment, please,” Sir Timothy begged, as she showed signs
+of departure. “Listen. I want to make a suggestion to you. There is an
+impression abroad that I was interested in the two young men, Victor
+Bidlake and Fairfax, and that I knew something of their quarrel.
+You were an intimate friend of young Bidlake's and presumably in his
+confidence. It occurs to me, therefore, that Mr. Shopland might very
+well have visited you in search of information, linking me up with that
+unfortunate affair. Hence your little note to me.”
+
+Miss Hyslop rose to her feet. She had the appearance of being very angry
+indeed.
+
+“Do you mean to insinuate--” she began.
+
+“Madam, I insinuate nothing,” Sir Timothy interrupted sternly. “I only
+desire to suggest this. You are a young lady whose manner of living, I
+gather, is to a certain extent precarious. It must have seemed to you a
+likelier source of profit to withhold any information you might have to
+give at the solicitation of a rich man, than to give it free gratis and
+for nothing to a detective. Now am I right?”
+
+Miss Hyslop turned towards the door. She had the air of a person who had
+been entirely misunderstood.
+
+“I wrote you out of kindness, Sir Timothy,” she said in an aggrieved
+manner. “I shall have nothing more to say on the matter--to you, at any
+rate.”
+
+Sir Timothy sighed.
+
+“You see,” he said, turning to the others, “I have lost my chance of
+conciliating a witness. My cheque-book remains locked up and she has
+gone over to your side.”
+
+She turned around suddenly.
+
+“You know that you made Bobby Fairfax kill Victor!” she almost shouted.
+
+Sir Timothy smiled in triumph.
+
+“My dear young lady,” he begged, “let us now be friends again. I desired
+to know your trump card. For that reason I fear that I have been a
+little brutal. Now please don't hurry away. You have shot your bolt.
+Already Mr. Shopland is turning the thing over in his mind. Was I
+lurking outside that night, Mr. Shopland, to guide that young man's
+flabby arm? He scarcely seemed man enough for a murderer, did he, when
+he sat quaking on that stool in Soto's Bar while Mr. Ledsam tortured
+him? I beg you again not to hurry, Miss Hyslop. At any rate wait while
+my servants fetch you a taxi. It was clouding over when I came in. We
+may even have a thunderstorm.”
+
+“I want to get out of this house,” Daisy Hyslop declared. “I think you
+are all horrible. Mr. Ledsam did behave like a gentleman when he came to
+see me, and Mr. Shopland asked questions civilly. But you--” she added,
+turning round to Sir Timothy.
+
+“Hush, my dear,” he interrupted, holding out his hand. “Don't abuse me.
+I am not angry with you--not in the least--and I am going to prove it. I
+shall oppose any search warrant which you might apply for, Mr. Shopland,
+and I think I can oppose it with success. But I invite you two, Miss
+Hyslop and Mr. Ledsam, to my party on Thursday night. Once under my roof
+you shall have carte blanche. You can wander where you please, knock
+the walls for secret hiding-places, stamp upon the floor for oubliettes.
+Upstairs or down, the cellars and the lofts, the grounds and the park,
+the whole of my domain is for you from midnight on Thursday until four
+o'clock. What do you say, Mr. Shopland? Does my offer satisfy you?”
+
+The detective hesitated.
+
+“I should prefer an invitation for myself,” he declared bluntly.
+
+Sir Timothy shook his head.
+
+“Alas, my dear Mr. Shopland,” he regretted, “that is impossible! If I
+had only myself to consider I would not hesitate. Personally I like
+you. You amuse me more than any one I have met for a long time. But
+unfortunately I have my guests to consider! You must be satisfied with
+Mr. Ledsam's report.”
+
+Shopland stroked his stubbly moustache. It was obvious that he was not
+in the least disconcerted.
+
+“There are three days between now and then,” he reflected.
+
+“During those three days, of course,” Sir Timothy said drily, “I shall
+do my best to obliterate all traces of my various crimes. Still, you
+are a clever detective, and you can give Mr. Ledsam a few hints. Take my
+advice. You won't get that search warrant, and if you apply for it none
+of you will be at my party.”
+
+“I accept,” Shopland decided.
+
+Sir Timothy crossed the room, unlocked the drawer of a magnificent
+writing-table, and from a little packet drew out two cards of
+invitation. They were of small size but thick, and the colour was a
+brilliant scarlet. On one he wrote the name of Francis, the other he
+filled in for Miss Hyslop.
+
+“Miss Daisy Hyslop,” he said, “shall we drink a glass of wine together
+on Thursday evening, and will you decide that although, perhaps, I am
+not a very satisfactory correspondent, I can at least be an amiable
+host?”
+
+The girl's eyes glistened. She knew very well that the possession of
+that card meant that for the next few days she would be the envy of
+every one of her acquaintances.
+
+“Thank you, Sir Timothy,” she replied eagerly. “You have quite
+misunderstood me but I should like to come to your party.”
+
+Sir Timothy handed over the cards. He rang for a servant and bowed the
+others out. Francis he detained for a moment.
+
+“Our little duel, my friend, marches,” he said. “After Thursday night we
+will speak again of this matter concerning Margaret. You will know then
+what you have to face.”
+
+Margaret herself opened the door and looked in.
+
+“What have those people been doing here?” she asked. “What is
+happening?”
+
+Her father unlocked his drawer once more and drew out another of the red
+cards.
+
+“Margaret,” he said, “Ledsam here has accepted my invitation for
+Thursday night. You have never, up till now, honoured me, nor have I
+ever asked you. I suggest that for the first part of the entertainment,
+you give me the pleasure of your company.”
+
+“For the first part?”
+
+“For the first part only,” he repeated, as he wrote her name upon the
+card.
+
+“What about Francis?” she asked. “Is he to stay all the time?”
+
+Sir Timothy smiled. He locked up his drawer and slipped the key into his
+pocket.
+
+“Ledsam and I,” he said, “have promised one another a more complete
+mutual understanding on Thursday night. I may not be able to part with
+him quite so soon.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+Bored and listless, like a tired and drooping lily in the arms of her
+somewhat athletic partner, Lady Cynthia brought her dance to a somewhat
+abrupt conclusion.
+
+“There is some one in the lounge there to whom I wish to speak,” she
+said. “Perhaps you won't mind if we finish later. The floor seems sticky
+tonight, or my feet are heavy.”
+
+Her partner made the best of it, as Lady Cynthia's partners, nowadays,
+generally had to. She even dispensed with his escort, and walked across
+the lounge of Claridge's alone. Sir Timothy rose to his feet. He had
+been sitting in a corner, half sheltered by a pillar, and had fancied
+himself unseen.
+
+“What a relief!” she exclaimed. “Another turn and I should have fainted
+through sheer boredom.”
+
+“Yet you are quite wonderful dancing,” he said. “I have been watching
+you for some time.”
+
+“It is one of my expiring efforts,” she declared, sinking into the
+chair by his side. “You know whose party it is, of course? Old Lady
+Torrington's. Quite a boy and girl affair. Twenty-four of us had dinner
+in the worst corner of the room. I can hear the old lady ordering the
+dinner now. Charles with a long menu. She shakes her head and taps him
+on the wrist with her fan. 'Monsieur Charles, I am a poor woman. Give
+me what there is--a small, plain dinner--and charge me at your minimum.'
+The dinner was very small and very plain, the champagne was horribly
+sweet. My partner talked of a new drill, his last innings for the
+Household Brigade, and a wonderful round of golf he played last Sunday
+week. I was turned on to dance with a man who asked me to marry him, a
+year ago, and I could feel him vibrating with gratitude, as he looked at
+me, that I had refused. I suppose I am very haggard.”
+
+“Does that matter, nowadays?” Sir Timothy asked.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“I am afraid it does. The bone and the hank of hair stuff is played out.
+The dairy-maid style is coming in. Plump little Fanny Torrington had a
+great success to-night, in one of those simple white dresses, you know,
+which look like a sack with a hole cut in the top. What are you doing
+here by yourself?”
+
+“I have an engagement in a few minutes,” he explained. “My car is
+waiting now. I looked in at the club to dine, found my favourite table
+taken and nearly every man I ever disliked sidling up to tell me that he
+hears I am giving a wonderful party on Thursday. I decided not to dine
+there, after all, and Charles found me a corner here. I am going in five
+minutes.”
+
+“Where to?” she asked. “Can't I come with you?”
+
+“I fear not,” he answered. “I am going down in the East End.”
+
+“Adventuring?”
+
+“More or less,” he admitted.
+
+Lady Cynthia became beautiful. She was always beautiful when she was not
+tired.
+
+“Take me with you, please,” she begged.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“Not to be done!”
+
+“Don't shake your head like that,” she enjoined, with a little grimace.
+“People will think I am trying to borrow money from you and that you are
+refusing me! Just take me with you some of the way. I shall scream if I
+go back into that dancing-room again.”
+
+Sir Timothy glanced at the clock.
+
+“If there is any amusement to you in a rather dull drive eastwards--”
+
+She was on her feet with the soft, graceful speed which had made her so
+much admired before her present listlessness had set in.
+
+“I'll get my cloak,” she said.
+
+They drove along the Embankment, citywards. The heat of the city seemed
+to rise from the pavements. The wall of the Embankment was lined with
+people, leaning over to catch the languid breeze that crept up with the
+tide. They crossed the river and threaded their way through a nightmare
+of squalid streets, where half-dressed men and women hung from the top
+windows and were even to be seen upon the roof, struggling for air. The
+car at last pulled up at the corner of a long street.
+
+“I am going down here,” Sir Timothy announced. “I shall be gone perhaps
+an hour. The neighbourhood is not a fit one for you to be left alone in.
+I shall have time to send you home. The car will be back here for me by
+the time I require it.”
+
+“Where are you going?” she asked curiously. “Why can't I come with you?”
+
+“I am going where I cannot take you,” was the firm reply. “I told you
+that before I started.”
+
+“I shall sit here and wait for you,” she decided. “I rather like the
+neighbourhood. There is a gentleman in shirt-sleeves, leaning over the
+rail of the roof there, who has his eye on me. I believe I shall be
+a success here--which is more than I can say of a little further
+westwards.”
+
+Sir Timothy smiled slightly. He had exchanged his hat for a tweed cap,
+and had put on a long dustcoat.
+
+“There is no gauge by which you may know the measure of your success,”
+ he said. “If there were--”
+
+“If there were?” she asked, leaning a little forward and looking at him
+with a touch of the old brilliancy in her eyes.
+
+“If there were,” he said, with a little show of mock gallantry, “a very
+jealously-guarded secret might escape me. I think you will be quite all
+right here,” he continued. “It is an open thoroughfare, and I see two
+policemen at the corner. Hassell, my chauffeur, too, is a reliable
+fellow. We will be back within the hour.”
+
+“We?” she repeated.
+
+He indicated a man who had silently made his appearance during the
+conversation and was standing waiting on the sidewalk.
+
+“Just a companion. I do not advise you to wait. If you insist--au
+revoir!”
+
+Lady Cynthia leaned back in a corner of the car.
+
+Through half-closed eyes she watched the two men on their way down
+the crowded thoroughfare--Sir Timothy tall, thin as a lath, yet with
+a certain elegance of bearing; the man at his side shorter, his hands
+thrust into the pockets of his coat, his manner one of subservience. She
+wondered languidly as to their errand in this unsavoury neighbourhood.
+Then she closed her eyes altogether and wondered about many things.
+
+Sir Timothy and his companion walked along the crowded, squalid street
+without speech. Presently they turned to the right and stopped in front
+of a public-house of some pretensions.
+
+“This is the place?” Sir Timothy asked.
+
+“Yes, sir!”
+
+Both men entered. Sir Timothy made his way to the counter, his companion
+to a table near, where he took a seat and ordered a drink. Sir Timothy
+did the same. He was wedged in between a heterogeneous crowd of shabby,
+depressed but apparently not ill-natured men and women. A man in a
+flannel shirt and pair of shabby plaid trousers, which owed their
+precarious position to a pair of worn-out braces, turned a beery eye
+upon the newcomer.
+
+“I'll 'ave one with you, guvnor,” he said.
+
+“You shall indeed,” Sir Timothy assented.
+
+“Strike me lucky but I've touched first time!” the man exclaimed. “I'll
+'ave a double tot of whisky,” he added, addressing the barman. “Will it
+run to it, guvnor?”
+
+“Certainly,” was the cordial reply, “and the same to your friends, if
+you will answer a question.”
+
+“Troop up, lads,” the man shouted. “We've a toff 'ere. He ain't a
+'tec--I know the cut of them. Out with the question.”
+
+“Serve every one who desires it with drinks,” Sir Timothy directed the
+barman. “My question is easily answered. Is this the place which a man
+whom I understand they call Billy the Tanner frequents?”
+
+The question appeared to produce an almost uncomfortable sensation. The
+enthusiasm for the free drinks, however, was only slightly damped, and a
+small forest of grimy hands was extended across the counter.
+
+“Don't you ask no questions about 'im, guvnor,” Sir Timothy's immediate
+companion advised earnestly. “He'd kill you as soon as look at you. When
+Billy the Tanner's in a quarrelsome mood, I've see 'im empty this place
+and the whole street, quicker than if a mad dog was loose. 'E's a fair
+and 'oly terror, 'e is. 'E about killed 'is wife, three nights ago, but
+there ain't a living soul as 'd dare to stand in the witness-box about
+it.”
+
+“Why don't the police take a hand in the matter if the man is such a
+nuisance?” Sir Timothy asked.
+
+His new acquaintance, gripping a thick tumbler of spirits and water with
+a hand deeply encrusted with the stains of his trade, scoffed.
+
+“Police! Why, 'e'd take on any three of the police round these parts!”
+ he declared. “Police! You tell one on 'em that Billy the Tanner's on
+the rampage, and you'll see 'em 'op it. Cheero, guvnor and don't you get
+curious about Billy. It ain't 'ealthy.”
+
+The swing-door was suddenly opened. A touslehaired urchin shoved his
+face in.
+
+“Billy the Tanner's coming!” he shouted. “Cave, all! He's been 'avin' a
+rare to-do in Smith's Court.”
+
+Then a curious thing happened. The little crowd at the bar seemed
+somehow to melt away. Half-a-dozen left precipitately by the door.
+Half-a-dozen more slunk through an inner entrance into some room beyond.
+Sir Timothy's neighbour set down his tumbler empty. He was the last to
+leave.
+
+“If you're going to stop 'ere, guvnor,” he begged fervently, “you keep
+a still tongue in your 'ead. Billy ain't particular who it is. 'E'd
+kill 'is own mother, if 'e felt like it. 'E'll swing some day, sure as
+I stand 'ere, but 'e'll do a bit more mischief first. 'Op it with me,
+guvnor, or get inside there.”
+
+“Jim's right,” the man behind the bar agreed. “He's a very nasty
+customer, Bill the Tanner, sir. If he's coming down, I'd clear out for a
+moment. You can go in the guvnor's sitting-room, if you like.”
+
+Sir Timothy shook his head.
+
+“Billy the Tanner will not hurt me,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I
+came down to see him.”
+
+His new friend hesitated no longer but made for the door through which
+most of his companions had already disappeared. The barman leaned across
+the counter.
+
+“Guvnor,” he whispered hoarsely, “I don't know what the game is, but
+I've given you the office. Billy won't stand no truck from any one. He's
+a holy terror.”
+
+Sir Timothy nodded.
+
+“I quite understand,” he said.
+
+There was a moment's ominous silence. The barman withdrew to the further
+end of his domain and busied himself cleaning some glasses. Suddenly the
+door was swung open. A man entered whose appearance alone was calculated
+to inspire a certain amount of fear. He was tall, but his height escaped
+notice by reason of the extraordinary breadth of his shoulders. He had
+a coarse and vicious face, a crop of red hair, and an unshaven growth of
+the same upon his face. He wore what appeared to be the popular dress in
+the neighbourhood--a pair of trousers suspended by a belt, and a dirty
+flannel shirt. His hands and even his chest, where the shirt fell away,
+were discoloured by yellow stains. He looked around the room at first
+with an air of disappointment. Then he caught sight of Sir Timothy
+standing at the counter, and he brightened up.
+
+“Where's all the crowd, Tom?” he asked the barman.
+
+“Scared of you, I reckon,” was the brief reply. “There was plenty here a
+few minutes ago.”
+
+“Scared of me, eh?” the other repeated, staring hard at Sir Timothy.
+“Did you 'ear that, guvnor?”
+
+“I heard it,” Sir Timothy acquiesced.
+
+Billy the Tanner began to cheer up. He walked all round this stranger.
