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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.
"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.
"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.
"I shall do nothing of the sort," Sir Timothy declared, helping himself with care to the pate. "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.
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.
"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 pate, that.
"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."
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.
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.
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?"
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