They were established now in their easy-chairs, and Wilmore summoned a waiter.

“Two large whiskies and sodas,” he ordered.  “Francis,” he went on, studying his companion intently, “what’s the matter with you?  You don’t look as though your few days in the country last week had done you any good.”

Francis glanced around as though to be sure that they were alone.

“I was all right when I came up, Andrew,” he muttered.  “This case has upset me.”

“Upset you?  But why the dickens should it?” the other demanded, in a puzzled tone.  “It was quite an ordinary case, in its way, and you won it.”

“I won it,” Francis admitted.

“Your defence was the most ingenious thing I ever heard.”

“Mostly suggested, now I come to think of it,” the barrister remarked grimly, “by the prisoner himself.”

“But why are you upset about it, anyway?” Wilmore persisted.

Francis rose to his feet, shook himself, and with his elbow resting upon the mantelpiece leaned down towards his friend.  He could not rid himself altogether of this sense of unreality.  He had the feeling that he had passed through one of the great crises of his life.

“I’ll tell you, Andrew.  You’re about the only man in the world I could tell.  I’ve gone crazy.”

“I thought you looked as though you’d been seeing spooks,” Wilmore murmured sympathetically.

“I have seen a spook,” Francis rejoined, with almost passionate seriousness, “a spook who lifted an invisible curtain with invisible fingers, and pointed to such a drama of horrors as De Quincey, Poe and Sue combined could never have imagined.  Oliver Hilditch was guilty, Andrew.  He murdered the man Jordan—­murdered him in cold blood.”

“I’m not surprised to hear that,” was the somewhat puzzled reply.

“He was guilty, Andrew, not only of the murder of this man, his partner, but of innumerable other crimes and brutalities,” Francis went on.  “He is a fiend in human form, if ever there was one, and I have set him loose once more to prey upon Society.  I am morally responsible for his next robbery, his next murder, the continued purgatory of those forced to associate with him.”

“You’re dotty, Francis,” his friend declared shortly.

“I told you I was crazy,” was the desperate reply.  “So would you be if you’d sat opposite that woman for half-an-hour, and heard her story.”

“What woman?” Wilmore demanded, leaning forward in his chair and gazing at his friend with increasing uneasiness.

“A woman who met me outside the Court and told me the story of Oliver Hilditch’s life.”

“A stranger?”

“A complete stranger to me.  It transpired that she was his wife.”

Wilmore lit a cigarette.

“Believe her?”

“There are times when one doesn’t believe or disbelieve,” Francis answered.  “One knows.”