must
ring up and tell you of a very strange thing which happened after you
left this evening."

"Go on," he begged hoarsely.

"After you left," she went on, "my husband persisted in playing with
that curious dagger. He laid it against his heart, and seated himself
in the chair which Mr. Jordan had occupied, in the same attitude. It was
what he called a reconstruction. While he was holding it there, I think
that he must have had a fit, or it may have been remorse, we shall never
know. He called out and I hurried across the room to him. I tried to
snatch the dagger away--I did so, in fact--but I must have been too
late. He had already applied that slight movement of the fingers which
was necessary. The doctor has just left. He says that death must have
been instantaneous."

"But this is horrible!" Francis cried out into the well of darkness.

"A person is on the way from Scotland Yard," the voice continued,
without change or tremor. "When he has satisfied himself, I am going to
bed. He is here now. Good-night!"

Francis tried to speak again but his words beat against a wall of
silence. He sat upon the edge of the bed, shivering. In that moment
of agony he seemed to hear again the echo of Oliver Hilditch's mocking
words:

"My death is the one thing in the world which would make my wife happy!"

CHAPTER VII

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.

"Sent back four topping briefs, to my knowledge, last week," one of the
legal luminaries of the place announced to a little group of friends and
fellow-members over a before-dinner cocktail.

"Griggs offered him the defence of William Bull, the Chippenham
murderer, and he refused it," another remarked. "Griggs wrote him
personally, and the reply came from the Brancaster Golf Club! It isn't
like Ledsam to be taking golfing holidays in the middle of the session."

"There's nothing wrong with Ledsam," declared a gruff voice from the
corner. "And don't gossip, you fellows, at the top of your voices like a
lot of old women. He'll be calling here for me in a moment or two."

They all looked around. Andrew Wilmore rose slowly to his feet and
emerged from behind the sheets of an evening paper. He laid his hand
upon the shoulder of a friend, and glanced towards the door.