+
+“A toff! A big toff! I'll 'ave a drink with you, guvnor,” he declared,
+with a note of incipient truculence in his tone.
+
+The barman had already reached up for two glasses but Sir Timothy shook
+his head.
+
+“I think not,” he said.
+
+There was a moment's silence. The barman made despairing signs at Sir
+Timothy. Billy the Tanner was moistening his lips with his tongue.
+
+“Why not?” he demanded.
+
+“Because I don't know you and I don't like you,” was the bland reply.
+
+Billy the Tanner wasted small time upon preliminaries. He spat upon his
+hands.
+
+“I dunno you and I don't like you,” he retorted. “D'yer know wot I'm
+going to do?”
+
+“I have no idea,” Sir Timothy confessed.
+
+“I'm going to make you look so that your own mother wouldn't know
+you--then I'm going to pitch you into the street,” he added, with an
+evil grin. “That's wot we does with big toffs who come 'anging around
+'ere.”
+
+“Do you?” Sir Timothy said calmly. “Perhaps my friend may have something
+to say about that.”
+
+The man of war was beginning to be worked up.
+
+“Where's your big friend?” he shouted. “Come on! I'll take on the two of
+you.”
+
+The man who had met Sir Timothy in the street had risen to his feet. He
+strolled up to the two. Billy the Tanner eyed him hungrily.
+
+“The two of you, d'yer 'ear?” he shouted. “And 'ere's just a flick for
+the toff to be going on with!”
+
+He delivered a sudden blow at Sir Timothy--a full, vicious, jabbing blow
+which had laid many a man of the neighbourhood in the gutter. To his
+amazement, the chin at which he had aimed seemed to have mysteriously
+disappeared. Sir Timothy himself was standing about half-a-yard further
+away. Billy the Tanner was too used to the game to be off his balance,
+but he received at that moment the surprise of his life. With the flat
+of his hand full open, Sir Timothy struck him across the cheek such a
+blow that it resounded through the place, a blow that brought both the
+inner doors ajar, that brought peering eyes from every direction. There
+was a moment's silence. The man's fists were clenched now, there was
+murder in his face. Sir Timothy stepped on one side.
+
+“I am not a fighter,” he said coolly, leaning back against the marble
+table. “My friend will deal with you.”
+
+Billy the Tanner glared at the newcomer, who had glided in between him
+and Sir Timothy.
+
+“You can come and join in, too,” he shouted to Sir Timothy. “I'll knock
+your big head into pulp when I've done with this little job!”
+
+The bully knew in precisely thirty seconds what had happened to him. So
+did the crowds who pressed back into the place through the inner
+door. So did the barman. So did the landlord, who had made a cautious
+appearance through a trapdoor. Billy the Tanner, for the first time
+in his life, was fighting a better man. For two years he had been the
+terror of the neighbourhood, and he showed now that at least he had
+courage. His smattering of science, however, appeared only ridiculous.
+Once, through sheer strength and blundering force, he broke down his
+opponent's guard and struck him in the place that had dispatched many a
+man before--just over the heart. His present opponent scarcely winced,
+and Billy the Tanner paid the penalty then for his years of bullying.
+His antagonist paused for a single second, as though unnerved by the
+blow. Red fire seemed to stream from his eyes. Then it was all over.
+With a sickening crash, Billy the Tanner went down upon the sanded
+floor. It was no matter of a count for him. He lay there like a dead
+man, and from the two doors the hidden spectators streamed into the
+room. Sir Timothy laid some money upon the table.
+
+“This fellow insulted me and my friend,” he said. “You see, he has paid
+the penalty. If he misbehaves again, the same thing will happen to him.
+I am leaving some money here with your barman. I shall be glad for every
+one to drink with me. Presently, perhaps, you had better send for an
+ambulance or a doctor.”
+
+A little storm of enthusiastic excitement, evidenced for the most part
+in expletives of a lurid note, covered the retreat of Sir Timothy and
+his companion. Out in the street a small crowd was rushing towards the
+place. A couple of policemen seemed to be trying to make up their minds
+whether it was a fine night. An inspector hurried up to them.
+
+“What's doing in 'The Rising Sun'?” he demanded sharply.
+
+“Some one's giving Billy the Tanner a hiding,” one of the policemen
+replied.
+
+“Honest?”
+
+“A fair, ripe, knock-out hiding,” was the emphatic confirmation. “I
+looked in at the window.”
+
+The inspector grinned.
+
+“I'm glad you had the sense not to interfere,” he remarked.
+
+Sir Timothy and his companion reached the car. The latter took a seat by
+the chauffeur. Sir Timothy stepped in. It struck him that Lady Cynthia
+was a little breathless. Her eyes, too, were marvellously bright.
+Wrapped around her knees was the chauffeur's coat.
+
+“Wonderful!” she declared. “I haven't had such a wonderful five minutes
+since I can remember! You are a dear to have brought me, Sir Timothy.”
+
+“What do you mean?” he demanded.
+
+“Mean?” she laughed, as the car swung around and they glided away.
+“You didn't suppose I was going to sit here and watch you depart upon
+a mysterious errand? I borrowed your chauffeur's coat and his cap,
+and slunk down after you. I can assure you I looked the most wonderful
+female apache you ever saw! And I saw the fight. It was better than any
+of the prize fights I have ever been to. The real thing is better than
+the sham, isn't it?”
+
+Sir Timothy leaned back in his place and remained silent. Soon they
+passed out of the land of tired people, of stalls decked out with
+unsavoury provender, of foetid smells and unwholesome-looking houses.
+They passed through a street of silent warehouses on to the Embankment.
+A stronger breeze came down between the curving arc of lights.
+
+“You are not sorry that you brought me?” Lady Cynthia asked, suddenly
+holding out her hand.
+
+Sir Timothy took it in his. For some reason or other, he made no answer
+at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+The car stopped in front of the great house in Grosvenor Square. Lady
+Cynthia turned to her companion.
+
+“You must come in, please,” she said. “I insist, if it is only for five
+minutes.”
+
+Sir Timothy followed her across the hall to a curved recess, where the
+footman who had admitted them touched a bell, and a small automatic lift
+came down.
+
+“I am taking you to my own quarters,” she explained. “They are rather
+cut off but I like them--especially on hot nights.”
+
+They glided up to the extreme top of the house. She opened the gates and
+led the way into what was practically an attic sitting-room, decorated
+in black and white. Wide-flung doors opened onto the leads, where
+comfortable chairs, a small table and an electric standard were
+arranged. They were far above the tops of the other houses, and looked
+into the green of the Park.
+
+“This is where I bring very few people,” she said. “This is where, even
+after my twenty-eight years of fraudulent life, I am sometimes myself.
+Wait.”
+
+There were feminine drinks and sandwiches arranged on the table. She
+opened the cupboard of a small sideboard just inside the sitting-room,
+however, and produced whisky and a syphon of soda. There was a pail of
+ice in a cool corner. From somewhere in the distance came the music
+of violins floating through the window of a house where a dance was in
+progress. They could catch a glimpse of the striped awning and the
+long line of waiting vehicles with their twin eyes of fire. She curled
+herself up on a settee, flung a cushion at Sir Timothy, who was already
+ensconced in a luxurious easy-chair, and with a tumbler of iced sherbet
+in one hand, and a cigarette in the other, looked across at him.
+
+“I am not sure,” she said, “that you have not to-night dispelled an
+illusion.”
+
+“What manner of one?” he asked.
+
+“Above all things,” she went on, “I have always looked upon you as
+wicked. Most people do. I think that is one reason why so many of
+the women find you attractive. I suppose it is why I have found you
+attractive.”
+
+The smile was back upon his lips. He bowed a little, and, leaning
+forward, dropped a chunk of ice into his whisky and soda.
+
+“Dear Lady Cynthia,” he murmured, “don't tell me that I am going to slip
+back in your estimation into some normal place.”
+
+“I am not quite sure,” she said deliberately. “I have always looked upon
+you as a kind of amateur criminal, a man who loved black things and
+dark ways. You know how weary one gets of the ordinary code of morals in
+these days. You were such a delightful antidote. And now, I am not sure
+that you have not shaken my faith in you.”
+
+“In what way?”
+
+“You really seem to have been engaged to-night in a very sporting and
+philanthropic enterprise. I imagined you visiting some den of vice and
+mixing as an equal with these terrible people who never seem to cross
+the bridges. I was perfectly thrilled when I put on your chauffeur's
+coat and hat and followed you.”
+
+“The story of my little adventure is a simple one,” Sir Timothy said. “I
+do not think it greatly affects my character. I believe, as a matter
+of fact, that I am just as wicked as you would have me be, but I have
+friends in every walk of life, and, as you know, I like to peer into the
+unexpected places. I had heard of this man Billy the Tanner. He beats
+women, and has established a perfect reign of terror in the court and
+neighbourhood where he lives. I fear I must agree with you that there
+were some elements of morality--of conforming, at any rate, to the
+recognised standards of justice--in what I did. You know, of course,
+that I am a great patron of every form of boxing, fencing, and the
+various arts of self-defence and attack. I just took along one of the
+men from my gymnasium who I knew was equal to the job, to give this
+fellow a lesson.”
+
+“He did it all right,” Lady Cynthia murmured.
+
+“But this is where I think I re-establish myself,” Sir Timothy
+continued, the peculiar nature of his smile reasserting itself. “I did
+not do this for the sake of the neighbourhood. I did not do it from any
+sense of justice at all. I did it to provide for myself an enjoyable and
+delectable spectacle.”
+
+She smiled lazily.
+
+“That does rather let you out,” she admitted. “However, on the whole I
+am disappointed. I am afraid that you are not so bad as people think.”
+
+“People?” he repeated. “Francis Ledsam, for instance--my son-in-law in
+posse?”
+
+“Francis Ledsam is one of those few rather brilliant persons who have
+contrived to keep sane without becoming a prig,” she remarked.
+
+“You know why?” he reminded her. “Francis Ledsam has been a tremendous
+worker. It is work which keeps a man sane. Brilliancy without the
+capacity for work drives people to the madhouse.”
+
+“Where we are all going, I suppose,” she sighed.
+
+“Not you,” he answered. “You have just enough--I don't know what we
+moderns call it--soul, shall I say?--to keep you from the muddy ways.”
+
+She rose to her feet and leaned over the rails. Sir Timothy watched her
+thoughtfully. Her figure, notwithstanding its suggestions of delicate
+maturity, was still as slim as a young girl's. She was looking across
+the tree-tops towards an angry bank of clouds--long, pencil-like streaks
+of black on a purple background. Below, in the street, a taxi passed
+with grinding of brakes and noisy horn. The rail against which she
+leaned looked very flimsy. Sir Timothy stretched out his hand and held
+her arm.
+
+“My nerves are going with my old age,” he apologised. “That support
+seems too fragile.”
+
+She did not move. The touch of his fingers grew firmer.
+
+“We have entered upon an allegory,” she murmured. “You are preserving me
+from the depths.”
+
+He laughed harshly.
+
+“I!” he exclaimed, with a sudden touch of real and fierce bitterness
+which brought the light dancing into her eyes and a spot of colour to
+her cheeks. “I preserve you! Why, you can never hear my name without
+thinking of sin, of crime of some sort! Do you seriously expect me to
+ever preserve any one from anything?”
+
+“You haven't made any very violent attempts to corrupt me,” she reminded
+him.
+
+“Women don't enter much into my scheme of life,” he declared. “They
+played a great part once. It was a woman, I think, who first headed me
+off from the pastures of virtue.”
+
+“I know,” she said softly. “It was Margaret's mother.”
+
+His voice rang out like a pistol-shot.
+
+“How did you know that?”
+
+She turned away from the rail and threw herself back in her chair. His
+hand, however, she still kept in hers.
+
+“Uncle Joe was Minister at Rio, you know, the year it all happened,”
+ she explained. “He told us the story years ago--how you came back
+from Europe and found things were not just as they should be between
+Margaret's mother and your partner, and how you killed your partner.”
+
+His nostrils quivered a little. One felt that the fire of suffering had
+touched him again for a moment.
+
+“Yes, I killed him,” he admitted. “That is part of my creed. The men who
+defend their honour in the Law Courts are men I know nothing of. This
+man would have wronged me and robbed me of my honour. I bade him defend
+himself in any way he thought well. It was his life or mine. He was a
+poor fighter and I killed him.”
+
+“And Margaret's mother died from the shock.”
+
+“She died soon afterwards.”
+
+The stars grew paler. The passing vehicles, with their brilliant lights,
+grew fewer and fewer. The breeze which had been so welcome at first,
+turned into a cold night wind. She led the way back into the room.
+
+“I must go,” he announced.
+
+“You must go,” she echoed, looking up at him. “Good-bye!”
+
+She was so close to him that his embrace, sudden and passionate though
+it was, came about almost naturally. She lay in his arms with perfect
+content and raised her lips to his.
+
+He broke away. He was himself again, self-furious.
+
+“Lady Cynthia,” he said, “I owe you my most humble apologies. The evil
+that is in me does not as a rule break out in this direction.”
+
+“You dear, foolish person,” she laughed, “that was good, not evil.
+You like me, don't you? But I know you do. There is one crime you have
+always forgotten to develop--you haven't the simplest idea in the world
+how to lie.”
+
+“Yes, I like you,” he admitted. “I have the most absurd feeling for you
+that any man ever found it impossible to put into words. We have indeed
+strayed outside the world of natural things,” he added.
+
+“Why?” she murmured. “I never felt more natural or normal in my life.
+I can assure you that I am loving it. I feel like muslin gowns and
+primroses and the scent of those first March violets underneath a warm
+hedge where the sun comes sometimes. I feel very natural indeed, Sir
+Timothy.”
+
+“What about me?” he asked harshly. “In three weeks' time I shall be
+fifty years old.”
+
+She laughed softly.
+
+“And in no time at all I shall be thirty--and entering upon a terrible
+period of spinsterhood!”
+
+“Spinsterhood!” he scoffed. “Why, whenever the Society papers are at a
+loss for a paragraph, they report a few more offers of marriage to the
+ever-beautiful Lady Cynthia.”
+
+“Don't be sarcastic,” she begged. “I haven't yet had the offer of
+marriage I want, anyhow.”
+
+“You'll get one you don't want in a moment,” he warned her.
+
+She made a little grimace.
+
+“Don't!” she laughed nervously. “How am I to preserve my romantic
+notions of you as the emperor of the criminal world, if you kiss me as
+you did just now--you kissed me rather well--and then ask me to marry
+you? It isn't your role. You must light a cigarette now, pat the back of
+my hand, and swagger off to another of your haunts of vice.”
+
+“In other words, I am not to propose?” Sir Timothy said slowly.
+
+“You see how decadent I am,” she sighed. “I want to toy with my
+pleasures. Besides, there's that scamp of a brother of mine coming up
+to have a drink--I saw him get out of a taxi--and you couldn't get it
+through in time, not with dignity.”
+
+The rattle of the lift as it stopped was plainly audible. He stooped and
+kissed her fingers.
+
+“I fear some day,” he murmured, “I shall be a great disappointment to
+you.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+There was a great deal of discussion, the following morning at the
+Sheridan Club, during the gossipy half-hour which preceded luncheon,
+concerning Sir Timothy Brast's forthcoming entertainment. One of the
+men, Philip Baker, who had been for many years the editor of a famous
+sporting weekly, had a ticket of invitation which he displayed to an
+envious little crowd.
+
+“You fellows who get invitations to these parties,” a famous actor
+declared, “are the most elusive chaps on earth. Half London is dying
+to know what really goes on there, and yet, if by any chance one comes
+across a prospective or retrospective guest, he is as dumb about it as
+though it were some Masonic function. We've got you this time, Baker,
+though. We'll put you under the inquisition on Friday morning.”
+
+“There won't be any need,” the other replied. “One hears a great deal
+of rot talked about these affairs, but so far as I know, nothing very
+much out of the way goes on. There are always one or two pretty stiff
+fights in the gymnasium, and you get the best variety show and supper in
+the world.”
+
+“Why is there this aroma of mystery hanging about the affair, then?”
+ some one asked.
+
+“Well, for one or two reasons,” Baker answered. “One, no doubt, is
+because Sir Timothy has a great idea of arranging the fights himself,
+and the opponents actually don't know until the fight begins whom they
+are meeting, and sometimes not even then. There has been some gossiping,
+too, about the rules, and the weight of the gloves, but that I know,
+nothing about.”
+
+“And the rest of the show?” a younger member enquired. “Is it simply
+dancing and music and that sort of thing?”
