The Evil Shepherd Part 5

The woman was seated upon the very edge of her chair, her eyes rivetted upon the dagger. There was no change in her face, not a tremor in her tone.

"I said nothing," she replied. "I did not speak at all. I was just watching."

Hilditch turned back to his guest.

"These two fingers," he repeated, "and a flick of the wrist--very little more than would be necessary for a thirty yard putt right across the green."

Francis had recovered himself, had found his bearings to a certain extent.

"I am sorry that you have told me this, Mr. Hilditch," he said, a little stiffly.

"Why?" was the puzzled reply. "I thought you would be interested."

"I am interested to this extent," Francis declared, "I shall accept no more cases such as yours unless I am convinced of my client's innocence.

I look upon your confession to me as being in the worst possible taste, and I regret very much my efforts on your behalf."

The woman was listening intently. Hilditch's expression was one of cynical wonder. Francis rose to his feet and moved across to his hostess.

"Mrs. Hilditch," he said, "will you allow me to make my apologies? Your husband and I have arrived at an understanding--or perhaps I should say a misunderstanding--which renders the acceptance of any further hospitality on my part impossible."

She held out the tips of her fingers.

"I had no idea," she observed, with gentle sarcasm, "that you barristers were such purists morally. I thought you were rather proud of being the last hope of the criminal cla.s.ses."

"Madam," Francis replied, "I am not proud of having saved the life of a self-confessed murderer, even though that man may be your husband."

Hilditch was laughing softly to himself as he escorted his departing guest to the door.

"You have a quaint sense of humour," Francis remarked.

"Forgive me," Oliver Hilditch begged, "but your last few words rather appealed to me. You must be a person of very scanty perceptions if you could spend the evening here and not understand that my death is the one thing in the world which would make my wife happy."

Francis walked home with these last words ringing in his ears. They seemed with him even in that brief period of troubled sleep which came to him when he had regained his rooms and turned in. 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 a.s.sented. "Who wants me?"

"It is Margaret Hilditch speaking," she announced. "I felt that I must ring up and tell you of a very strange thing which happened after you left this evening."

"Go on," he begged hoa.r.s.ely.

"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 att.i.tude. 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 c.o.c.ktail.

"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.

"Ledsam's had a touch of nerves," he confided. "There's been nothing else the matter with him. We've been down at the Dormy House at Brancaster and he's as right as a trivet now. That Hilditch affair did him in completely."

"I don't see why," one of the bystanders observed. "He got Hilditch off all right. One of the finest addresses to a jury I ever heard."

"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."

"I still don't see where Ledsam's worry comes in," the legal luminary remarked. "The fact that the man was guilty is rather a feather in the cap of his counsel. Shows how jolly good his pleading must have been."

"Just so," Wilmore agreed, "but Ledsam, as you know, is a very conscientious sort of fellow, and very sensitive, too. The whole thing was a shock to him."

"It must have been a queer experience," a novelist remarked from the outskirts of the group, "to dine with a man whose life you have juggled away from the law, and then have him explain his crime to you, and the exact manner of its accomplishment. Seems to bring one amongst the goats, somehow."

"Bit of a shock, no doubt," the lawyer a.s.sented, "but I still don't understand Ledsam's sending back all his briefs. He's not going to chuck the profession, is he?"

"Not by any means," Wilmore declared. "I think he has an idea, though, that he doesn't want to accept any briefs unless he is convinced that the person whom he has to represent is innocent, and lawyers don't like that sort of thing, you know. You can't pick and choose, even when you have Leadsam's gifts."

"The fact of it is," the novelist commented, "Francis Ledsam isn't callous enough to be a.s.sociated with you money-grubbing dispensers of the law. He'd be all right as Public Prosecutor, a sort of Sir Galahad waving the banner of virtue, but he hates to stuff his pockets at the expense of the criminal cla.s.ses."

"Who the mischief are the criminal cla.s.ses?" a police court magistrate demanded. "Personally, I call war profiteering criminal, I call a good many Stock Exchange deals criminal, and," he added, turning to a member of the committee who was hovering in the background, "I call it criminal to expect us to drink French vermouth like this."

"There is another point of view," the latter retorted. "I call it a crime to expect a body of intelligent men to administer without emolument to the greed of such a crowd of rotters. You'll get the right stuff next week."

The hall-porter approached and addressed Wilmore.

"Mr. Ledsam is outside in a taxi, sir," he announced.

"Outside in a taxi?" the lawyer repeated. "Why on earth can't he come in?"

"I never heard such rot," another declared. "Let's go and rope him in."

"Mr. Ledsam desired me to say, sir," the hall porter continued, "to any of his friends who might be here, that he will be in to lunch to-morrow."