At this slur in his daughter’s honour Sir Anthony broke out fiercely, and, for a moment, I feared lest he would throw himself on Gedge and wring his neck.  I managed to check his outburst and bring him to reason.  He resumed his attitude on the hearthrug.

“As I was saying,” Gedge continued, rather frightened, “from my sociological point of view I considered the affair no business of mine.  I speak of it now, because ever since war broke out your class and the parasitical bourgeoisie have done your best to reduce me to starvation.  I thought it would be pleasant to get a bit of my own back.  Just a little bit,” he added, rubbing his hands.

“If you think you’ve done it, you’ll find yourself mistaken.”

Gedge shrugged his shoulders and pulled his beard.  I hated the light in his little crafty eyes.  I feel sure he had been looking forward for months to this moment of pure happiness.

“Having given us an insight into your motives, which seem consistent with what we know of your character,” said I, judicially, “will you now make your statement of facts?”

“What’s the good of listening further to his lies?” interrupted Sir Anthony.  “I’m a magistrate.  I can give the police at once a warrant for his arrest.”

Again I pacified him.  “Let us hear what the man has to say.”

Gedge began.  He spoke by the book, like one who repeats a statement carefully prepared.

“It was past ten o’clock on the night of the 25th June, 1914.  I had just finished supper when I was rung up by the landlord of The Three Feathers on the Farfield road—­it’s the inn about a quarter of a mile from the lock gates.  He said that the District Secretary of the Red Democratic Federation was staying there—­his brother-in-law, if you want to know—­and he hadn’t received my report.  I must explain that I am the local secretary, and as there was to be an important conference of the Federation at Derby the next day, the District Secretary ought to have been in possession of my report on local affairs.  I had drawn up the report.  My daughter Phyllis had typed it, and she ought to have posted it.  On questioning her, I found she had neglected to do so.  I explained this over the wires and said I would bring the report at once to The Three Feathers.  I only tell you all this, in which you can’t be interested, so that you can’t say:  ’What were you doing on a lonely road at that time of night?’ My daughter and the landlord of The Three Feathers can corroborate this part of my story.  I set out on my bicycle.  It was bright moonlight.  You know that for about two hundred yards before the lock gate, and for about twenty after, the towing-path is raised above the level of the main road which runs parallel with it a few yards away.  There are strips of market garden between.  When I got to this open bit I saw two persons up on the towing-path.  One was a girl with a loose kind of cloak and a hat.  The other was a man wearing a soft felt hat and a