+
+“Just a variety entertainment,” the proud possessor of the scarlet-hued
+ticket declared. “Sir Timothy always has something up his sleeve. Last
+year, for instance, he had those six African girls over from Paris in
+that queer dance which they wouldn't allow in London at all. This
+time no one knows what is going to happen. The house, as you know, is
+absolutely surrounded by that hideous stone wall, and from what I have
+heard, reporters who try to get in aren't treated too kindly. Here's
+Ledsam. Very likely he knows more about it.”
+
+“Ledsam,” some one demanded, as Francis joined the group, “are you going
+to Sir Timothy Brast's show to-morrow night?”
+
+“I hope so,” Francis replied, producing his strip of pasteboard.
+
+“Ever been before?”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“Do you know what sort of a show it's going to be?” the actor enquired.
+
+“Not the slightest idea. I don't think any one does. That's rather a
+feature of the affair, isn't it?”
+
+“It is the envious outsider who has never received an invitation, like
+myself,” some one remarked, “who probably spreads these rumours, for one
+always hears it hinted that some disgraceful and illegal exhibition
+is on tap there--a new sort of drugging party, or some novel form of
+debauchery.”
+
+“I don't think,” Francis said quietly, “that Sir Timothy is quite that
+sort of man.”
+
+“Dash it all, what sort of man is he?” the actor demanded. “They tell me
+that financially he is utterly unscrupulous, although he is rolling
+in money. He has the most Mephistophelian expression of any man I ever
+met--looks as though he'd set his heel on any one's neck for the sport
+of it--and yet they say he has given at least fifty thousand pounds to
+the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and that the whole
+of the park round that estate of his down the river is full of lamed and
+decrepit beasts which he has bought himself off the streets.”
+
+“The man must have an interesting personality,” a novelist who had
+joined the party observed. “Of course, you know that he was in prison
+for six months?”
+
+“What for?” some one asked.
+
+“Murder, only they brought it in manslaughter,” was the terse reply.
+“He killed his partner. It was many years ago, and no one knows all the
+facts of the story.”
+
+“I am not holding a brief for Sir Timothy,” Francis remarked, as he
+sipped his cocktail. “As a matter of fact, he and I are very much at
+cross-purposes. But as regards that particular instance, I am not sure
+that he was very much to be blamed, any more than you can blame any
+injured person who takes the law into his own hands.”
+
+“He isn't a man I should care to have for an enemy,” Baker declared.
+
+“Well, we'll shake the truth out of you fellows, somehow or other,” one
+of the group threatened. “On Friday morning we are going to have the
+whole truth--none of this Masonic secrecy which Baker indulged in last
+year.”
+
+The men drifted in to luncheon and Francis, leaving them, took a taxi on
+to the Ritz. Looking about in the vestibule for Margaret, he came face
+to face with Lady Cynthia. She was dressed with her usual distinction in
+a gown of yellow muslin and a beflowered hat, and was the cynosure of a
+good many eyes.
+
+“One would almost imagine, Lady Cynthia,” he said, as they exchanged
+greetings, “that you had found that elixir we were talking about.”
+
+“Perhaps I have,” she answered, smiling. “Are you looking for Margaret?
+She is somewhere about. We were just having a chat when I was literally
+carried off by that terrible Lanchester woman. Let's find her.”
+
+They strolled up into the lounge. Margaret came to meet them. Her smile,
+as she gave Francis her left hand, transformed and softened her whole
+appearance.
+
+“You don't mind my having asked Cynthia to lunch with us?” she said. “I
+really couldn't get rid of the girl. She came in to see me this morning
+the most aggressively cheerful person I ever knew. I believe that she
+had an adventure last night. All that she will tell me is that she dined
+and danced at Claridge's with a party of the dullest people in town.”
+
+A tall, familiar figure passed down the vestibule. Lady Cynthia gave a
+little start, and Francis, who happened to be watching her, was amazed
+at her expression.
+
+“Your father, Margaret!” she pointed out. “I wonder if he is lunching
+here.”
+
+“He told me that he was lunching somewhere with a South American
+friend--one of his partners, I believe,” Margaret replied. “I expect he
+is looking for him.”
+
+Sir Timothy caught sight of them, hesitated for a moment and came slowly
+in their direction.
+
+“Have you found your friend?” Margaret asked.
+
+“The poor fellow is ill in bed,” her father answered. “I was just
+regretting that I had sent the car away, or I should have gone back to
+Hatch End.”
+
+“Stay and lunch with us,” Lady Cynthia begged, a little impetuously.
+
+“I shall be very pleased if you will,” Francis put in. “I'll go and tell
+the waiter to enlarge my table.”
+
+He hurried off. On his way back, a page-boy touched him on the arm.
+
+“If you please, sir,” he announced, “you are wanted on the telephone.”
+
+“I?” Francis exclaimed. “Some mistake, I should think. Nobody knows that
+I am here.”
+
+“Mr. Ledsam,” the boy said. “This way, sir.”
+
+Francis walked down the vestibule to the row of telephone boxes at the
+further end. The attendant who was standing outside, indicated one of
+them and motioned the boy to go away. Francis stepped inside. The man
+followed, closing the door behind him.
+
+“I am asking your pardon, sir, for taking a great liberty,” he
+confessed. “No one wants you on the telephone. I wished to speak to
+you.”
+
+Francis looked at him in surprise. The man was evidently agitated.
+Somehow or other, his face was vaguely familiar.
+
+“Who are you, and what do you want with me?” Francis asked.
+
+“I was butler to Mr. Hilditch, sir,” the man replied. “I waited upon you
+the night you dined there, sir--the night of Mr. Hilditch's death.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“I have a revelation to make with regard to that night, sir,” the man
+went on, “which I should like to place in your hands. It is a very
+serious matter, and there are reasons why something must be done about
+it at once. Can I come and see you at your rooms, sir?”
+
+Francis studied the man for a moment intently. He was evidently
+agitated--evidently, too, in very bad health. His furtive manner was
+against him. On the other hand, that might have arisen from nervousness.
+
+“I shall be in at half-past three, number 13 b, Clarges Street,” Francis
+told him.
+
+“I can get off for half-an-hour then, sir,” the man replied. “I shall be
+very glad to come. I must apologise for having troubled you, sir.”
+
+Francis went slowly back to his trio of guests. All the way down the
+carpeted vestibule he was haunted by the grim shadow of a spectral fear.
+The frozen horror of that ghastly evening was before him like a hateful
+tableau. Hilditch's mocking words rang in his cars: “My death is the
+one thing in the world which would make my wife happy.” The Court scene,
+with all its gloomy tragedy, rose before his eyes--only in the dock,
+instead of Hilditch, he saw another!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+There were incidents connected with that luncheon which Francis always
+remembered. In the first place, Sir Timothy was a great deal more silent
+than usual. A certain vein of half-cynical, half-amusing comment upon
+things and people of the moment, which seemed, whenever he cared to
+exert himself, to flow from his lips without effort, had deserted him.
+He sat where the rather brilliant light from the high windows fell upon
+his face, and Francis wondered more than once whether there were not
+some change there, perhaps some prescience of trouble to come, which had
+subdued him and made him unusually thoughtful. Another slighter but more
+amusing feature of the luncheon was the number of people who stopped
+to shake hands with Sir Timothy and made more or less clumsy efforts to
+obtain an invitation to his coming entertainment. Sir Timothy's reply
+to these various hints was barely cordial. The most he ever promised was
+that he would consult with his secretary and see if their numbers were
+already full. Lady Cynthia, as a somewhat blatant but discomfited Peer
+of the Realm took his awkward leave of them, laughed softly.
+
+“Of course, I think they all deserve what they get,” she declared. “I
+never heard such brazen impudence in my life--from people who ought to
+know better, too.”
+
+Lord Meadowson, a sporting peer, who was one of Sir Timothy's few
+intimates, came over to the table. He paid his respects to the two
+ladies and Francis, and turned a little eagerly to Sir Timothy.
+
+“Well?” he asked.
+
+Sir Timothy nodded.
+
+“We shall be quite prepared for you,” he said. “Better bring your
+cheque-book.”
+
+“Capital!” the other exclaimed. “As I hadn't heard anything, I was
+beginning to wonder whether you would be ready with your end of the
+show.”
+
+“There will be no hitch so far as we are concerned,” Sir Timothy assured
+him.
+
+“More mysteries?” Margaret enquired, as Meadowson departed with a smile
+of satisfaction.
+
+Her father shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Scarcely that,” he replied. “It is a little wager between Lord
+Meadowson and myself which is to be settled to-morrow.”
+
+Lady Torrington, a fussy little woman, her hostess of the night before,
+on her way down the room stopped and shook hands with Lady Cynthia.
+
+“Why, my dear,” she exclaimed, “wherever did you vanish to last night?
+Claude told us all that, in the middle of a dance with him, you excused
+yourself for a moment and he never saw you again. I quite expected to
+read in the papers this morning that you had eloped.”
+
+“Precisely what I did,” Lady Cynthia declared. “The only trouble was
+that my partner had had enough of me before the evening was over,
+and deposited me once more in Grosvenor Square. It is really very
+humiliating,” she went on meditatively, “how every one always returns
+me.”
+
+“You talk such nonsense, Cynthia!” Lady Torrington exclaimed, a little
+pettishly. “However, you found your way home all right?”
+
+“Quite safely, thank you. I was going to write you a note this
+afternoon. I went away on an impulse. All I can say is that I am sorry.
+Do forgive me.”
+
+“Certainly!” was the somewhat chilly reply. “Somehow or other, you seem
+to have earned the right to do exactly as you choose. Some of my young
+men whom you had promised to dance with, were disappointed, but after
+all, I suppose that doesn't matter.”
+
+“Not much,” Lady Cynthia assented sweetly. “I think a few
+disappointments are good for most of the young men of to-day.”
+
+“What did you do last night, Cynthia?” Margaret asked her presently,
+when Lady Torrington had passed on.
+
+“I eloped with your father,” Lady Cynthia confessed, smiling across
+at Sir Timothy. “We went for a little drive together and I had a most
+amusing time. The only trouble was, as I have been complaining to that
+tiresome woman, he brought me home again.”
+
+“But where did you go to?” Margaret persisted.
+
+“It was an errand of charity,” Sir Timothy declared.
+
+“It sounds very mysterious,” Francis observed. “Is that all we are to be
+told?”
+
+“I am afraid,” Sir Timothy complained, “that very few people sympathise
+with my hobbies or my prosecution of them. That is why such little
+incidents as last night's generally remain undisclosed. If you really
+wish to know what happened,” he went on, after a moment's pause, “I will
+tell you. As you know, I have a great many friends amongst the boxing
+fraternity, and I happened to hear of a man down in the East End who has
+made himself a terror to the whole community in which he lives. I took
+Peter Fields, my gymnasium instructor, down to the East End last night,
+and Peter Fields--dealt with him.”
+
+“There was a fight?” Margaret exclaimed, with a little shudder.
+
+“There was a fight,” Sir Timothy repeated, “if you can call it such.
+Fields gave him some part of the punishment he deserved.”
+
+“And you were there, Cynthia?”
+
+“I left Lady Cynthia in the car,” Sir Timothy explained. “She most
+improperly bribed my chauffeur to lend her his coat and hat, and
+followed me.”
+
+“You actually saw the fight, then?” Francis asked.
+
+“I did,” Lady Cynthia admitted. “I saw it from the beginning to the
+end.”
+
+Margaret looked across the table curiously. It seemed to her that her
+friend had turned a little paler.
+
+“Did you like it?” she asked simply.
+
+Lady Cynthia was silent for a moment. She glanced at Sir Timothy. He,
+too, was waiting for her answer with evident interest.
+
+“I was thrilled,” she acknowledged. “That was the pleasurable part of it
+I have been so, used to looking on at shows that bored me, listening
+to conversations that wearied me, attempting sensations which were
+repellent, that I just welcomed feeling, when it came--feeling of any
+sort. I was excited. I forgot everything else. I was so fascinated that
+I could not look away. But if you ask me whether I liked it, and I have
+to answer truthfully, I hated it! I felt nothing of the sort at the
+time, but when I tried to sleep I found myself shivering. It was
+justice, I know, but it was ugly.”
+
+She watched Sir Timothy, as she made her confession, a little wistfully.
+He said nothing, but there was a very curious change in his expression.
+He smiled at her in an altogether unfamiliar way.
+
+“I suppose,” she said, appealing to him, “that you are very disappointed
+in me?”
+
+“On the contrary,” he answered, “I am delighted.”
+
+“You mean that?” she asked incredulously.
+
+“I do,” he declared. “Companionship between our sexes is very delightful
+so far as it goes, but the fundamental differences between a man's
+outlook and tastes and a woman's should never be bridged over. I myself
+do not wish to learn to knit. I do not care for the womenkind in whom I
+am interested to appreciate and understand fighting.”
+
+Margaret looked across the table in amazement.
+
+“You are most surprising this morning, father,” she declared.
+
+“I am perhaps misunderstood,” he sighed, “perhaps have acquired a
+reputation for greater callousness than I possess. Personally, I love
+fighting. I was born a fighter, and I should find no happier way of
+ending my life than fighting, but, to put it bluntly, fighting is a
+man's job.”
+
+“What about women going to see fights at the National Sporting Club?”
+ Lady Cynthia asked curiously.
+
+“It is their own affair, but if you ask my opinion I do not approve of
+it,” Sir Timothy replied. “I am indifferent upon the subject, because
+I am indifferent upon the subject of the generality of your sex,” he
+added, with a little smile, “but I simply hold that it is not a taste
+which should be developed in women, and if they do develop it, it is at
+the expense of those very qualities which make them most attractive.”
+
+Lady Cynthia took a cigarette from her case and leaned over to Francis
+for a light.
+
+“The world is changing,” she declared. “I cannot bear many more shocks.
+I fancied that I had written myself for ever out of Sir Timothy's good
+books because of my confession just now.”
+
+He smiled across at her. His words were words of courteous badinage, but
+Lady Cynthia was conscious of a strange little sense of pleasure.
+
+“On the contrary,” he assured her, “you found your way just a little
+further into my heart.”
+
+“It seems to me, in a general sort of way,” Margaret observed, leaning
+back in her chair, “that you and my father are becoming extraordinarily
+friendly, Cynthia.”
+
+“I am hopefully in love with your father,” Lady Cynthia confessed. “It
+has been coming on for a long time. I suspected it the first time I ever
+met him. Now I am absolutely certain.”
+
+“It's quite a new idea,” Margaret remarked. “Shall we like her in the
+family, Francis?”
+
+“No airs!” Lady Cynthia warned her. “You two are not properly engaged
+yet. It may devolve upon me to give my consent.”
+
+“In that case,” Francis replied, “I hope that we may at least count upon
+your influence with Sir Timothy?”
+
+“If you'll return the compliment and urge my suit with him,” Lady
+Cynthia laughed. “I am afraid he can't quite make up his mind about me,
+and I am so nice. I haven't flirted nearly so much as people think, and
+my instincts are really quite domestic.”
+
+“My position,” Sir Timothy remarked, as he made an unsuccessful attempt
+to possess himself of the bill which Francis had called for, “is
+becoming a little difficult.”
+
+“Not really difficult,” Lady Cynthia objected, “because the real
+decision rests in your hands.”
+
+“Just listen to the woman!” Margaret exclaimed. “Do you realise, father,
+that Cynthia is making the most brazen advances to you? And I was going
+to ask her if she'd like to come back to The Sanctuary with us this
+evening!”
+
+Lady Cynthia was suddenly eager. Margaret glanced across at her father.
+Sir Timothy seemed almost imperceptibly to stiffen a little.
+
+“Margaret has carte blanche at The Sanctuary as regards her visitors,”
+ he said. “I am afraid that I shall be busy over at The Walled House.”
+
+“But you'd come and dine with us?”
+
+Sir Timothy hesitated. An issue which had been looming in his mind for
+many hours seemed to be suddenly joined.
+
+“Please!” Lady Cynthia begged.
+
+Sir Timothy followed the example of the others and rose to his feet. He
+avoided Lady Cynthia's eyes. He seemed suddenly a little tired.
+
+“I will come and dine,” he assented quietly. “I am afraid that I cannot
+promise more than that. Lady Cynthia, as she knows, is always welcome at
+The Sanctuary.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+Punctual to his appointment that afternoon, the man who had sought an
+interview with Francis was shown into the latter's study in Clarges
+Street.
+
+He wore an overcoat over his livery, and directly he entered the room
+Francis was struck by his intense pallor. He had been trying feverishly
+to assure himself that all that the man required was the usual sort of
+help, or assistance into a hospital. Yet there was something furtive in
+his visitor's manner, something which suggested the bearer of a guilty
+secret.
