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
