The Evil Shepherd | Page 4

few feet, Andrew, were like an impassable gulf. She spoke
from the shores of another world. I listened and answered, spoke and
listened again. And when she told her story, she went. I can't shake off

the effect she had upon me, Andrew. I feel as though I had taken a step
to the right or to the left over the edge of the world."
Andrew Wilmore studied his friend thoughtfully.
He was full of sympathy and understanding. His one desire at that
moment was not to make a mistake. He decided to leave unasked the
obvious question.
"I know," he said simply. "Are you dining anywhere?"
"I thought of staying on here," was the indifferent reply.
"We won't do anything of the sort," Wilmore insisted. "There's scarcely
a soul in to-night, and the place is too humpy for a man who's been
seeing spooks. Get back to your rooms and change. I'll wait here."
"What about you?"
"I have some clothes in my locker. Don't be long. And, by-the-bye,
which shall it be--Bohemia or Mayfair? I'll telephone for a table.
London's so infernally full, these days."
Francis hesitated.
"I really don't care," he confessed. "Now I think of it, I shall be glad to
get away from here, though. I don't want any more congratulations on
saving Oliver Hilditch's life. Let's go where we are least likely to meet
any one we know."
"Respectability and a starched shirt-front, then," Wilmore decided.
"We'll go to Claridge's."
CHAPTER III
The two men occupied a table set against the wall, not far from the
entrance to the restaurant, and throughout the progress of the earlier
part of their meal were able to watch the constant incoming stream of

their fellow-guests. They were, in their way, an interesting contrast
physically, neither of them good-looking according to ordinary
standards, but both with many pleasant characteristics. Andrew
Wilmore, slight and dark, with sallow cheeks and brown eyes, looked
very much what he was--a moderately successful journalist and writer
of stories, a keen golfer, a bachelor who preferred a pipe to cigars, and
lived at Richmond because he could not find a flat in London which he
could afford, large enough for his somewhat expansive habits. Francis
Ledsam was of a sturdier type, with features perhaps better known to
the world owing to the constant activities of the cartoonist. His
reputation during the last few years had carried him, notwithstanding
his comparative youth--he was only thirty-five years of age--into the
very front ranks of his profession, and his income was one of which
men spoke with bated breath. He came of a family of landed proprietors,
whose younger sons for generations had drifted always either to the Bar
or the Law, and his name was well known in the purlieus of Lincoln's
Inn before he himself had made it famous. He was a persistent refuser
of invitations, and his acquaintances in the fashionable world were
comparatively few. Yet every now and then he felt a mild interest in the
people whom his companion assiduously pointed out to him.
"A fashionable restaurant, Francis, is rather like your Law Courts--it
levels people up," the latter remarked. "Louis, the head-waiter, is the
judge, and the position allotted in the room is the sentence. I wonder
who is going to have the little table next but one to us. Some favoured
person, evidently."
Francis glanced in the direction indicated without curiosity. The table
in question was laid for two and was distinguished by a wonderful
cluster of red roses.
"Why is it," the novelist continued speculatively, "that, whenever we
take another man's wife out, we think it necessary to order red roses?"
"And why is it," Francis queried, a little grimly, "that a dear fellow like
you, Andrew, believes it his duty to talk of trifles for his pal's sake,
when all the time he is thinking of something else? I know you're dying
to talk about the Hilditch case, aren't you? Well, go ahead."

"I'm only interested in this last development," Wilmore confessed. "Of
course, I read the newspaper reports. To tell you the truth, for a murder
trial it seemed to me to rather lack colour."
"It was a very simple and straightforward case," Francis said slowly.
"Oliver Hilditch is the principal partner in an American financial
company which has recently opened offices in the West End. He seems
to have arrived in England about two years ago, to have taken a house
in Hill Street, and to have spent a great deal of money. A month or so
ago, his partner from New York arrived in London, a man named
Jordan of whom nothing was known. It has since transpired, however,
that his journey to Europe was undertaken because he was unable to
obtain certain figures relating to the business,