+
+“Please tell me what you want as quickly as you can,” Francis begged. “I
+am due to start down into the country in a few minutes.”
+
+“I won't keep you long, sir,” the man replied. “The matter is rather a
+serious one.”
+
+“Are you ill?”
+
+“Yes, sir!”
+
+“You had better sit down.”
+
+The man relapsed gratefully into a chair.
+
+“I'll leave out everything that doesn't count, sir,” he said. “I'll be
+as brief as I can. I want you to go back to the night I waited upon
+you at dinner the night Mr. Oliver Hilditch was found dead. You gave
+evidence. The jury brought it in 'suicide.' It wasn't suicide at all,
+sir. Mr. Hilditch was murdered.”
+
+The sense of horror against which he had been struggling during the
+last few hours, crept once more through the whole being of the man who
+listened. He was face to face once more with that terrible issue. Had he
+perjured himself in vain? Was the whole structure of his dreams about to
+collapse, to fall about his ears?
+
+“By whom?” he faltered.
+
+“By Sir Timothy Brast, sir.”
+
+Francis, who had been standing with his hand upon the table, felt
+suddenly inclined to laugh. Facile though his brain was, the change of
+issues was too tremendous for him to readily assimilate it. He picked
+up a cigarette from an open box, with shaking fingers, lit it, and threw
+himself into an easy-chair. He was all the time quite unconscious of
+what he was doing.
+
+“Sir Timothy Brast?” he repeated.
+
+“Yes, sir,” the man reiterated. “I wish to tell you the whole story.”
+
+“I am listening,” Francis assured him.
+
+“That evening before dinner, Sir Timothy Brast called to see Mr.
+Hilditch, and a very stormy interview took place. I do not know the
+rights of that, sir. I only know that there was a fierce quarrel. Mrs.
+Hilditch came in and Sir Timothy left the house. His last words to Mr.
+Hilditch were, 'You will hear from me again.' As you know, sir--I mean
+as you remember, if you followed the evidence--all the servants slept at
+the back of the house. I slept in the butler's room downstairs, next to
+the plate pantry. I was awake when you left, sitting in my easy-chair,
+reading. Ten minutes after you had left, there was a sound at the front
+door as though some one had knocked with their knuckles. I got up, to
+open it but Mr. Hilditch was before me. He admitted Sir Timothy. They
+went back into the library together. It struck me that Mr. Hilditch had
+had a great deal to drink, and there was a queer look on Sir Timothy's
+face that I didn't understand. I stepped into the little room which
+communicates with the library by folding doors. There was a chink
+already between the two. I got a knife from the pantry and widened it
+until I could see through. I heard very little of the conversation but
+there was no quarrel. Mr. Hilditch took up the weapon which you
+know about, sat in a chair and held it to his heart. I heard him say
+something like this. 'This ought to appeal to you, Sir Timothy. You're a
+specialist in this sort of thing. One little touch, and there you are.'
+Mrs. Hilditch said something about putting it away. My master turned
+to Sir Timothy and said something in a low tone. Suddenly Sir Timothy
+leaned over. He caught hold of Mr. Hilditch's hand which held the hilt
+of the dagger, and and--well, he just drove it in, sir. Then he stood
+away. Mrs. Hilditch sprang up and would have screamed, but Sir Timothy
+placed his hand over her mouth. In a moment I heard her say, 'What have
+you done?' Sir Timothy looked at Mr. Hilditch quite calmly. 'I have
+ridded the world of a verminous creature,' he said. My knees began to
+shake. My nerves were always bad. I crept back into my room, took off my
+clothes and got into bed. I had just put the light out when they called
+for me.”
+
+Francis was himself again. There was an immense relief, a joy in his
+heart. He had never for a single moment blamed Margaret, but he had
+never for a single moment forgotten. It was a closed chapter but the
+stain was on its pages. It was wonderful to tear it out and scatter the
+fragments.
+
+“I remember you at the inquest,” he said. “Your name is John Walter.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Your evidence was very different.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“You kept all this to yourself.”
+
+“I did, sir. I thought it best.”
+
+“Tell me what has happened since?”
+
+The man looked down at the table.
+
+“I have always been a poor man, sir,” he said. “I have had bad luck
+whenever I've made a try to start at anything. I thought there seemed a
+chance for me here. I went to Sir Timothy and I told him everything.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Sir Timothy never turned a hair, sir. When I had finished he was very
+short with me, almost curt. 'You have behaved like a man of sense,
+Walter,' he said. 'How much?' I hesitated for some time. Then I could
+see he was getting impatient. I doubled what I had thought of first. 'A
+thousand pounds, sir,' I said. Sir Timothy he went to a safe in the
+wall and he counted out a thousand pounds in notes, there and then.
+He brought them over to me. 'Walter,' he said, 'there is your thousand
+pounds. For that sum I understand you promise to keep what you saw to
+yourself?' 'Yes, sir,' I agreed. 'Take it, then,' he said, 'but I want
+you to understand this. There have been many attempts but no one yet
+has ever succeeded in blackmailing me. No one ever will. I give you this
+thousand pounds willingly. It is what you have asked for. Never let me
+see your face again. If you come to me starving, it will be useless. I
+shall not part with another penny.'”
+
+The man's simple way of telling his story, his speech, slow and uneven
+on account of his faltering breath, seemed all to add to the dramatic
+nature of his disclosure. Francis found himself sitting like a child who
+listens to a fairy story.
+
+“And then?” he asked simply.
+
+“I went off with the money,” Walter continued, “and I had cruel bad
+luck. I put it into a pub. I was robbed a little, I drank a little, my
+wife wasn't any good. I lost it all, sir. I found myself destitute. I
+went back to Sir Timothy.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+The man shifted his feet nervously. He seemed to have come to the
+difficult part of his story.
+
+“Sir Timothy was as hard as nails,” he said slowly. “He saw me. The
+moment I had finished, he rang the bell. 'Hedges,' he said to the
+manservant who came in, 'this man has come here to try and blackmail me.
+Throw him out. If he gives any trouble, send for the police. If he shows
+himself here again, send for the police.”'
+
+“What happened then?”
+
+“Well, I nearly blurted out the whole story,” the man confessed, “and
+then I remembered that wouldn't do me any good, so I went away. I got a
+job at the Ritz, but I was took ill a few days afterwards. I went to see
+a doctor. From him I got my death-warrant, sir.”
+
+“Is it heart?”
+
+“It's heart, sir,” the man acknowledged. “The doctor told me I might
+snuff out at any moment. I can't live, anyway, for more than a year.
+I've got a little girl.”
+
+“Now just why have you come to see me?” Francis asked.
+
+“For just this, sir,” the man replied. “Here's my account of what
+happened,” he went on, drawing some sheets of foolscap from his
+pocket. “It's written in my own hand and there are two witnesses to my
+signature--one a clergyman, sir, and the other a doctor, they thinking
+it was a will or something. I had it in my mind to send that to Scotland
+Yard, and then I remembered that I hadn't a penny to leave my little
+girl. I began to wonder--think as meanly of me as you like, sir--how
+I could still make some money out of this. I happened to know that you
+were none too friendly disposed towards Sir Timothy. This confession of
+mine, if it wouldn't mean hanging, would mean imprisonment for the rest
+of his life. You could make a better bargain with him than me, sir. Do
+you want to hold him in your power? If so, you can have this confession,
+all signed and everything, for two hundred pounds, and as I live, sir,
+that two hundred pounds is to pay for my funeral, and the balance for my
+little girl.”
+
+Francis took the papers and glanced them through.
+
+“Supposing I buy this document from you,” he said, “what is its actual
+value? You could write out another confession, get that signed, and
+sell it to another of Sir Timothy's enemies, or you could still go to
+Scotland Yard yourself.”
+
+“I shouldn't do that, sir, I assure you,” the man declared nervously,
+“not on my solemn oath. I want simply to be quit of the whole matter and
+have a little money for the child.”
+
+Francis considered for a moment.
+
+“There is only one way I can see,” he said, “to make this document worth
+the money to me. If you will sign a confession that any statement you
+have made as to the death of Mr. Hilditch is entirely imaginary, that
+you did not see Sir Timothy in the house that night, that you went to
+bed at your usual time and slept until you were awakened, and that you
+only made this charge for the purpose of extorting money--if you will
+sign a confession to that effect and give it me with these papers, I
+will pay you the two hundred pounds and I will never use the confession
+unless you repeat the charge.”
+
+“I'll do it, sir,” the man assented.
+
+Francis drew up a document, which his visitor read through and signed.
+Then he wrote out an open cheque.
+
+“My servant shall take you to the bank in a taxi,” he said. “They would
+scarcely pay you this unless you were identified. We understand one
+another?”
+
+“Perfectly, sir!”
+
+Francis rang the bell, gave his servant the necessary orders, and
+dismissed the two men. Half-an-hour later, already changed into
+flannels, he was on his way into the country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+Sir Timothy walked that evening amongst the shadows. Two hours ago,
+the last of the workmen from the great furnishing and catering
+establishments who undertook the management of his famous
+entertainments, had ceased work for the day and driven off in the
+motor-brakes hired to take them to the nearest town. The long, low
+wing whose use no one was able absolutely to divine, was still full of
+animation, but the great reception-rooms and stately hall were silent
+and empty. In the gymnasium, an enormous apartment as large as an
+ordinary concert hall, two or three electricians were still at work,
+directed by the man who had accompanied Sir Timothy to the East End on
+the night before. The former crossed the room, his footsteps awaking
+strange echoes.
+
+“There will be seating for fifty, sir, and standing room for fifty,” he
+announced. “I have had the ring slightly enlarged, as you suggested,
+and the lighting is being altered so that the start is exactly north and
+south.”
+
+Sir Timothy nodded thoughtfully. The beautiful oak floor of the place
+was littered with sawdust and shavings of wood. Several tiers of
+seats had been arranged on the space usually occupied by swings,
+punching-balls and other artifices. On a slightly raised dais at the
+further end was an exact replica of a ring, corded around and with
+sawdust upon the floor. Upon the walls hung a marvellous collection of
+weapons of every description, from the modern rifle to the curved and
+terrible knife used by the most savage of known tribes.
+
+“How are things in the quarters?” Sir Timothy asked.
+
+“Every one is well, sir. Doctor Ballantyne arrived this afternoon. His
+report is excellent.”
+
+Sir Timothy nodded and turned away. He looked into the great gallery,
+its waxen floors shining with polish, ready for the feet of the dancers
+on the morrow; looked into a beautiful concert-room, with an organ that
+reached to the roof; glanced into the banquetting hall, which extended
+far into the winter-garden; made his way up the broad stairs, turned
+down a little corridor, unlocked a door and passed into his own suite.
+There was a small dining-room, a library, a bedroom, and a bathroom
+fitted with every sort of device. A man-servant who had heard him enter,
+hurried from his own apartment across the way.
+
+“You are not dining here, sir?” he enquired.
+
+Sir Timothy shook his head.
+
+“No, I am dining late at The Sanctuary,” he replied. “I just strolled
+over to see how the preparations were going on. I shall be sleeping over
+there, too. Any prowlers?”
+
+“Photographer brought some steps and photographed the horses in the
+park from the top of the wall this afternoon, sir,” the man announced.
+“Jenkins let him go. Two or three pressmen sent in their cards to you,
+but they were not allowed to pass the lodge.”
+
+Sir Timothy nodded. Soon he left the house and crossed the park towards
+The Sanctuary. He was followed all the way by horses, of which there
+were more than thirty in the great enclosure. One mare greeted him with
+a neigh of welcome and plodded slowly after him. Another pressed her
+nose against his shoulder and walked by his side, with his hand upon her
+neck. Sir Timothy looked a little nervously around, but the park itself
+lay almost like a deep green pool, unobserved, and invisible from
+anywhere except the house itself. He spoke a few words to each of the
+horses, and, producing his key, passed through the door in the wall
+into The Sanctuary garden, closing it quickly as he recognised Francis
+standing under the cedar-tree.
+
+“Has Lady Cynthia arrived yet?” he enquired.
+
+“Not yet,” Francis replied. “Margaret will be here in a minute. She told
+me to say that cocktails are here and that she has ordered dinner served
+on the terrace.”
+
+“Excellent!” Sir Timothy murmured. “Let me try one of your cigarettes.”
+
+“Everything ready for the great show to-morrow night?” Francis asked, as
+he served the cocktails.
+
+“Everything is in order. I wonder, really,” Sir Timothy went on, looking
+at Francis curiously, “what you expect to see?”
+
+“I don't think we any of us have any definite idea,” Francis replied.
+“We have all, of course, made our guesses.”
+
+“You will probably be disappointed,” Sir Timothy warned him. “For some
+reason or other--perhaps I have encouraged the idea--people look upon
+my parties as mysterious orgies where things take place which may not
+be spoken of. They are right to some extent. I break the law, without a
+doubt, but I break it, I am afraid, in rather a disappointing fashion.”
+
+A limousine covered in dust raced in at the open gates and came to a
+standstill with a grinding of brakes. Lady Cynthia stepped lightly out
+and came across the lawn to them.
+
+“I am hot and dusty and I was disagreeable,” she confided, “but the
+peace of this wonderful place, and the sight of that beautiful silver
+thing have cheered me. May I have a cocktail before I go up to change?
+I am a little late, I know,” she went on, “but that wretched
+garden-party! I thought my turn would never come to receive my few
+words. Mother would have been broken-hearted if I had left without them.
+What slaves we are to royalty! Now shall I hurry and change? You men
+have the air of wanting your dinner, and I am rather that way myself.
+You look tired, dear host,” she added, a little hesitatingly.
+
+“The heat,” he answered.
+
+“Why you ever leave this spot I can't imagine,” she declared, as she
+turned away, with a lingering glance around. “It seems like Paradise to
+come here and breathe this air. London is like a furnace.”
+
+The two men were alone again. In Francis' pocket were the two documents,
+which he had not yet made up his mind how to use. Margaret came out to
+them presently, and he strolled away with her towards the rose garden.
+
+“Margaret,” he said, “is it my fancy or has there been a change in your
+father during the last few days?”
+
+“There is a change of some sort,” she admitted. “I cannot describe it. I
+only know it is there. He seems much more thoughtful and less hard. The
+change would be an improvement,” she went on, “except that somehow or
+other it makes me feel uneasy. It is as though he were grappling with
+some crisis.”
+
+They came to a standstill at the end of the pergola, where the masses
+of drooping roses made the air almost faint with their perfume. Margaret
+stretched out her hand, plucked a handful of the creamy petals and held
+them against her cheek. A thrush was singing noisily. A few yards away
+they heard the soft swish of the river.
+
+“Tell me,” she asked curiously, “my father still speaks of you as being
+in some respects an enemy. What does he mean?”
+
+“I will tell you exactly,” he answered. “The first time I ever spoke to
+your father I was dining at Soto's. I was talking to Andrew Wilmore.
+It was only a short time after you had told me the story of Oliver
+Hilditch, a story which made me realise the horror of spending one's
+life keeping men like that out of the clutch of the law.”
+
+“Go on, please,” she begged.
+
+“Well, I was talking to Andrew. I told him that in future I should
+accept no case unless I not only believed in but was convinced of the
+innocence of my client. I added that I was at war with crime. I think,
+perhaps, I was so deeply in earnest that I may have sounded a little
+flamboyant. At any rate, your father, who had overheard me, moved up to
+our table. I think he deduced from what I was saying that I was going to
+turn into a sort of amateur crime-investigator, a person who I gathered
+later was particularly obnoxious to him. At any rate, he held out a
+challenge. 'If you are a man who hates crime,' he said, or something
+like it, 'I am one who loves it.' He then went on to prophesy that a
+crime would be committed close to where we were, within an hour or so,
+and he challenged me to discover the assassin. That night Victor Bidlake
+was murdered just outside Soto's.”
+
+“I remember! Do you mean to tell me, then,” Margaret went on, with a
+little shiver, “that father told you this was going to happen?”
+
+“He certainly did,” Francis replied. “How his knowledge came I am not
+sure--yet. But he certainly knew.”
+
+“Have you anything else against him?” she asked.
+
+“There was the disappearance of Andrew Wilmore's younger brother,
+Reginald Wilmore. I have no right to connect your father with that, but
+Shopland, the Scotland Yard detective, who has charge of the case, seems
+to believe that the young man was brought into this neighbourhood, and
+some other indirect evidence which came into my hands does seem to point
+towards your father being concerned in the matter. I appealed to him at
+once but he only laughed at me. That matter, too, remains a mystery.”
+
+Margaret was thoughtful for a moment. Then she turned towards the house.
