“Bit of a shock, no doubt,” the lawyer assented, “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 associated 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 classes.”

“Who the mischief are the criminal classes?” 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.”

“Leave him to me till then,” Wilmore begged.  “He’ll be all right directly.  He’s simply altering his bearings and taking his time about it.  If he’s promised to lunch here to-morrow, he will.  He’s as near as possible through the wood.  Coming up in the train, he suggested a little conversation to-night and afterwards the normal life.  He means it, too.  There’s nothing neurotic about Ledsam.”

The magistrate nodded.

“Run along, then, my merry Andrew,” he said, “but see that Ledsam keeps his word about to-morrow.”

Andrew Wilmore plunged boldly into the forbidden subject later on that evening, as the two men sat side by side at one of the wall tables in Soto’s famous club restaurant.  They had consumed an excellent dinner.  An empty champagne bottle had just been removed, double liqueur brandies had taken its place.  Francis, with an air of complete and even exuberant humanity, had lit a huge cigar.  The moment seemed propitious.

“Francis,” his friend began, “they say at the club that you refused to be briefed in the Chippenham affair.”

“Quite true,” was the calm reply.  “I told Griggs that I wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”