this morning."

Sir Timothy studied the two documents, read the wireless. There was
little change in his face. Only for a single moment his lips quivered.

"What does this mean?" he asked, rising to his feet with the documents
in his hand.

"It means that those papers are yours to do what you like with. I
drafted the second one so that you should be absolutely secure against
any further attempt at blackmail. As a matter of fact, though, Walter is
on his last legs. I doubt whether he will live to land in Australia."

"You know that I killed Oliver Hilditch?" Sir Timothy said, his eyes
fixed upon the other's.

"I know that you killed Oliver Hilditch," Francis repeated. "If I had
been Margaret's father, I think that I should have done the same."

Sir Timothy seemed suddenly very much younger. The droop of his lips was
no longer pathetic. There was a little humourous twitch there.

"You, the great upholder of the law?" he murmured.

"I have heard the story of Oliver Hilditch's life," Francis replied. "I
was partially responsible for saving him from the gallows. I repeat what
I have said. And if you will--"

He held out his hand. Sir Timothy hesitated for one moment. Instead of
taking it, he laid his hand upon Francis' shoulder.

"Ledsam," he said, "we have thought wrong things of one another. I
thought you a prig, moral to your finger-tips with the morality of the
law and the small places. Perhaps I was tempted for that reason to give
you a wrong impression of myself. But you must understand this. Though I
have had my standard and lived up to it all my life, I am something of
a black sheep. A man stole my wife. I did not trouble the Law Courts. I
killed him."

"I have the blood of generations of lawyers in my veins," Francis
declared, "but I have read many a divorce case in which I think it would
have been better and finer if the two men had met as you and that man
met."

"I was born with the love of fighting in my bones," Sir Timothy went
on. "In my younger days, I fought in every small war in the southern
hemisphere. I fought, as you know, in our own war. I have loved to see
men fight honestly and fairly."

"It is a man's hobby," Francis pronounced.

"I encouraged you deliberately to think," Sir Timothy went on, "what
half the world thinks that--my parties at The Walled House were
mysterious orgies of vice. They have, as a matter of fact, never been
anything of the sort. The tragedies which are supposed