+They heard the soft ringing of the gong.
+
+“Will you believe me when I tell you this?” she begged, as they passed
+arm in arm down the pergola. “I am terrified of my father, though in
+many ways he is almost princely in his generosity and in the broad view
+he takes of things. Then his kindness to all dumb animals, and the way
+they love him, is the most amazing thing I ever knew. If we were alone
+here to-night, every animal in the house would be around his chair. He
+has even the cats locked up if we have visitors, so that no one shall
+see it. But I am quite honest when I tell you this--I do not believe
+that my father has the ordinary outlook upon crime. I believe that there
+is a good deal more of the Old Testament about him than the New.”
+
+“And this change which we were speaking about?” he asked, lowering his
+voice as they reached the lawn.
+
+“I believe that somehow or other the end is coming,” she said. “Francis,
+forgive me if I tell you this--or rather let me be forgiven--but I know
+of one crime my father has committed, and it makes me fear that there
+may be others. And I have the feeling, somehow, that the end is close at
+hand and that he feels it, just as we might feel a thunder-storm in the
+air.”
+
+“I am going to prove the immemorial selfishness of my sex,” he
+whispered, as they drew near the little table. “Promise me one thing
+and I don't care if your father is Beelzebub himself. Promise me that,
+whatever happens, it shall not make any difference to us?”
+
+She smiled at him very wonderfully, a smile which had to take the place
+of words, for there were servants now within hearing, and Sir Timothy
+himself was standing in the doorway.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Lady Cynthia and Sir Timothy strolled after dinner to the bottom of the
+lawn and watched the punt which Francis was propelling turn from the
+stream into the river.
+
+“Perfectly idyllic,” Lady Cynthia sighed.
+
+“We have another punt,” her companion suggested.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“I am one of those unselfish people,” she declared, “whose idea of
+repose is not only to rest oneself but to see others rest. I think these
+two chairs, plenty of cigarettes, and you in your most gracious and
+discoursive mood, will fill my soul with content.”
+
+“Your decision relieves my mind,” her companion declared, as he arranged
+the cushions behind her back. “I rather fancy myself with a pair of
+sculls, but a punt-pole never appealed to me. We will sit here and enjoy
+the peace. To-morrow night you will find it all disturbed--music and
+raucous voices and the stampede of my poor, frightened horses in the
+park. This is really a very gracious silence.”
+
+“Are those two really going to marry?” Lady Cynthia asked, moving her
+head lazily in the direction of the disappearing punt.
+
+“I imagine so.”
+
+“And you? What are you going to do then?”
+
+“I am planning a long cruise. I telegraphed to Southampton to-day. I
+am having my yacht provisioned and prepared. I think I shall go over to
+South America.”
+
+She was silent for a moment.
+
+“Alone?” she asked presently.
+
+“I am always alone,” he answered.
+
+“That is rather a matter of your own choice, is it not?”
+
+“Perhaps so. I have always found it hard to make friends. Enemies seem
+to be more in my line.”
+
+“I have not found it difficult to become your friend,” she reminded him.
+
+“You are one of my few successes,” he replied.
+
+She leaned back with half-closed eyes. There was nothing new about their
+environment--the clusters of roses, the perfume of the lilies in
+the rock garden, the even sweeter fragrance of the trim border of
+mignonette. Away in the distance, the night was made momentarily ugly by
+the sound of a gramophone on a passing launch, yet this discordant
+note seemed only to bring the perfection of present things closer. Back
+across the velvety lawn, through the feathery strips of foliage, the
+lights of The Sanctuary, shaded and subdued, were dimly visible. The
+dining-table under the cedar-tree had already been cleared. Hedges,
+newly arrived from town to play the major domo, was putting the
+finishing touches to a little array of cool drinks. And beyond, dimly
+seen but always there, the wall. She turned to him suddenly.
+
+“You build a wall around your life,” she said, “like the wall which
+encircles your mystery house. Last night I thought that I could see a
+little way over the top. To-night you are different.”
+
+“If I am different,” he answered quietly, “it is because, for the first
+time for many years, I have found myself wondering whether the life I
+had planned for myself, the things which I had planned should make life
+for me, are the best. I have had doubts--perhaps I might say regrets.”
+
+“I should like to go to South America,” Lady Cynthia declared softly.
+
+He finished the cigarette which he was smoking and deliberately threw
+away the stump. Then he turned and looked at her. His face seemed harder
+than ever, clean-cut, the face of a man able to defy Fate, but she saw
+something in his eyes which she had never seen before.
+
+“Dear child,” he said, “if I could roll back the years, if from all
+my deeds of sin, as the world knows sin, I could cancel one, there is
+nothing in the world would make me happier than to ask you to come with
+me as my cherished companion to just whatever part of the world you
+cared for. But I have been playing pitch and toss with fortune all my
+life, since the great trouble came which changed me so much. Even at
+this moment, the coin is in the air which may decide my fate.”
+
+“You mean?” she ventured.
+
+“I mean,” he continued, “that after the event of which we spoke last
+night, nothing in life has been more than an incident, and I have
+striven to find distraction by means which none of you--not even you,
+Lady Cynthia, with all your breadth of outlook and all your craving
+after new things--would justify.”
+
+“Nothing that you may have done troubles me in the least,” she assured
+him. “I do wish that you could put it all out of your mind and let me
+help you to make a fresh start.”
+
+“I may put the thing itself out of my mind,” he answered sadly, “but the
+consequences remain.”
+
+“There is a consequence which threatens?” she asked.
+
+He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, he had recovered all
+his courage.
+
+“There is the coin in the air of which I spoke,” he replied. “Let us
+forget it for a moment. Of the minor things I will make you my judge.
+Ledsam and Margaret are coming to my party to-morrow night. You, too,
+shall be my guest. Such secrets as lie on the other side of that wall
+shall be yours. After that, if I survive your judgment of them, and
+if the coin which I have thrown into the air comes, down to the tune
+I call--after that--I will remind you of something which happened last
+night--of something which, if I live for many years, I shall never
+forget.”
+
+She leaned towards him. Her eyes were heavy with longing. Her arms,
+sweet and white in the dusky twilight, stole hesitatingly out.
+
+“Last night was so long ago. Won't you take a later memory?”
+
+Once again she lay in his arms, still and content.
+
+As they crossed the lawn, an hour or so later, they were confronted by
+Hedges--who hastened, in fact, to meet them.
+
+“You are being asked for on the telephone, sir,” he announced. “It is a
+trunk call. I have switched it through to the study.”
+
+“Any name?” Sir Timothy asked indifferently.
+
+The man hesitated. His eyes sought his master's respectfully but charged
+with meaning.
+
+“The person refuses to give his name, sir, but I fancied that I
+recognised his voice. I think it would be as well for you to speak,
+sir.”
+
+Lady Cynthia sank into a chair.
+
+“You shall go and answer your telephone call,” she said, “and leave
+Hedges to serve me with one of these strange drinks. I believe I see
+some of my favourite orangeade.”
+
+Sir Timothy made his way into the house and into the low, oak-beamed
+study with its dark furniture and latticed windows. The telephone bell
+began to ring again as he entered. He took up the receiver.
+
+“Sir Timothy?” a rather hoarse, strained voice asked.
+
+“I am speaking,” Sir Timothy replied. “Who is it?”
+
+The man at the other end spoke as though he were out of breath.
+Nevertheless, what he said was distinct enough.
+
+“I am John Walter.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“I am just ringing you up,” the voice went on, “to give you what's
+called a sporting chance. There's a boat from Southampton midday
+tomorrow. If you're wise, you'll catch it. Or better still, get off on
+your own yacht. They carry a wireless now, these big steamers. Don't
+give a criminal much of a chance, does it?”
+
+“I am to understand, then,” Sir Timothy said calmly, “that you have laid
+your information?”
+
+“I've parted with it and serve you right,” was the bitter reply. “I'm
+not saying that you're not a brave man, Sir Timothy, but there's such a
+thing as being foolhardy, and that's what you are. I wasn't asking you
+for half your fortune, nor even a dab of it, but if your life wasn't
+worth a few hundred pounds--you, with all that money--well, it wasn't
+worth saving. So now you know. I've spent ninepence to give you a chance
+to hop it, because I met a gent who has been good to me. I've had a good
+dinner and I feel merciful. So there you are.”
+
+“Do I gather,” Sir Timothy asked, in a perfectly level tone, “that the
+deed is already done?”
+
+“It's already done and done thoroughly,” was the uncompromising answer.
+“I'm not ringing up to ask you to change your mind. If you were to offer
+me five thousand now, or ten, I couldn't stop the bally thing. You've a
+sporting chance of getting away if you start at once. That's all there
+is to it.”
+
+“You have nothing more to say?”
+
+“Nothing! Only I wish to God I'd never stepped into that Mayfair agency.
+I wish I'd never gone to Mrs. Hilditch's as a temporary butler. I wish
+I'd never seen any one of you! That's all. You can go to Hell which way
+you like, only, if you take my advice, you'll go by the way of South
+America. The scaffold isn't every man's fancy.”
+
+There was a burr of the instrument and then silence. Sir Timothy
+carefully replaced the receiver, paused on his way out of the room to
+smell a great bowl of lavender, and passed back into the garden.
+
+“More applicants for invitations?” Lady Cynthia enquired lazily.
+
+Her host smiled.
+
+“Not exactly! Although,” he added, “as a matter of fact my party would
+have been perhaps a little more complete with the presence of the person
+to whom I have been speaking.”
+
+Lady Cynthia pointed to the stream, down which the punt was slowly
+drifting. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and Francis' figure, as he
+stood there, was undefined and ghostly. A thought seemed to flash into
+her mind. She leaned forward.
+
+“Once,” she said, “he told me that he was your enemy.”
+
+“The term is a little melodramatic,” Sir Timothy protested. “We look
+at certain things from opposite points of view. You see, my prospective
+son-in-law, if ever he becomes that, represents the law--the Law with a
+capital 'L'--which recognises no human errors or weaknesses, and judges
+crime out of the musty books of the law-givers of old. He makes of the
+law a mechanical thing which can neither bend nor give, and he judges
+humanity from the same standpoint. Yet at heart he is a good fellow and
+I like him.”
+
+“And you?”
+
+“My weakness lies the other way,” he confessed, “and my sympathy is with
+those who do not fear to make their own laws.”
+
+She held out her hand, white and spectral in the momentary gloom. At the
+other end of the lawn, Francis and Margaret were disembarking from the
+punt.
+
+“Does it sound too shockingly obvious,” she murmured, “if I say that I
+want to make you my law?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+It would have puzzled anybody, except, perhaps, Lady Cynthia herself, to
+have detected the slightest alteration in Sir Timothy's demeanour during
+the following day, when he made fitful appearances at The Sanctuary, or
+at the dinner which was served a little earlier than usual, before his
+final departure for the scene of the festivities. Once he paused in the
+act of helping himself to some dish and listened for a moment to the
+sound of voices in the hall, and when a taxicab drove up he set down his
+glass and again betrayed some interest.
+
+“The maid with my frock, thank heavens!” Lady Cynthia announced,
+glancing out of the window. “My last anxiety is removed. I am looking
+forward now to a wonderful night.”
+
+“You may very easily be disappointed,” her host warned her. “My
+entertainments appeal more, as a rule, to men.”
+
+“Why don't you be thoroughly original and issue no invitations to women
+at all?” Margaret enquired.
+
+“For the same reason that you adorn your rooms and the dinner-table with
+flowers,” he answered. “One needs them--as a relief. Apart from that, I
+am really proud of my dancing-room, and there again, you see, your sex
+is necessary.”
+
+“We are flattered,” Margaret declared, with a little bow. “It does seem
+queer to think that you should own what Cynthia's cousin, Davy Hinton,
+once told me was the best floor in London, and that I have never danced
+on it.”
+
+“Nor I,” Lady Cynthia put in. “There might have been some excuse for not
+asking you, Margaret, but why an ultra-Bohemian like myself has had to
+beg and plead for an invitation, I really cannot imagine.”
+
+“You might find,” Sir Timothy said, “you may even now--that some of my
+men guests are not altogether to your liking.”
+
+“Quite content to take my risk,” Lady Cynthia declared cheerfully. “The
+man with the best manners I ever met--it was at one of Maggie's studio
+dances, too--was a bookmaker. And a retired prize-fighter brought me
+home once from an Albert Hall dance.”
+
+“How did he behave?” Francis asked.
+
+“He was wistful but restrained,” Lady Cynthia replied, “quite the
+gentleman, in fact.”
+
+“You encourage me to hope for the best,” Sir Timothy said, rising to his
+feet. “You will excuse me now? I have a few final preparations to make.”
+
+“Are we to be allowed,” Margaret enquired, “to come across the park?”
+
+“You would not find it convenient,” her father assured her. “You had
+better order a car, say for ten o'clock. Don't forget to bring your
+cards of invitation, and find me immediately you arrive. I wish to
+direct your proceedings to some extent.”
+
+Lady Cynthia strolled across with him to the postern-gate and stood
+by his side after he had opened it. Several of the animals, grazing in
+different parts of the park, pricked up their ears at the sound. An old
+mare came hobbling towards him; a flea-bitten grey came trotting down
+the field, his head in the air, neighing loudly.
+
+“You waste a great deal of tenderness upon your animal friends, dear
+host,” she murmured.
+
+He deliberately looked away from her.
+
+“The reciprocation, at any rate, has its disadvantages,” he remarked,
+glancing a little disconsolately at the brown hairs upon his
+coat-sleeve. “I shall have to find another coat before I can receive my
+guests--which is a further reason,” he added, “why I must hurry.”
+
+At the entrance to the great gates of The Walled House, two men in
+livery were standing. One of them examined with care the red cards of
+invitation, and as soon as he was satisfied the gates were opened by
+some unseen agency. The moment the car had passed through, they were
+closed again.
+
+“Father seems thoroughly mediaeval over this business,” Margaret
+remarked, looking about her with interest. “What a quaint courtyard,
+too! It really is quite Italian.”
+
+“It seems almost incredible that you have never been here!” Lady Cynthia
+exclaimed. “Curiosity would have brought me if I had had to climb over
+the wall!”
+
+“It does seem absurd in one way,” Margaret agreed, “but, as a matter
+of fact, my father's attitude about the place has always rather set me
+against it. I didn't feel that there was any pleasure to be gained by
+coming here. I won't tell you really what I did think. We must keep to
+our bargain. We are not to anticipâté.”
+
+At the front entrance, under the covered portico, the white tickets
+which they had received in exchange for their tickets of invitation,
+were carefully collected by another man, who stopped the car a few yards
+from the broad, curving steps. After that, there was no more suggestion
+of inhospitality. The front doors, which were of enormous size and
+height, seemed to have been removed, and in the great domed hall beyond
+Sir Timothy was already receiving his guests. Being without wraps, the
+little party made an immediate entrance. Sir Timothy, who was talking to
+one of the best-known of the foreign ambassadors, took a step forward to
+meet them.
+
+“Welcome,” he said, “you, the most unique party, at least, amongst my
+guests. Prince, may I present you to my daughter, Mrs. Hilditch? Lady
+Cynthia Milton and Mr. Ledsam you know, I believe.”
+
+“Your father has just been preparing me for this pleasure,” the Prince
+remarked, with a smile. “I am delighted that his views as regards these
+wonderful parties are becoming a little more--would it be correct to say
+latitudinarian? He has certainly been very strict up to now.”
+
+“It is the first time I have been vouchsafed an invitation,” Margaret
+confessed.
+
+“You will find much to interest you,” the Prince observed. “For myself,
+I love the sport of which your father is so noble a patron. That,
+without doubt, though, is a side of his entertainment of which you will
+know nothing.”
+
+Sir Timothy, choosing a moment's respite from the inflowing stream of
+guests, came once more across to them.
+
+“I am going to leave you, my honoured guests from The Sanctuary,” he
+said, with a faint smile, “to yourselves for a short time. In the room
+to your left, supper is being served. In front is the dancing-gallery.
+To the right, as you see, is the lounge leading into the winter-garden.
+The gymnasium is closed until midnight. Any other part of the place
+please explore at your leisure, but I am going to ask you one thing.
+I want you to meet me in a room which I will show you, at a quarter to
+twelve.”
+
+He led them down one of the corridors which opened from the hall. Before
+the first door on the right a man-servant was standing as though
+on sentry duty. Sir Timothy tapped the panel of the door with his
+forefinger.
+
+“This is my sanctum,” he announced. “I allow no one in here without
+special permission. I find it useful to have a place to which one can
+come and rest quite quietly sometimes. Williams here has no other duty
+except to guard the entrance. Williams, you will allow this gentleman
+and these two ladies to pass in at a quarter to twelve.”
