lity at all is without a doubt due to
these."

"I only did what I was paid to do," Francis insisted, a little harshly.
"You must remember that these things come in the day's work with us."

His host nodded.

"Naturally," he murmured. "There was another reason, too, why I was
anxious to meet you, Mr. Ledsam," he continued. "You have gathered
already that I am something of a crank. I have a profound detestation
of all sentimentality and affected morals. It is a relief to me to
come into contact with a man who is free from that bourgeois incubus to
modern enterprise--a conscience."

"Is that your estimate of me?" Francis asked.

"Why not? You practise your profession in the criminal courts, do you
not?"

"That is well-known," was the brief reply.

"What measure of conscience can a man have," Oliver Hilditch argued
blandly, "who pleads for the innocent and guilty alike with the same
simulated fervour? Confess, now, Mr. Ledsam--there is no object in being
hypocritical in this matter--have you not often pleaded for the guilty
as though you believed them innocent?"

"That has sometimes been my duty," Francis acknowledged.

Hilditch laughed scornfully.

"It is all part of the great hypocrisy of society," he proclaimed.
"You have an extra glass of champagne for dinner at night and are
congratulated by your friends because you have helped some poor devil
to cheat the law, while all the time you know perfectly well, and so
do your high-minded friends, that your whole attitude during those two
hours of eloquence has been a lie. That is what first attracted me to
you, Mr. Ledsam."

"I am sorry to hear it," Francis commented coldly. "The ethics of my
profession--"

His host stopped him with a little wave of the hand.

"Spare me that," he begged. "While we are on the subject, though, I have
a question to ask you. My lawyer told me, directly after he had briefed
you, that, although it would make no real difference to your pleading,
it would be just as well for me to keep up my bluff of being innocent,
even in private conversation with you. Why was that?"

"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 de