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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evil Shepherd, by E. Phillips Oppenheim

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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

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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!”










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