“I will tell you exactly,” he answered.  “The first time I ever spoke to your father I was dining at Soto’s.  I was talking to Andrew Wilmore.  It was only a short time after you had told me the story of Oliver Hilditch, a story which made me realise the horror of spending one’s life keeping men like that out of the clutch of the law.”

“Go on, please,” she begged.

“Well, I was talking to Andrew.  I told him that in future I should accept no case unless I not only believed in but was convinced of the innocence of my client.  I added that I was at war with crime.  I think, perhaps, I was so deeply in earnest that I may have sounded a little flamboyant.  At any rate, your father, who had overheard me, moved up to our table.  I think he deduced from what I was saying that I was going to turn into a sort of amateur crime-investigator, a person who I gathered later was particularly obnoxious to him.  At any rate, he held out a challenge.  ‘If you are a man who hates crime,’ he said, or something like it, ‘I am one who loves it.’  He then went on to prophesy that a crime would be committed close to where we were, within an hour or so, and he challenged me to discover the assassin.  That night Victor Bidlake was murdered just outside Soto’s.”

“I remember!  Do you mean to tell me, then,” Margaret went on, with a little shiver, “that father told you this was going to happen?”

“He certainly did,” Francis replied.  “How his knowledge came I am not sure—­yet.  But he certainly knew.”

“Have you anything else against him?” she asked.

“There was the disappearance of Andrew Wilmore’s younger brother, Reginald Wilmore.  I have no right to connect your father with that, but Shopland, the Scotland Yard detective, who has charge of the case, seems to believe that the young man was brought into this neighbourhood, and some other indirect evidence which came into my hands does seem to point towards your father being concerned in the matter.  I appealed to him at once but he only laughed at me.  That matter, too, remains a mystery.”

Margaret was thoughtful for a moment.  Then she turned towards the house.  They heard the soft ringing of the gong.

“Will you believe me when I tell you this?” she begged, as they passed arm in arm down the pergola.  “I am terrified of my father, though in many ways he is almost princely in his generosity and in the broad view he takes of things.  Then his kindness to all dumb animals, and the way they love him, is the most amazing thing I ever knew.  If we were alone here to-night, every animal in the house would be around his chair.  He has even the cats locked up if we have visitors, so that no one shall see it.  But I am quite honest when I tell you this—­I do not believe that my father has the ordinary outlook upon crime.  I believe that there is a good deal more of the Old Testament about him than the New.”