+
+The man looked at them searchingly.
+
+“Certainly, sir,” he said. “No one else?”
+
+“No one, under any pretext.”
+
+Sir Timothy hurried back to the hall, and the others followed him in
+more leisurely fashion. They were all three full of curiosity.
+
+“I never dreamed,” Margaret declared, as she looked around her, “that
+I should ever find myself inside this house. It has always seemed to
+me like one great bluebeard's chamber. If ever my father spoke of it at
+all, it was as of a place which he intended to convert into a sort of
+miniature Hell.”
+
+Sir Timothy leaned back to speak to them as they passed.
+
+“You will find a friend over there, Ledsam,” he said.
+
+Wilmore turned around and faced them. The two men exchanged somewhat
+surprised greetings.
+
+“No idea that I was coming until this afternoon,” Wilmore explained. “I
+got my card at five o'clock, with a note from Sir Timothy's secretary. I
+am racking my brains to imagine what it can mean.”
+
+“We're all a little addled,” Francis confessed. “Come and join our
+tour of exploration. You know Lady Cynthia. Let me present you to Mrs.
+Hilditch.”
+
+The introduction was effected and they all, strolled on together.
+Margaret and Lady Cynthia led the way into the winter-garden, a palace
+of glass, tall palms, banks of exotics, flowering shrubs of every
+description, and a fountain, with wonderfully carved water nymphs,
+brought with its basin from Italy. Hidden in the foliage, a small
+orchestra was playing very softly. The atmosphere of the place was
+languorous and delicious.
+
+“Leave us here,” Margaret insisted, with a little exclamation of
+content. “Neither Cynthia nor I want to go any further. Come back and
+fetch us in time for our appointment.”
+
+The two men wandered off. The place was indeed a marvel of architecture,
+a country house, of which only the shell remained, modernised and made
+wonderful by the genius of a great architect. The first room which
+they entered when they left the winter-garden, was as large as a small
+restaurant, panelled in cream colour, with a marvellous ceiling. There
+were tables of various sizes laid for supper, rows of champagne bottles
+in ice buckets, and servants eagerly waiting for orders. Already a
+sprinkling of the guests had found their way here. The two men crossed
+the floor to the cocktail bar in the far corner, behind which a familiar
+face grinned at them. It was Jimmy, the bartender from Soto's, who stood
+there with a wonderful array of bottles on a walnut table.
+
+“If it were not a perfectly fatuous question, I should ask what you were
+doing here, Jimmy?” Francis remarked.
+
+“I always come for Sir Timothy's big parties, sir,” Jimmy explained.
+“Your first visit, isn't it, sir?”
+
+“My first,” Francis assented.
+
+“And mine,” his companion echoed.
+
+“What can I have the pleasure of making for you, sir?” the man enquired.
+
+“A difficult question,” Francis admitted. “It is barely an hour and a
+half since we finished dinner. On the other hand, we are certainly going
+to have some supper some time or other.”
+
+Jimmy nodded understandingly.
+
+“Leave it to me, sir,” he begged.
+
+He served them with a foaming white concoction in tall glasses. A
+genuine lime bobbed up and down in the liquid.
+
+“Sir Timothy has the limes sent over from his own estate in South
+America,” Jimmy announced. “You will find some things in that drink you
+don't often taste.”
+
+The two men sipped their beverage and pronounced it delightful. Jimmy
+leaned a little across the table.
+
+“A big thing on to-night, isn't there, sir?” he asked cautiously.
+
+“Is there?” Francis replied. “You mean--?”
+
+Jimmy motioned towards the open window, close to which the river was
+flowing by.
+
+“You going down, sir?”
+
+Francis shook his head dubiously.
+
+“Where to?”
+
+The bartender looked with narrowed eyes from one to the other of the two
+men. Then he suddenly froze up. Wilmore leaned a little further over the
+impromptu counter.
+
+“Jimmy,” he asked, “what goes on here besides dancing and boxing and
+gambling?”
+
+“I never heard of any gambling,” Jimmy answered, shaking his head. “Sir
+Timothy doesn't care about cards being played here at all.”
+
+“What is the principal entertainment, then?” Francis demanded. “The
+boxing?”
+
+The bartender shook his head.
+
+“No one understands very much about this house, sir,” he said, “except
+that it offers the most wonderful entertainment in Europe. That is
+for the guests to find out, though. We servants have to attend to our
+duties. Will you let me mix you another drink, sir?”
+
+“No, thanks,” Francis answered. “The last was too good to spoil. But you
+haven't answered my question, Jimmy. What did you mean when you asked if
+we were going down?”
+
+Jimmy's face had become wooden.
+
+“I meant nothing, sir,” he said. “Sorry I spoke.”
+
+The two men turned away. They recognised many acquaintances in the
+supper-room, and in the long gallery beyond, where many couples were
+dancing now to the music of a wonderful orchestra. By slow stages
+they made their way back to the winter-garden, where Lady Cynthia and
+Margaret were still lost in admiration of their surroundings. They all
+walked the whole length of the place. Beyond, down a flight of stone
+steps, was a short, paved way to the river. A large electric launch
+was moored at the quay. The grounds outside were dimly illuminated with
+cunningly-hidden electric lights shining through purple-coloured globes
+into the cloudy darkness. In the background, enveloping the whole of the
+house and reaching to the river on either side, the great wall loomed
+up, unlit, menacing almost in its suggestions. A couple of loiterers
+stood within a few yards of them, looking at the launch.
+
+“There she is, ready for her errand, whatever it may be,” one said to
+the other curiously. “We couldn't play the stowaway, I suppose, could
+we?”
+
+“Dicky Bell did that once,” the other answered. “Sir Timothy has only
+one way with intruders. He was thrown into the river and jolly nearly
+drowned.”
+
+The two men passed out of hearing.
+
+“I wonder what part the launch plays in the night's entertainment,”
+ Wilmore observed.
+
+Francis shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“I have given up wondering,” he said. “Margaret, do you hear that
+music?”
+
+She laughed.
+
+“Are we really to dance?” she murmured. “Do you want to make a girl of
+me again?”
+
+“Well, I shouldn't be a magician, should I?” he answered.
+
+They passed into the ballroom and danced for some time. The music was
+seductive and perfect, without any of the blatant notes of too many of
+the popular orchestras. The floor seemed to sway under their feet.
+
+“This is a new joy come back into life!” Margaret exclaimed, as they
+rested for a moment.
+
+“The first of many,” he assured her.
+
+They stood in the archway between the winter-garden and the
+dancing-gallery, from which they could command a view of the passing
+crowds. Francis scanned the faces of the men and women with intense
+interest. Many of them were known to him by sight, others were
+strangers. There was a judge, a Cabinet Minister, various members of the
+aristocracy, a sprinkling from the foreign legations, and although the
+stage was not largely represented, there were one or two well-known
+actors. The guests seemed to belong to no universal social order, but to
+Francis, watching them almost eagerly, they all seemed to have something
+of the same expression, the same slight air of weariness, of restless
+and unsatisfied desires.
+
+“I can't believe that the place is real, or that these people we see are
+not supers,” Margaret whispered.
+
+“I feel every moment that a clock will strike and that it will all fade
+away.”
+
+“I'm afraid I'm too material for such imaginings,” Francis replied, “but
+there is a quaintly artificial air about it all. We must go and look for
+Wilmore and Lady Cynthia.”
+
+They turned back into the enervating atmosphere of the winter-garden,
+and came suddenly face to face with Sir Timothy, who had escorted a
+little party of his guests to see the fountain, and was now returning
+alone.
+
+“You have been dancing, I am glad to see,” the latter observed. “I trust
+that you are amusing yourselves?”
+
+“Excellently, thank you,” Francis replied.
+
+“And so far,” Sir Timothy went on, with a faint smile, “you find my
+entertainment normal? You have no question yet which you would like to
+ask?”
+
+“Only one--what do you do with your launch up the river on moonless
+nights, Sir Timothy?”
+
+Sir Timothy's momentary silence was full of ominous significance.
+
+“Mr. Ledsam,” he said, after a brief pause, “I have given you almost
+carte blanche to explore my domains here. Concerning the launch,
+however, I think that you had better ask no questions at present.”
+
+“You are using it to-night?” Francis persisted.
+
+“Will you come and see, my venturesome guest?”
+
+“With great pleasure,” was the prompt reply.
+
+Sir Timothy glanced at his watch.
+
+“That,” he said, “is one of the matters of which we will speak at a
+quarter to twelve. Meanwhile, let me show you something. It may amuse
+you as it has done me.”
+
+The three moved back towards one of the arched openings which led into
+the ballroom.
+
+“Observe, if you please,” their host continued, “the third couple who
+pass us. The girl is wearing green--the very little that she does wear.
+Watch the man, and see if he reminds you of any one.”
+
+Francis did as he was bidden. The girl was a well-known member of the
+chorus of one of the principal musical comedies, and she seemed to be
+thoroughly enjoying both the dance and her partner. The latter appeared
+to be of a somewhat ordinary type, sallow, with rather puffy cheeks, and
+eyes almost unnaturally dark. He danced vigorously and he talked all the
+time. Something about him was vaguely familiar to Francis, but he failed
+to place him.
+
+“Notwithstanding all my precautions,” Sir Timothy continued, “there,
+fondly believing himself to be unnoticed, is an emissary of
+Scotland Yard. Really, of all the obvious, the dry-as-dust,
+hunt-your-criminal-by-rule-of-three kind of people I ever met, the class
+of detective to which this man belongs can produce the most blatant
+examples.”
+
+“What are you going to do about him?” Francis asked.
+
+Sir Timothy shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“I have not yet made up my mind,” he said. “I happen to know that he
+has been laying his plans for weeks to get here, frequenting Soto's and
+other restaurants, and scraping acquaintances with some of my friends.
+The Duke of Tadchester brought him--won a few hundreds from him at
+baccarat, I suppose. His grace will never again find these doors open to
+him.”
+
+Francis' attention had wandered. He was gazing fixedly at the man whom
+Sir Timothy had pointed out.
+
+“You still do not fully recognise our friend,” the latter observed
+carelessly. “He calls himself Manuel Loito, and he professes to be
+a Cuban. His real name I understood, when you introduced us, to be
+Shopland.”
+
+“Great heavens, so it is!” Francis exclaimed.
+
+“Let us leave him to his precarious pleasures,” Sir Timothy suggested.
+“I am free for a few moments. We will wander round together.”
+
+They found Lady Cynthia and Wilmore, and looked in at the supper-room,
+where people were waiting now for tables, a babel of sound and gaiety.
+The grounds and winter-gardens were crowded. Their guide led the way to
+a large apartment on the other side of the hall, from which the sound of
+music was proceeding.
+
+“My theatre,” he said. “I wonder what is going on.”
+
+They passed inside. There was a small stage with steps leading down to
+the floor, easy-chairs and round tables everywhere, and waiters serving
+refreshments. A girl was dancing. Sir Timothy watched her approvingly.
+
+“Nadia Ellistoff,” he told them. “She was in the last Russian ballet,
+and she is waiting now for the rest of the company to start again at
+Covent Garden. You see, it is Metzger who plays there. They improvise.
+Rather a wonderful performance, I think.”
+
+They watched her breathlessly, a spirit in grey tulle, with great black
+eyes now and then half closed.
+
+“It is 'Wind before Dawn,'” Lady Cynthia whispered. “I heard him play it
+two days after he composed it, only there are variations now. She is the
+soul of the south wind.”
+
+The curtain went down amidst rapturous applause. The dancer had left the
+stage, floating away into some sort of wonderfully-contrived nebulous
+background. Within a few moments, the principal comedian of the day was
+telling stories. Sir Timothy led them away.
+
+“But how on earth do you get all these people?” Lady Cynthia asked.
+
+“It is arranged for me,” Sir Timothy replied. “I have an agent who sees
+to it all. Every man or woman who is asked to perform, has a credit at
+Cartier's for a hundred guineas. I pay no fees. They select some little
+keepsake.”
+
+Margaret laughed softly.
+
+“No wonder they call this place a sort of Arabian Nights!” she declared.
+
+“Well, there isn't much else for you to see,” Sir Timothy said
+thoughtfully. “My gymnasium, which is one of the principal features
+here, is closed just now for a special performance, of which I will
+speak in a moment. The concert hall I see they are using for an overflow
+dance-room. What you have seen, with the grounds and the winter-garden,
+comprises almost everything.”
+
+They moved back through the hall with difficulty. People were now
+crowding in. Lady Cynthia laughed softly.
+
+“Why, it is like a gala night at the Opera, Sir Timothy!” she exclaimed.
+“How dare you pretend that this is Bohemia!”
+
+“It has never been I who have described my entertainments,” he reminded
+her. “They have been called everything--orgies, debauches--everything
+you can think of. I have never ventured myself to describe them.”
+
+Their passage was difficult. Every now and then Sir Timothy was
+compelled to shake hands with some of his newly-arriving guests. At
+last, however, they reached the little sitting-room. Sir Timothy turned
+back to Wilmore, who hesitated.
+
+“You had better come in, too, Mr. Wilmore, if you will,” he invited.
+“You were with Ledsam, the first day we met, and something which I have
+to say now may interest you.”
+
+“If I am not intruding,” Wilmore murmured.
+
+They entered the room, still jealously guarded. Sir Timothy closed the
+door behind them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+The apartment was one belonging to the older portion of the house,
+and had been, in fact, an annex to the great library. The walls were
+oak-panelled, and hung with a collection of old prints. There were some
+easy-chairs, a writing-table, and some well-laden bookcases. There
+were one or two bronze statues of gladiators, a wonderful study of two
+wrestlers, no minor ornaments. Sir Timothy plunged at once into what he
+had to say.
+
+“I promised you, Lady Cynthia, and you, Ledsam,” he said, “to divulge
+exactly the truth as regards these much-talked-of entertainments here.
+You, Margaret, under present circumstances, are equally interested. You,
+Wilmore, are Ledsam's friend, and you happen to have an interest in this
+particular party. Therefore, I am glad to have you all here together.
+The superficial part of my entertainment you have seen. The part which
+renders it necessary for me to keep closed doors, I shall now explain.
+I give prizes here of considerable value for boxing contests which are
+conducted under rules of our own. One is due to take place in a very few
+minutes. The contests vary in character, but I may say that the chief
+officials of the National Sporting Club are usually to be found here,
+only, of course, in an unofficial capacity. The difference between the
+contests arranged by me, and others, is that my men are here to fight.
+They use sometimes an illegal weight of glove and they sometimes hurt
+one another. If any two of the boxing fraternity have a grudge against
+one another, and that often happens, they are permitted here to fight
+it out, under the strictest control as regards fairness, but practically
+without gloves at all. You heard of the accident, for instance, to
+Norris? That happened in my gymnasium. He was knocked out by Burgin. It
+was a wonderful fight.
+
+“However, I pass on. There is another class of contest which frequently
+takes place here. Two boxers place themselves unreservedly in my hands.
+The details of the match are arranged without their knowledge. They come
+into the ring without knowing whom they are going to fight. Sometimes
+they never know, for my men wear masks. Then we have private matches.
+There is one to-night. Lord Meadowson and I have a wager of a thousand
+guineas. He has brought to-night from the East End a boxer who,
+according to the terms of our bet, has never before engaged in
+a professional contest. I have brought an amateur under the same
+conditions. The weight is within a few pounds the same, neither has ever
+seen the other, only in this case the fight is with regulation gloves
+and under Queensberry rules.”
+
+“Who is your amateur, Sir Timothy?” Wilmore asked harshly.
+
+“Your brother, Mr. Wilmore,” was the prompt reply. “You shall see the
+fight if I have your promise not to attempt in any way to interfere.”
+
+Wilmore rose to his feet.
+
+“Do you mean to tell me,” he demanded, “that my brother has been decoyed
+here, kept here against his will, to provide amusement for your guests?”
+
+“Mr. Wilmore, I beg that you will be reasonable,” Sir Timothy
+expostulated. “I saw your brother box at his gymnasium in Holborn. My
+agent made him the offer of this fight. One of my conditions had to
+be that he came here to train and that whilst he was here he held no
+communication whatever with the outside world. My trainer has ideas of
+his own and this he insists upon. Your brother in the end acquiesced.
+He was at first difficult to deal with as regards this condition, and
+he did, in fact, I believe, Mr. Ledsam, pay a visit to your office, with
+the object of asking you to become an intermediary between him and his
+relatives.”
+
+“He began a letter to me,” Francis interposed, “and then mysteriously
+disappeared.”
