I may add that I felt a bit frightened, as though that great city were slowly closing in on me.
Who was this woman of mystery?
What place had she held in the life--and perhaps in the death--of Captain Fraser-Freer?
Why should she come boldly to my rooms to make her impossible demand?
I resolved that, even at the risk of my own comfort, I would stick to the truth.

And to that resolve I would have clung had I not shortly received another visit--this one far more inexplicable, far more surprising, than the first.
It was about nine o'clock when Walters tapped at my door and told me two gentlemen wished to see me.

A moment later into my study walked Lieutenant Norman Fraser-Freer and a fine old gentleman with a face that suggested some faded portrait hanging on an aristocrat's wall.

I had never seen him before.
"I hope it is quite convenient for you to see us," said young Fraser-Freer.
I assured him that it was.

The boy's face was drawn and haggard; there was terrible suffering in his eyes, yet about him hung, like a halo, the glory of a great resolution.
"May I present my father ?" he said.