“My dear! Two night journeys and then a long motor drive!” Lady Kean’s voice was full of compunction. “Don’t do it,” she went on. “Stick to your original plan and come down with the car the day after to-morrow. I don’t suppose the extra day will really make much difference. It’s only that the child’s fretting.” “And so are you!” he retorted grimly. “No, I’ll come to-night and see what I can do, though I don’t suppose there’s much. I’m inured to journeys and I can work in the train. Meanwhile, don’t wear yourself to fiddle-strings. It will all come right in the end. I know you haven’t much opinion of the law, but it doesn’t often make mistakes. If the boy’s innocent, he will come out of it, you’ll see.” “Thank you, Edward. I don’t believe you’ll ever fail me!” There was more in her tone than in the words and he felt amply repaid for having yielded as he hung up the receiver. But he found it difficult to fix his mind on his work that morning and he wished with all his heart that his wife had been safe in London at the time of the murder. He knew that she would not know a night’s real rest so long as any friend of hers was in trouble and, in spite of his brave words on the telephone, he thought things looked awkward, to say the least of it, for John Leslie. And once more he cursed the Fates that had decreed the postponement of the case of Strickland _v._ Davies. For Leslie had been subpoenaed as a witness and, if things had taken their normal course, would have been in London at the moment when Mrs. Draycott met with her tragic end. And if it had not been for that unfortunate blunder of old Farrer’s he would have heard in time about the postponement and would have been at Staveley instead of in London when Lady Cynthia arrived with the news. Kean was usually studiously courteous in his dealings with underlings, but he was positively brutal to the old head clerk when, later in the day, he had occasion to pull him up for a slight error in the wording of a letter. Chapter V