+
+“The mystery is easily explained,” Sir Timothy continued. “My trainer,
+Roger Hagon, a Varsity blue, and the best heavyweight of his year,
+occupies the chambers above yours. He saw from the window the arrival of
+Reginald Wilmore--which was according to instructions, as they were to
+come down to Hatch End together--went down the stairs to meet him,
+and, to cut a long story short, fetched him out of your office, Ledsam,
+without allowing him to finish his letter. This absolute isolation
+seems a curious condition, perhaps, but Hagon insists upon it, and I can
+assure you that he knows his business. The mystery, as you have termed
+it, of his disappearance that morning, is that he went upstairs with
+Hagon for several hours to undergo a medical examination, instead of
+leaving the building forthwith.”
+
+“Queer thing I never thought of Hagon,” Francis remarked. “As a matter
+of fact, I never see him in the Temple, and I thought that he had left.”
+
+“May I ask,” Wilmore intervened, “when my brother will be free to return
+to his home?”
+
+“To-night, directly the fight is over,” Sir Timothy replied. “Should he
+be successful, he will take with him a sum of money sufficient to start
+him in any business he chooses to enter.”
+
+Wilmore frowned slightly.
+
+“But surely,” he protested, “that would make him a professional
+pugilist?”
+
+“Not at all,” Sir Timothy replied. “For one thing, the match is a
+private one in a private house, and for another the money is a gift.
+There is no purse. If your brother loses, he gets nothing. Will you see
+the fight, Mr. Wilmore?”
+
+“Yes, I will see it,” was the somewhat reluctant assent.
+
+“You will give me your word not to interfere in any way?”
+
+“I shall not interfere,” Wilmore promised. “If they are wearing
+regulation gloves, and the weights are about equal, and the conditions
+are what you say, it is the last thing I should wish to do.”
+
+“Capital!” Sir Timothy exclaimed. “Now to pass on. There is one other
+feature of my entertainments concerning which I have something to say--a
+series of performances which takes place on my launch at odd times.
+There is one fixed for tonight. I can say little about it except that
+it is unusual. I am going to ask you, Lady Cynthia, and you, Ledsam, to
+witness it. When you have seen that, you know everything. Then you and
+I, Ledsam, can call one another's hands. I shall have something else to
+say to you, but that is outside the doings here.”
+
+“Are we to see the fight in the gymnasium?” Lady Cynthia enquired.
+
+Sir Timothy shook his head.
+
+“I do not allow women there under any conditions,” he said. “You and
+Margaret had better stay here whilst that takes place. It will probably
+be over in twenty minutes. It will be time then for us to find our way
+to the launch. After that, if you have any appetite, supper. I will
+order some caviare sandwiches for you,” Sir Timothy went on, ringing the
+bell, “and some wine.”
+
+Lady Cynthia smiled.
+
+“It is really a very wonderful party,” she murmured.
+
+Their host ushered the two men across the hall, now comparatively
+deserted, for every one had settled down to his or her chosen
+amusement--down a long passage, through a private door which he unlocked
+with a Yale key, and into the gymnasium. There were less than fifty
+spectators seated around the ring, and Francis, glancing at them
+hastily, fancied that he recognised nearly every one of them. There was
+Baker, a judge, a couple of actors, Lord Meadowson, the most renowned of
+sporting peers, and a dozen who followed in his footsteps; a little man
+who had once been amateur champion in the bantam class, and who was
+now considered the finest judge of boxing in the world; a theatrical
+manager, the present amateur boxing champion, and a sprinkling of
+others. Sir Timothy and his companions took their chairs amidst a
+buzz of welcome. Almost immediately, the man who was in charge of the
+proceedings, and whose name was Harrison, rose from his place.
+
+“Gentlemen,” he said, “this is a sporting contest, but one under unusual
+rules and unusual conditions. An amateur, who tips the scales at twelve
+stone seven, who has never engaged in a boxing contest in his life, is
+matched against a young man from a different sphere of life, who intends
+to adopt the ring as his profession, but who has never as yet fought in
+public. Names, gentlemen, as you know, are seldom mentioned here. I will
+only say that the first in the ring is the nominee of our friend and
+host, Sir Timothy Brast; second comes the nominee of Lord Meadowson.”
+
+Wilmore, notwithstanding his pre-knowledge, gave a little gasp. The
+young man who stood now within a few yards of him, carelessly swinging
+his gloves in his hand, was without a doubt his missing brother. He
+looked well and in the pink of condition; not only well but entirely
+confident and at his ease. His opponent, on the other hand, a sturdier
+man, a few inches shorter, was nervous and awkward, though none the less
+determined-looking. Sir Timothy rose and whispered in Harrison's
+ear. The latter nodded. In a very few moments the preliminaries were
+concluded, the fight begun.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Francis, glad of a moment or two's solitude in which to rearrange his
+somewhat distorted sensations, found an empty space in the stern of the
+launch and stood leaning over the rail. His pulses were still tingling
+with the indubitable excitement of the last half-hour. It was all there,
+even now, before his eyes like a cinematograph picture--the duel between
+those two men, a duel of knowledge, of strength, of science, of courage.
+From beginning to end, there had been no moment when Francis had felt
+that he was looking on at what was in any way a degrading or immoral
+spectacle. Each man had fought in his way to win. Young Wilmore,
+graceful as a panther, with a keen, joyous desire of youth for supremacy
+written in his face and in the dogged lines of his mouth; the budding
+champion from the East End less graceful, perhaps, but with even more
+strength and at least as much determination, had certainly done his best
+to justify his selection. There were no points to be scored. There
+had been no undue feinting, no holding, few of the tricks of the
+professional ring. It was a fight to a finish, or until Harrison gave
+the word. And the better man had won. But even that knock-out blow which
+Reggie Wilmore had delivered after a wonderful feint, had had little
+that was cruel in it. There was something beautiful almost in the
+strength and grace with which it had been delivered--the breathless
+eagerness, the waiting, the end.
+
+Francis felt a touch upon his arm and looked around. A tall, sad-faced
+looking woman, whom he had noticed with a vague sense of familiarity in
+the dancing-room, was standing by his side.
+
+“You have forgotten me, Mr. Ledsam,” she said.
+
+“For the moment,” he admitted.
+
+“I am Isabel Culbridge,” she told him, watching his face.
+
+“Lady Isabel?” Francis repeated incredulously. “But surely--”
+
+“Better not contradict me,” she interrupted. “Look again.”
+
+Francis looked again.
+
+“I am very sorry,” he said. “It is some time, is it not, since we met?”
+
+She stood by his side, and for a few moments neither of them spoke. The
+little orchestra in the bows had commenced to play softly, but there
+was none of the merriment amongst the handful of men and women generally
+associated with a midnight river picnic. The moon was temporarily
+obscured, and it seemed as though some artist's hand had so dealt with
+the few electric lights that the men, with their pale faces and white
+shirt-fronts, and the three or four women, most of them, as it happened,
+wearing black, were like some ghostly figures in some sombre procession.
+Only the music kept up the pretence that this was in any way an ordinary
+excursion. Amongst the human element there was an air of tenseness which
+seemed rather to increase as they passed into the shadowy reaches of the
+river.
+
+“You have been ill, I am afraid?” Francis said tentatively.
+
+“If you will,” she answered, “but my illness is of the soul. I have
+become one of a type,” she went on, “of which you will find many
+examples here. We started life thinking that it was clever to despise
+the conventional and the known and to seek always for the daring and the
+unknown. New experiences were what we craved for. I married a wonderful
+husband. I broke his heart and still looked for new things. I had a
+daughter of whom I was fond--she ran away with my chauffeur and left me;
+a son whom I adored, and he was killed in the war; a lover who told
+me that he worshipped me, who spent every penny I had and made me the
+laughing-stock of town. I am still looking for new things.”
+
+“Sir Timothy's parties are generally supposed to provide them,” Francis
+observed.
+
+The woman shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“So far they seem very much like anybody's else,” she said. “The fight
+might have been amusing, but no women were allowed. The rest was very
+wonderful in its way, but that is all. I am still hoping for what we are
+to see downstairs.”
+
+They heard Sir Timothy's voice a few yards away, and turned to look at
+him. He had just come from below, and had paused opposite a man who had
+been standing a little apart from the others, one of the few who was
+wearing an overcoat, as though he felt the cold. In the background were
+the two servants who had guarded the gangway.
+
+“Mr. Manuel Loito,” Sir Timothy said--“or shall I say Mr. Shopland?--my
+invited guests are welcome. I have only one method of dealing with
+uninvited ones.”
+
+The two men suddenly stepped forward. Shopland made no protest,
+attempted no struggle. They lifted him off his feet as though he were a
+baby, and a moment later there was a splash in the water. They threw a
+life-belt after him.
+
+“Always humane, you see,” Sir Timothy remarked, as he leaned over the
+side. “Ah! I see that even in his overcoat our friend is swimmer enough
+to reach the bank. You find our methods harsh, Ledsam?” he asked,
+turning a challenging gaze towards the latter.
+
+Francis, who had been watching Shopland come to the surface, shrugged
+his shoulders. He delayed answering for a moment while he watched the
+detective, disdaining the life-belt, swim to the opposite shore.
+
+“I suppose that under the circumstances,” Francis said, “he was prepared
+to take his risk.”
+
+“You should know best about that,” Sir Timothy rejoined. “I wonder
+whether you would mind looking after Lady Cynthia? I shall be busy for a
+few moments.”
+
+Francis stepped across the deck towards where Lady Cynthia had been
+sitting by her host's side. They had passed into the mouth of a
+tree-hung strip of the river. The engine was suddenly shut off. A gong
+was sounded. There was a murmur, almost a sob of relief, as the little
+sprinkling of men and women rose hastily to their feet and made their
+way towards the companion-way. Downstairs, in the saloon, with its white
+satinwood panels and rows of swing chairs, heavy curtains were drawn
+across the portholes, all outside light was shut out from the place. At
+the further end, raised slightly from the floor, was a sanded circle.
+Sir Timothy made his way to one of the pillars by its side and turned
+around to face the little company of his guests. His voice, though it
+seemed scarcely raised above a whisper, was extraordinarily clear and
+distinct. Even Francis, who, with Lady Cynthia, had found seats only
+just inside the door, could hear every word he said.
+
+“My friends,” he began, “you have often before been my guests at such
+small fights as we have been able to arrange in as unorthodox a manner
+as possible between professional boxers. There has been some novelty
+about them, but on the last occasion I think it was generally
+observed that they had become a little too professional, a little
+ultra-scientific. There was something which they lacked. With that
+something I am hoping to provide you to-night. Thank you, Sir Edgar,” he
+murmured, leaning down towards his neighbour.
+
+He held his cigarette in the flame of a match which the other had
+kindled. Francis, who was watching intently, was puzzled at the
+expression with which for a moment, as he straightened himself, Sir
+Timothy glanced down the room, seeking for Lady Cynthia's eyes. In
+a sense it was as though he were seeking for something he
+needed--approbation, sympathy, understanding.
+
+“Our hobby, as you know, has been reality,” he continued. “That is what
+we have not always been able to achieve. Tonight I offer you reality.
+There are two men here, one an East End coster, the other an Italian
+until lately associated with an itinerant vehicle of musical production.
+These two men have not outlived sensation as I fancy so many of us
+have. They hate one another to the death. I forget their surnames,
+but Guiseppe has stolen Jim's girl, is living with her at the present
+moment, and proposes to keep her. Jim has sworn to have the lives of
+both of them. Jim's career, in its way, is interesting to us. He has
+spent already six years in prison for manslaughter, and a year for
+a brutal assault upon a constable. Guiseppe was tried in his native
+country for a particularly fiendish murder, and escaped, owing, I
+believe, to some legal technicality. That, however, has nothing to do
+with the matter. These men have sworn to fight to the death, and
+the girl, I understand, is willing to return to Jim if he should be
+successful, or to remain with Guiseppe if he should show himself able
+to retain her. The fight between these men, my friends, has been
+transferred from Seven Dials for your entertainment. It will take place
+before you here and now.”
+
+There was a little shiver amongst the audience. Francis, almost to his
+horror, was unable to resist the feeling of queer excitement which stole
+through his veins. A few yards away, Lady Isabel seemed to have become
+transformed. She was leaning forward in her chair, her eyes glowing,
+her lips parted, rejuvenated, dehumanised. Francis' immediate companion,
+however, rather surprised him. Her eyes were fixed intently upon Sir
+Timothy's. She seemed to have been weighing every word he had spoken.
+There was none of that hungry pleasure in her face which shone from the
+other woman's and was reflected in the faces of many of the others. She
+seemed to be bracing herself for a shock. Sir Timothy looked over his
+shoulder towards the door which opened upon the sanded space.
+
+“You can bring your men along,” he directed.
+
+One of the attendants promptly made his appearance. He was holding
+tightly by the arm a man of apparently thirty years of age, shabbily
+dressed, barefooted, without collar or necktie, with a mass of black
+hair which looked as though it had escaped the care of any barber for
+many weeks. His complexion was sallow; he had high cheekbones and a
+receding chin, which gave him rather the appearance of a fox. He shrank
+a little from the lights as though they hurt his eyes, and all the time
+he looked furtively back to the door, through which in a moment or two
+his rival was presently escorted. The latter was a young man of stockier
+build, ill-conditioned, and with the brutal face of the lowest of his
+class. Two of his front teeth were missing, and there was a livid mark
+on the side of his cheek. He looked neither to the right nor to the
+left. His eyes were fixed upon the other man, and they looked death.
+
+“The gentleman who first appeared,” Sir Timothy observed, stepping up
+into the sanded space but still half facing the audience, “is Guiseppe,
+the Lothario of this little act. The other is Jim, the wronged
+husband. You know their story. Now, Jim,” he added, turning towards
+the Englishman, “I put in your trousers pocket these notes, two hundred
+pounds, you will perceive. I place in the trousers pocket of Guiseppe
+here notes to the same amount. I understand you have a little quarrel to
+fight out. The one who wins will naturally help himself to the other's
+money, together with that other little reward which I imagine was the
+first cause of your quarrel. Now... let them go.”
+
+Sir Timothy resumed his seat and leaned back in leisurely fashion. The
+two attendants solemnly released their captives. There was a moment's
+intense silence. The two men seemed fencing for position. There was
+something stealthy and horrible about their movements as they crept
+around one another. Francis realised what it was almost as the little
+sobbing breath from those of the audience who still retained any
+emotion, showed him that they, too, foresaw what was going to happen.
+Both men had drawn knives from their belts. It was murder which had been
+let loose.
+
+Francis found himself almost immediately upon his feet. His whole being
+seemed crying out for interference. Lady Cynthia's death-white face and
+pleading eyes seemed like the echo of his own passionate aversion to
+what was taking place. Then he met Sir Timothy's gaze across the room
+and he remembered his promise. Under no conditions was he to protest
+or interfere. He set his teeth and resumed his seat. The fight went
+on. There were little sobs and tremors of excitement, strange banks of
+silence. Both men seemed out of condition. The sound of their hoarse
+breathing was easily heard against the curtain of spellbound silence.
+For a time their knives stabbed the empty air, but from the first the
+end seemed certain. The Englishman attacked wildly. His adversary waited
+his time, content with avoiding the murderous blows struck at him,
+striving all the time to steal underneath the other's guard. And then,
+almost without warning, it was all over. Jim was on his back in a
+crumpled heap. There was a horrid stain upon his coat. The other man
+was kneeling by his side, hate, glaring out of his eyes, guiding all
+the time the rising and falling of his knife. There was one more
+shriek--then silence only the sound of the victor's breathing as he rose
+slowly from his ghastly task. Sir Timothy rose to his feet and waved his
+hand. The curtain went down.
+
+“On deck, if you please, ladies and gentlemen,” he said calmly.
+
+No one stirred. A woman began to sob. A fat, unhealthy-looking man in
+front of Francis reeled over in a dead faint. Two other of the guests
+near had risen from their seats and were shouting aimlessly like
+lunatics. Even Francis was conscious of that temporary imprisonment of
+the body due to his lacerated nerves. Only the clinging of Lady Cynthia
+to his arm kept him from rushing from the spot.
+
+“You are faint?” he whispered hoarsely.
+
+“Upstairs--air,” she faltered.
+
+They rose to their feet. The sound of Sir Timothy's voice reached them
+as they ascended the stairs.
+
+“On deck, every one, if you please,” he insisted. “Refreshments are
+being served there. There are inquisitive people who watch my launch,
+and it is inadvisable to remain here long.”
