“Well?”

“Sir Timothy never turned a hair, sir.  When I had finished he was very short with me, almost curt.  ’You have behaved like a man of sense, Walter,’ he said.  ‘How much?’ I hesitated for some time.  Then I could see he was getting impatient.  I doubled what I had thought of first.  ‘A thousand pounds, sir,’ I said.  Sir Timothy he went to a safe in the wall and he counted out a thousand pounds in notes, there and then.  He brought them over to me.  ‘Walter,’ he said, ’there is your thousand pounds.  For that sum I understand you promise to keep what you saw to yourself?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I agreed.  ‘Take it, then,’ he said, ’but I want you to understand this.  There have been many attempts but no one yet has ever succeeded in blackmailing me.  No one ever will.  I give you this thousand pounds willingly.  It is what you have asked for.  Never let me see your face again.  If you come to me starving, it will be useless.  I shall not part with another penny.’”

The man’s simple way of telling his story, his speech, slow and uneven on account of his faltering breath, seemed all to add to the dramatic nature of his disclosure.  Francis found himself sitting like a child who listens to a fairy story.

“And then?” he asked simply.

“I went off with the money,” Walter continued, “and I had cruel bad luck.  I put it into a pub.  I was robbed a little, I drank a little, my wife wasn’t any good.  I lost it all, sir.  I found myself destitute.  I went back to Sir Timothy.”

“Well?”

The man shifted his feet nervously.  He seemed to have come to the difficult part of his story.

“Sir Timothy was as hard as nails,” he said slowly.  “He saw me.  The moment I had finished, he rang the bell.  ‘Hedges,’ he said to the manservant who came in, ’this man has come here to try and blackmail me.  Throw him out.  If he gives any trouble, send for the police.  If he shows himself here again, send for the police."’

“What happened then?”

“Well, I nearly blurted out the whole story,” the man confessed, “and then I remembered that wouldn’t do me any good, so I went away.  I got a job at the Ritz, but I was took ill a few days afterwards.  I went to see a doctor.  From him I got my death-warrant, sir.”

“Is it heart?”

“It’s heart, sir,” the man acknowledged.  “The doctor told me I might snuff out at any moment.  I can’t live, anyway, for more than a year.  I’ve got a little girl.”

“Now just why have you come to see me?” Francis asked.

“For just this, sir,” the man replied.  “Here’s my account of what happened,” he went on, drawing some sheets of foolscap from his pocket.  “It’s written in my own hand and there are two witnesses to my signature—­one a clergyman, sir, and the other a doctor, they thinking it was a will or something.  I had it in my mind to send that to Scotland Yard, and then I remembered