“Tell me who he was,” I insisted.

Ray shook his head.

“Better for you not to know,” he remarked reflectively.  “Much better.”

My cheeks grew hot with anger.

“Colonel Ray,” I said, “this may yet be a serious affair for you.  Why you should assume that I am willing to be a silent accessory to your crime I cannot imagine.  I insist upon knowing who this man was.”

“You have come to London,” Ray answered quietly, “to ask me this?”

“I have told you before why I am here,” I answered.  “I will not be put off any longer.  Who was that man, and what did he want with me?”

For a period of time which I could not measure, but which seemed to me of great duration, there was silence between us.  Then Ray leaned over towards me.

“I think,” he said, “that it is my turn to talk.  You have come to me like a hysterical schoolboy, you seem ignorant of the primeval elements of justice.  After all it is not wonderful.  As yet you have only looked in upon life.  You look in, but you do not understand.  You have called me a coward.  It is only a year or so since His Majesty pinned a little cross upon my coat—­for valour.  I won that for saving a man’s life.  Mind you, he was a man.  He was a man and a comrade.  To save him I rode through a hell of bullets.  It ought to have meant death.  As a matter of fact it didn’t.  That was my luck.  But you mustn’t call me a coward, Ducaine.  It is an insult to my decoration.”

“Oh, I know that you are brave enough,” I answered, “but this man was a poor weak creature, a baby in your hands.”

“So are the snakes we stamp beneath our feet,” he answered coolly.  “Yet we kill them.  In Egypt I have been in more than one hot corner where we fought hand to hand.  I have killed men more than once.  I have watched them galloping up with waving swords, and their fine faces ablaze with the joy of battle, and all the time one’s revolver went spit, and the saddles were empty.  Yet never once have I sent a brave man to his last account without regret, enemy and fanatic though he was.  I am not a bloodthirsty man.  When I kill, it is because necessity demands it.  As for that creature whom you found in the marshes, well, if there were a dozen such in this room now, I would do my best to rid the earth of them.  Take my advice.  Dismiss the whole subject from your mind.  Go back to Braster and wait.  Something may happen within the next twenty-four hours which will be very much to your benefit.  Go back to Braster and wait.”

“You will tell me nothing, then?” I asked.  “It is treating me like a child.  I am not a sentimentalist.  If the man deserved death the matter is between you and your conscience.  But he came to Rowchester to see me.  I want to know why.”

“Go back to Rowchester and wait,” Ray said.  “I shall tell you nothing.  Depend upon it that his business with you, if he had any, was evil business.  He and his whole brood left their mark for evil wherever they crawled.”