+
+People hurried out then as though their one desire was to escape from
+the scene of the tragedy. Lady Cynthia, still clinging to Francis' arm,
+led him to the furthermost corner of the launch. There were real tears
+in her eyes, her breath was coming in little sobs.
+
+“Oh, it was horrible!” she cried. “Horrible! Mr. Ledsam--I can't help
+it--I never want to speak to Sir Timothy again!”
+
+One final horror arrested for a moment the sound of voices. There was
+a dull splash in the river. Something had been thrown overboard. The
+orchestra began to play dance music. Conversation suddenly burst out.
+Every one was hysterical. A Peer of the Realm, red-eyed and shaking
+like an aspen leaf, was drinking champagne out of the bottle. Every
+one seemed to be trying to outvie the other in loud conversation, in
+outrageous mirth. Lady Isabel, with a glass of champagne in her hand,
+leaned back towards Francis.
+
+“Well,” she asked, “how are you feeling, Mr. Ledsam?”
+
+“As though I had spent half-an-hour in Hell,” he answered.
+
+She screamed with laughter.
+
+“Hear this man,” she called out, “who will send any poor ragamuffin to
+the gallows if his fee is large enough! Of course,” she added, turning
+back to him, “I ought to remember you are a normal person and to-night's
+entertainment was not for normal persons. For myself I am grateful
+to Sir Timothy. For a few moments of this aching aftermath of life, I
+forgot.”
+
+Suddenly all the lights around the launch flamed out, the music stopped.
+Sir Timothy came up on deck. On either side of him was a man in ordinary
+dinner clothes. The babel of voices ceased. Everyone was oppressed by
+some vague likeness. A breathless silence ensued.
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen,” Sir Timothy said, and once more the smile upon
+his lips assumed its most mocking curve, “let me introduce you to the
+two artists who have given us to-night such a realistic performance,
+Signor Guiseppe Elito and Signor Carlos Marlini. I had the good
+fortune,” he went on, “to witness this very marvellous performance in a
+small music-hall at Palermo, and I was able to induce the two actors to
+pay us a visit over here. Steward, these gentlemen will take a glass of
+champagne.”
+
+The two Sicilians raised their glasses and bowed expectantly to the
+little company. They received, however, a much greater tribute to their
+performance than the applause which they had been expecting. There
+reigned everywhere a deadly, stupefied silence. Only a half-stifled sob
+broke from Lady Cynthia's lips as she leaned over the rail, her face
+buried in her hands, her whole frame shaking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+Francis and Margaret sat in the rose garden on the following morning.
+Their conversation was a little disjointed, as the conversation of
+lovers in a secluded and beautiful spot should be, but they came back
+often to the subject of Sir Timothy.
+
+“If I have misunderstood your father,” Francis, declared, “and I admit
+that I have, it has been to some extent his own fault. To me he was
+always the deliberate scoffer against any code of morals, a rebel
+against the law even if not a criminal in actual deeds. I honestly
+believed that The Walled House was the scene of disreputable orgies,
+that your father was behind Fairfax in that cold-blooded murder, and
+that he was responsible in some sinister way for the disappearance of
+Reggie Wilmore. Most of these things seem to have been shams, like the
+fight last night.”
+
+She moved uneasily in her place.
+
+“I am glad I did not see that,” she said, with a shiver.
+
+“I think,” he went on, “that the reason why your father insisted upon
+Lady Cynthia's and my presence there was that he meant it as a sort of
+allegory. Half the vices in life he claims are unreal.”
+
+Margaret passed her arm through his and leaned a little towards him.
+
+“If you knew just one thing I have never told you,” she confided, “I
+think that you would feel sorry for him. I do, more and more every day,
+because in a way that one thing is my fault.”
+
+Notwithstanding the warm sunshine, she suddenly shivered. Francis took
+her hands in his. They were cold and lifeless.
+
+“I know that one thing, dear,” he told her quietly.
+
+She looked at him stonily. There was a questioning fear in her eyes.
+
+“You know--”
+
+“I know that your father killed Oliver Hilditch.”
+
+She suddenly broke out into a stream of words. There was passion in her
+tone and in her eyes. She was almost the accuser.
+
+“My father was right, then!” she exclaimed. “He told me this morning
+that he believed that it was to you or to your friend at Scotland Yard
+that Walter had told his story. But you don't know you don't know how
+terrible the temptation was how--you see I say it quite coolly--how
+Oliver Hilditch deserved to die. He was trusted by my father in South
+America and he deceived him, he forged the letters which induced me to
+marry him. It was part of his scheme of revenge. This was the first time
+we had any of us met since. I told my father the truth that afternoon.
+He knew for the first time how my marriage came about. My husband had
+prayed me to keep silent. I refused. Then he became like a devil. We
+were there, we three, that night after you left, and Francis, as I live,
+if my father had not killed him, I should have!”
+
+“There was a time when I believed that you had,” he reminded her. “I
+didn't behave like a pedagogic upholder of the letter of the law then,
+did I?”
+
+She drew closer to him.
+
+“You were wonderful,” she whispered.
+
+“Dearest, your father has nothing to fear from me,” he assured her
+tenderly. “On the contrary, I think that I can show him the way to
+safety.”
+
+She rose impulsively to her feet.
+
+“He will be here directly,” she said. “He promised to come across at
+half-past twelve. Let us go and meet him. But, Francis--”
+
+For a single moment she crept into his arms. Their lips met, her eyes
+shone into his. He held her away from him a moment later. The change was
+amazing. She was no longer a tired woman. She had become a girl again.
+Her eyes were soft with happiness, the little lines had gone from about
+her mouth, she walked with all the spring of youth and happiness.
+
+“It is marvellous,” she whispered. “I never dreamed that I should ever
+be happy again.”
+
+They crossed the rustic bridge which led on to the lawn. Lady Cynthia
+came out of the house to meet them. She showed no signs of fatigue, but
+her eyes and her tone were full of anxiety.
+
+“Margaret,” she cried, “do you know that the hall is filled with your
+father's luggage, and that the car is ordered to take him to Southampton
+directly after lunch?”
+
+Margaret and Francis exchanged glances.
+
+“Sir Timothy may change his mind,” the latter observed. “I have news for
+him directly he arrives.”
+
+On the other side of the wall they heard the whinnying of the old mare,
+the sound of galloping feet from all directions.
+
+“Here he comes!” Lady Cynthia exclaimed. “I shall go and meet him.”
+
+Francis laid his hand upon her arm.
+
+“Let me have a word with him first,” he begged.
+
+She hesitated.
+
+“You are not going to say anything--that will make him want to go away?”
+
+“I am going to tell him something which I think will keep him at home.”
+
+Sir Timothy came through the postern-gate, a moment or two later. He
+waved his hat and crossed the lawn in their direction. Francis went
+alone to meet him and, as he drew near, was conscious of a little shock.
+His host, although he held himself bravely, seemed to have aged in the
+night.
+
+“I want one word with you, sir, in your study, please,” Francis said.
+
+Sir Timothy shrugged his shoulders and led the way. He turned to wave
+his hand once more to Margaret and Lady Cynthia, however, and he looked
+with approval at the luncheon-table which a couple of servants were
+laying under the cedar tree.
+
+“Wonderful thing, these alfresco meals,” he declared. “I hope Hedges
+won't forget the maraschino with the melons. Come into my den, Ledsam.”
+
+He led the way in courtly fashion. He was the ideal host leading a
+valued guest to his sanctum for a few moments' pleasant conversation.
+But when they arrived in the little beamed room and the door was closed,
+his manner changed. He looked searchingly, almost challengingly at
+Francis.
+
+“You have news for me?” he asked.
+
+“Yes!” Francis answered.
+
+Sir Timothy shrugged his shoulders. He threw himself a little wearily
+into an easy-chair. His hands strayed out towards a cigarette box. He
+selected one and lit it.
+
+“I expected your friend, Mr. Shopland,” he murmured. “I hope he is none
+the worse for his ducking.”
+
+“Shopland is a fool,” Francis replied. “He has nothing to do with this
+affair, anyway. I have something to give you, Sir Timothy.”
+
+He took the two papers from his pocket and handed them over.
+
+“I bought these from John Walter the day before yesterday,” he
+continued. “I gave him two hundred pounds for them. The money was just
+in time. He caught a steamer for Australia late in the afternoon. I had
+this wireless from him this morning.”
+
+Sir Timothy studied the two documents, read the wireless. There was
+little change in his face. Only for a single moment his lips quivered.
+
+“What does this mean?” he asked, rising to his feet with the documents
+in his hand.
+
+“It means that those papers are yours to do what you like with. I
+drafted the second one so that you should be absolutely secure against
+any further attempt at blackmail. As a matter of fact, though, Walter is
+on his last legs. I doubt whether he will live to land in Australia.”
+
+“You know that I killed Oliver Hilditch?” Sir Timothy said, his eyes
+fixed upon the other's.
+
+“I know that you killed Oliver Hilditch,” Francis repeated. “If I had
+been Margaret's father, I think that I should have done the same.”
+
+Sir Timothy seemed suddenly very much younger. The droop of his lips was
+no longer pathetic. There was a little humourous twitch there.
+
+“You, the great upholder of the law?” he murmured.
+
+“I have heard the story of Oliver Hilditch's life,” Francis replied. “I
+was partially responsible for saving him from the gallows. I repeat what
+I have said. And if you will--”
+
+He held out his hand. Sir Timothy hesitated for one moment. Instead of
+taking it, he laid his hand upon Francis' shoulder.
+
+“Ledsam,” he said, “we have thought wrong things of one another. I
+thought you a prig, moral to your finger-tips with the morality of the
+law and the small places. Perhaps I was tempted for that reason to give
+you a wrong impression of myself. But you must understand this. Though I
+have had my standard and lived up to it all my life, I am something of
+a black sheep. A man stole my wife. I did not trouble the Law Courts. I
+killed him.”
+
+“I have the blood of generations of lawyers in my veins,” Francis
+declared, “but I have read many a divorce case in which I think it would
+have been better and finer if the two men had met as you and that man
+met.”
+
+“I was born with the love of fighting in my bones,” Sir Timothy went
+on. “In my younger days, I fought in every small war in the southern
+hemisphere. I fought, as you know, in our own war. I have loved to see
+men fight honestly and fairly.”
+
+“It is a man's hobby,” Francis pronounced.
+
+“I encouraged you deliberately to think,” Sir Timothy went on, “what
+half the world thinks that--my parties at The Walled House were
+mysterious orgies of vice. They have, as a matter of fact, never been
+anything of the sort. The tragedies which are supposed to have taken
+place on my launch have been just as much mock tragedies as last
+night's, only I have not previously chosen to take the audiences into
+my confidence. The greatest pugilists in the world have fought in my
+gymnasium, often, if you will, under illegal conditions, but there has
+never been a fight that was not fair.”
+
+“I believe that,” Francis said.
+
+“And there is another matter for which I take some blame,” Sir Timothy
+went on, “the matter of Fairfax and Victor Bidlake. They were neither
+of them young men for whose loss the world is any the worse. Fairfax
+to some extent imposed upon me. He was brought to The Walled House by a
+friend who should have known better. He sought my confidence. The story
+he told was exactly that of the mock drama upon the launch. Bidlake had
+taken his wife. He had no wish to appeal to the Courts. He wished to
+fight, a point of view with which I entirely sympathised. I arranged a
+fight between the two. Bidlake funked it and never turned up. My advice
+to Fairfax was, whenever he met Bidlake, to give him the soundest
+thrashing he could. That night at Soto's I caught sight of Fairfax some
+time before dinner. He was talking to the woman who had been his wife,
+and he had evidently been drinking. He drew me on one side. 'To-night,'
+he told me, 'I am going to settle accounts with Bidlake.' 'Where?' I
+asked. 'Here,' he answered. He went out to the theatre, I upstairs to
+dine. That was the extent of the knowledge I possessed which enabled me
+to predict some unwonted happening that night. Fairfax was a bedrugged
+and bedrunken decadent who had not the courage afterwards to face what
+he had done. That is all.”
+
+The hand slipped from Francis' shoulder. Francis, with a smile, held
+out his own. They stood there for a moment with clasped hands--a queer,
+detached moment, as it seemed to Francis, in a life which during the
+last few months had been full of vivid sensations. From outside came
+the lazy sounds of the drowsy summer morning--the distant humming of
+a mowing machine, the drone of a reaper in the field beyond, the
+twittering of birds in the trees, even the soft lapping of the stream
+against the stone steps. The man whose hand he was holding seemed to
+Francis to have become somehow transformed. It was as though he had
+dropped a mask and were showing a more human, a more kindly self.
+Francis wondered no longer at the halting gallop of the horses in the
+field.
+
+“You'll be good to Margaret?” Sir Timothy begged. “She's had a wretched
+time.”
+
+Francis smiled confidently.
+
+“I'm going to make up for it, sir,” he promised. “And this South
+American trip,” he continued, as they turned towards the French windows,
+“you'll call that off?”
+
+Sir Timothy hesitated.
+
+“I am not quite sure.”
+
+When they reached the garden, Lady Cynthia was alone. She scarcely
+glanced at Francis. Her eyes were anxiously fixed upon his companion.
+
+“Margaret has gone in to make the cocktails herself,” she explained.
+“We have both sworn off absinthe for the rest of our lives, and we know
+Hedges can't be trusted to make one without.”
+
+“I'll go and help her,” Francis declared.
+
+Lady Cynthia passed her arm through Sir Timothy's.
+
+“I want to know about South America,” she begged. “The sight of those
+trunks worries me.”
+
+Sir Timothy's casual reply was obviously a subterfuge. They crossed the
+lawn and the rustic bridge, almost in silence, passing underneath the
+pergola of roses to the sheltered garden at the further end. Then Lady
+Cynthia paused.
+
+“You are not going to South America,” she pleaded, “alone?”
+
+Sir Timothy took her hands.
+
+“My dear,” he said, “listen, please, to my confession. I am a fraud.
+I am not a purveyor of new sensations for a decadent troop of weary,
+fashionable people. I am a fraud sometimes even to myself. I have had
+good luck in material things. I have had bad luck in the precious,
+the sentimental side of life. It has made something of an artificial
+character of me, on the surface at any rate. I am really a simple,
+elderly man who loves fresh air, clean, honest things, games, and a
+healthy life. I have no ambitions except those connected with sport. I
+don't even want to climb to the topmost niches in the world of finance.
+I think you have looked at me through the wrong-coloured spectacles. You
+have had a whimsical fancy for a character which does not exist.”
+
+“What I have seen,” Lady Cynthia answered, “I have seen through no
+spectacles at all--with my own eyes. But what I have seen, even, does
+not count. There is something else.”
+
+“I am within a few weeks of my fiftieth birthday,” Sir Timothy reminded
+her, “and you, I believe, are twenty-nine.”
+
+“My dear man,” Lady Cynthia assured him fervently, “you are the only
+person in the world who can keep me from feeling forty-nine.”
+
+“And your people--”
+
+“Heavens! My people, for the first time in their lives, will count me a
+brilliant success,” Lady Cynthia declared. “You'll probably have to
+lend dad money, and I shall be looked upon as the fairy child who has
+restored the family fortunes.”
+
+Sir Timothy leaned a little towards her.
+
+“Last of all,” he said, and this time his voice was not quite so steady,
+“are you really sure that you care for me, dear, because I have loved
+you so long, and I have wanted love so badly, and it is so hard to
+believe--”
+
+It was the moment, it seemed to her, for which she had prayed. She was
+in his arms, tired no longer, with all the splendid fire of life in her
+love-lit eyes and throbbing pulses. Around them the bees were humming,
+and a soft summer breeze shook the roses and brought little wafts of
+perfume from the carnation bed.
+
+“There is nothing in life,” Lady Cynthia murmured brokenly, “so
+wonderful as this.”
+
+Francis and Margaret came out from the house, the former carrying a
+silver tray. They had spent a considerable time over their task, but
+Lady Cynthia and Sir Timothy were still absent. Hedges followed them, a
+little worried.
+
+“Shall I ring the gong, madam?” he asked Margaret. “Cook has taken such
+pains with her omelette.”
+
+“I think you had better, Hedges,” Margaret assented.
+
+The gong rang out--and rang again. Presently Lady Cynthia and Sir
+Timothy appeared upon the bridge and crossed the lawn. They were walking
+a little apart. Lady Cynthia was looking down at some roses which she
+had gathered. Sir Timothy's unconcern seemed a trifle overdone. Margaret
+laughed very softly.
+
+“A stepmother, Francis!” she whispered. “Just fancy Cynthia as a
+stepmother!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Evil Shepherd, by E. Phillips Oppenheim
+
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