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,” Sir Timothy observed.  “As a matter of fact, it was the eternal one.  There is no need to mention a woman’s name, so we will let it go at that.”