There were murmurs of sympathy from the four young men, who each in his own fashion appeared to derive consolation from Sir Timothy’s frank and somewhat caustic statement. Francis, who had listened unmoved to this flow of words, glanced towards the door behind which dark figures seemed to be looming.
“That is all you have to say, Sir Timothy?” he asked politely.
“For the present, yes,” was the guarded reply. “I trust that I have succeeded in setting these young gentlemen’s minds at ease.”
“There is one of them,” Francis said gravely, “whose mind not even your soothing words could lighten.”
Shopland had risen unobtrusively to his feet. He laid his hand suddenly on Fairfax’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. Fairfax, after his first start, seemed cool enough. He stretched out his hand towards the glass which as yet he had not touched; covered it with his fingers for a moment and drained its contents. The gently sarcastic smile left Sir Timothy’s lips. His eyebrows met in a quick frown, his eyes glittered.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded sharply.
A policeman in plain clothes had advanced from the door. The manager hovered in the background. Shopland saw that all was well.
“It means,” he announced, “that I have just arrested Mr. Robert Fairfax here on a charge of wilful murder. There is a way out through the kitchens, I believe. Take his other arm, Holmes. Now, gentlemen, if you please.”
There were a few bewildered exclamations—then a dramatic hush. Fairfax had fallen forward on his stool. He seemed to have relapsed into a comatose state. Every scrap of colour was drained from his sallow cheeks, his eyes were covered with a film and he was breathing heavily. The detective snatched up the glass from which the young man had been drinking, and smelt it.
“I saw him drop a tablet in just now,” Jimmy faltered. “I thought it was one of the digestion pills he uses sometimes.”
Shopland and the policeman placed their hands underneath the armpits of the unconscious man.
“He’s done, sir,” the former whispered to Francis. “We’ll try and get him to the station if we can.”
CHAPTER XIV
The greatest tragedies in the world, provided they happen to other people, have singularly little effect upon the externals of our own lives. There was certainly not a soul in Soto’s that night who did not know that Bobby Fairfax had been arrested in the bar below for the murder of Victor Bidlake, had taken poison and died on the way to the police station. Yet the same number of dinners were ordered and eaten, the same quantity of wine drunk. The management considered that they had shown marvellous delicacy of feeling by restraining the orchestra from their usual musical gymnastics until after the service of dinner. Conversation, in consequence, buzzed louder than ever. One speculation in particular absorbed the attention of every single person in the room—why had Bobby Fairfax, at the zenith of a very successful career, risked the gallows and actually accepted death for the sake of killing Victor Bidlake, a young man with whom, so far as anybody knew, he had no cause of quarrel whatever? There were many theories, many people who knew the real facts and whispered them into a neighbour’s ear, only to have them contradicted a few moments later. Yet, curiously enough, the two men who knew most about it were the two most silent men in the room, for each was dining alone. Francis, who had remained only in the hope that something of the sort might happen, was conscious of a queer sense of excitement when, with the service of coffee, Sir Timothy, glass in hand, moved up from a table lower down and with a word of apology took the vacant place by his side. It was what he had desired, and yet he felt a thrill almost of fear at Sir Timothy’s murmured words. He felt that he was in the company of one who, if not an enemy, at any rate had no friendly feeling towards him.
“My congratulations, Mr. Ledsam,” Sir Timothy said quietly. “You appear to have started your career with a success.”
“Only a partial one,” Francis acknowledged, “and as a matter of fact I deny that I have started in any new career. It was easy enough to make use of a fluke and direct the intelligence of others towards the right person, but when the real significance of the thing still eludes you, one can scarcely claim a triumph.”
Sir Timothy gently knocked the ash from the very fine cigar which he was smoking.
“Still, your groundwork was good,” he observed.
Francis shrugged his shoulders.
“That,” he admitted, “was due to chance.”
“Shall we exchange notes?” Sir Timothy suggested gently. “It might be interesting.”
“As you will,” Francis assented. “There is no particular secret in the way I stumbled upon the truth. I was dining here that night, as you know, with Andrew Wilmore, and while he was ordering the dinner and talking to some friends, I went down to the American Bar to have a cocktail. Miss Daisy Hyslop and Fairfax were seated there alone and talking confidentially. Fairfax was insisting that Miss Hyslop should do something which puzzled her. She consented reluctantly, and Fairfax then hurried off to the theatre. Later on, Miss Hyslop and the unfortunate young man occupied a table close to ours, and I happened to notice that she made a point of leaving the restaurant at a particular time. While they were waiting in the vestibule she grew very impatient. I was standing behind them and I saw her glance at the clock just before she insisted upon her companion’s going out himself to look for a taxicab. Ergo, one enquires at Fairfax’s theatre. For that exact three-quarters of an hour he is off the stage. At that point my interest in the matter ceases. Scotland Yard was quite capable of the rest.”
“Disappointing,” Sir Timothy murmured. “I thought at first that you were over-modest. I find that I was mistaken. It was chance alone which set you on the right track.”
“Well, there is my story, at any rate,” Francis declared. “With how much of your knowledge of the affair are you going to indulge me?”
Sir Timothy slowly revolved his brandy glass.
“Well,” he said, “I will tell you this. The two young men concerned, Bidlake and Fairfax, were both guests of mine recently at my country house. They had discovered for one another a very fierce and reasonable antipathy. With that recurrence to primitivism with which I have always been a hearty sympathiser, they agreed, instead of going round their little world making sneering remarks about each other, to fight it out.”
“At your suggestion, I presume?” Francis interposed.
“Precisely,” Sir Timothy assented. “I recommended that course, and I offered them facilities for bringing the matter to a crisis. The fight, indeed, was to have come off the day after the unfortunate episode which anticipated it.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you knew—” Francis began.
Sir Timothy checked him quietly but effectively.
“I knew nothing,” he said, “except this. They were neither of them young men of much stomach, and I knew that the one who was the greater coward would probably try to anticipate the matter by attacking the other first if he could. I knew that Fairfax was the greater coward—not that there was much to choose between them—and I also knew that he was the injured person. That is really all there is about it. My somewhat theatrical statement to you was based upon probability, and not upon any certain foreknowledge. As you see, it came off.”
“And the cause of their quarrel?” Francis asked.
“There might have been a hundred reasons,”