"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.
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