Poor Tommy! He bade fair to have the most to suffer. After his next examination before the magistrates, they committed him for trial. According to the newspapers, it would take place almost immediately. Things were moving fast. It was time that I should move as well. It was time that I should come to an understanding with my friend the gentleman. So I wrote to him to come and see me, putting a touch or two into my note which I knew would bring him. And he came. CHAPTER XXVII. MR. TOWNSEND IS MADE TO UNDERSTAND. I wondered if he had an inkling of what it was that I might have to say to him. He showed no signs of it. But one could not tell. I felt, instinctively, that his intuition was every whit as keen as mine. While as for his appearance of perfect ease, it clothed him like a skin. As he lounged in an easy-chair I drank in, as it were, the atmosphere of his grace and elegance and charm of manner. I felt that I was going to enjoy myself. I believe that the fighting instinct is the strongest instinct that I have. I knew that, at least, for once in a way, I was going to cross swords with a foeman who was worthy of my steel. I began to play with him, as a preliminary to the earnest which was to follow. "I hear that I am to congratulate you, Mr. Townsend." He made a slight movement with his hands--it was a pretty little trick he had. "I understand that you are about to make a change in your condition of life. You are about to be married." "In that respect I do deserve your congratulations, for if ever there was a marriage which, to one of the parties at any rate, promised all that the heart of man could desire, it is that on which I am about to enter. Therefore, Mrs. Carruth, I do solicit your congratulations." He looked me straight in the face as he said this, a smile peeping from the corners of his lips. The first score had been with him. And I felt he knew it. "I saw that the engagement was announced." "I know that it was announced--I believe at the suggestion of Sir Haselton Jardine." "It was rather an odd announcement, the one I saw." "Odd? In what way?" "Perhaps the oddity was also part of Sir Haselton Jardine's suggestion." "What was there peculiar about the one you saw?" "Well, there was a little about the marriage, and a good deal about the murder." "What murder?" "The Three Bridges murder. It seemed to me to be rather a funny mixture. It was not so much an announcement of the engagement as of Sir Haselton Jardine's connection with the murderer." "His connection with the murderer?" "As counsel for the Crown." "I'm afraid I don't quite follow your meaning." "No? Really?" He got up. "I fear, Mrs. Carruth, I must tear myself away. I have an appointment which I am inclined to think is already overdue." "You mustn't go. Did I not tell you in my note that I have something which I particularly wished to say to you? Have you forgotten? I am coming to it now."