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 Wilmor