and held
them against her cheek. A thrush was singing noisily. A few yards away
they heard the soft swish of the river.

"Tell me," she asked curiously, "my father still speaks of you as being
in some respects an enemy. What does he mean?"

"I will tell you exactly," he answered. "The first time I ever spoke to
your father I was dining at Soto's. I was talking to Andrew Wilmore.
It was only a short time after you had told me the story of Oliver
Hilditch, a story which made me realise the horror of spending one's
life keeping men like that out of the clutch of the law."

"Go on, please," she begged.

"Well, I was talking to Andrew. I told him that in future I should
accept no case unless I not only believed in but was convinced of the
innocence of my client. I added that I was at war with crime. I think,
perhaps, I was so deeply in earnest that I may have sounded a little
flamboyant. At any rate, your father, who had overheard me, moved up to
our table. I think he deduced from what I was saying that I was going to
turn into a sort of amateur crime-investigator, a person who I gathered
later was particularly obnoxious to him. At any rate, he held out a
challenge. 'If you are a man who hates crime,' he said, or something
like it, 'I am one who loves it.' He then went on to prophesy that a
crime would be committed close to where we were, within an hour or so,
and he challenged me to discover the assassin. That night Victor Bidlake
was murdered just outside Soto's."

"I remember! Do you mean to tell me, then," Margaret went on, with a
little shiver, "that father told you this was going to happen?"

"He certainly did," Francis replied. "How his knowledge came I am not
sure--yet. But he certainly knew."

"Have you anything else against him?" she asked.

"There was the disappearance of Andrew Wilmore's younger brother,
Reginald Wilmore. I have no right to connect your father with that, but
Shopland, the Scotland Yard detective, who has charge of the case, seems
to believe that the young man was brought into this neighbourhood, and
some other indirect evidence which came into my hands does seem to point
towards your father being concerned in the matter. I appealed to him at
once but he only laughed at me. That matter, too, remains a mystery."

Margaret was thoughtful for a moment. Then she turned towards the house.
They heard the soft ringing of the gong.

"Will you believe me when I tell you this?" she begged, as the