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Updated: May 9, 2025
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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?"
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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