The two men were alone again. In Francis' pocket were the two documents, which he had not yet made up his mind how to use. Margaret came out to them presently, and he strolled away with her towards the rose garden. “Margaret,” he said, “is it my fancy or has there been a change in your father during the last few days?” “There is a change of some sort,” she admitted. “I cannot describe it. I only know it is there. He seems much more thoughtful and less hard. The change would be an improvement,” she went on, “except that somehow or other it makes me feel uneasy. It is as though he were grappling with some crisis.” They came to a standstill at the end of the pergola, where the masses of drooping roses made the air almost faint with their perfume. Margaret stretched out her hand, plucked a handful of the creamy petals and held them against her cheek. A thrush was singing noisily. A few yards away they heard the soft swish of the river. “Tell me,” she asked curiously, “my father still speaks of you as being in some respects an enemy. What does he mean?” “I will tell you exactly,” he answered. “The first time I ever spoke to your father I was dining at Soto's. I was talking to Andrew Wilmore. It was only a short time after you had told me the story of Oliver Hilditch, a story which made me realise the horror of spending one's life keeping men like that out of the clutch of the law.” “Go on, please,” she begged. “Well, I was talking to Andrew. I told him that in future I should accept no case unless I not only believed in but was convinced of the innocence of my client. I added that I was at war with crime. I think, perhaps, I was so deeply in earnest that I may have sounded a little flamboyant. At any rate, your father, who had overheard me, moved up to our table. I think he deduced from what I was saying that I was going to turn into a sort of amateur crime-investigator, a person who I gathered later was particularly obnoxious to him. At any rate, he held out a challenge. 'If you are a man who hates crime,' he said, or something like it, 'I am one who loves it.' He then went on to prophesy that a crime would be committed close to where we were, within an hour or so, and he challenged me to discover the assassin. That night Victor Bidlake was murdered just outside Soto's.” “I remember! Do you mean to tell me, then,” Margaret went on, with a little shiver, “that father told you this was going to happen?” “He certainly did,” Francis replied. “How his knowledge came I am not sure--yet. But he certainly knew.” “Have you anything else against him?” she asked.