“For the very obvious reason,” Francis told him, “that we are not all such rogues and vagabonds as you seem to think.  There is more satisfaction to me, at any rate, in saving an innocent man’s life than a guilty one’s.”

Hilditch laughed as though amused.

“Come,” he threatened, “I am going to be ill-natured.  You have shown signs of smugness, a quality which I detest.  I am going to rob you of some part of your self-satisfaction.  Of course I killed Jordan.  I killed him in the very chair in which you are now sitting.”

There was a moment’s intense silence.  The woman was still fanning herself lazily.  Francis leaned forward in his place.

“I do not wish to hear this!” he exclaimed harshly.

“Don’t be foolish,” his host replied, rising to his feet and strolling across the room.  “You know the whole trouble of the prosecution.  They couldn’t discover the weapon, or anything like it, with which the deed was done.  Now I’ll show you something ingenious.”

Francis followed the other’s movements with fascinated eyes.  The woman scarcely turned her head.  Hilditch paused at the further end of the room, where there were a couple of gun cases, some fishing rods and a bag, of golf clubs.  From the latter he extracted a very ordinary-looking putter, and with it in his hands strolled back to them.

“Do you play golf, Ledsam?” he asked.  “What do you think of that?”

Francis took the putter into his hand.  It was a very ordinary club, which had apparently seen a good deal of service, so much, indeed, that the leather wrapping at the top was commencing to unroll.  The maker’s name was on the back of the blade, also the name of the professional from whom it had been purchased.  Francis swung the implement mechanically with his wrists.

“There seems to be nothing extraordinary about the club,” he pronounced.  “It is very much like a cleek I putt with myself.”

“Yet it contains a secret which would most certainly have hanged me,” Oliver Hilditch declared pleasantly.  “See!”

He held the shaft firmly in one hand and bent the blade away from it.  In a moment or two it yielded and he commenced to unscrew it.  A little exclamation escaped from Francis’ lips.  The woman looked on with tired eyes.

“The join in the steel,” Hilditch pointed out, “is so fine as to be undistinguishable by the naked eye.  Yet when the blade comes off, like this, you see that although the weight is absolutely adjusted, the inside is hollow.  The dagger itself is encased in this cotton wool to avoid any rattling.  I put it away in rather a hurry the last time I used it, and as you see I forgot to clean it.”

Francis staggered back and gripped at the mantelpiece.  His eyes were filled with horror.  Very slowly, and with the air of one engaged upon some interesting task, Oliver Hilditch had removed the blood-stained sheath of cotton wool from around the thin blade of a marvellous-looking stiletto, on which was also a long stain of encrusted blood.