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.”
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!
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.”
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.