"You have a quaint sense of humour," Francis remarked.
"Forgive me," Oliver Hilditch begged, "but your last few words
rather appealed to me. You must be a person of very scanty
perceptions if you could spend the evening here and not
understand that my death is the one thing in the world which
would make my wife happy."
Francis walked home with these last words ringing in his ears.
They seemed with him even in that brief period of troubled sleep
which came to him when he had regained his rooms and turned in.
They were there in the middle of the night when he was awakened,
shivering, by the shrill summons of his telephone bell. He stood
quaking before the instrument in his pajamas. It was the voice
which, by reason of some ghastly premonition, he had dreaded to
hear--level, composed, emotionless.
"Mr. Ledsam?" she enquired.
"I am Francis Ledsam," he assented. "Who wants me?"
"It is Margaret Hilditch speaking," she announced. "I felt that
I must ring up and tell you of a very strange thing which
happened after you left this evening."
"Go on," he begged hoarsely.
"After you left," she went on, "my husband persisted in playing
with that curious dagger. He laid it against his heart, and
seated himself in the chair which Mr. Jordan had occupied, in the
same attitude.
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