play over his sallow features. "You know Mr. Cantercot, I suppose? The
poet."

"Oh, yes; how do you do, Tom? Seen the 'New Pork Herald' lately? Not
bad, those old times, eh?"

"No," said Tom, "I wish I was back in them."

"Nonsense, nonsense," said Peter, in much concern. "Look at the good you
are doing to the working man. Look how you are sweeping away the Fads.
Ah, it's a grand thing to be gifted, Tom. The idea of your chuckin'
yourself away on a composin' room! Manual labor is all very well for
plain men like me, with no gift but just enough brains to see into the
realities of things--to understand that we've got no soul and no
immortality, and all that--and too selfish to look after anybody's
comfort but my own and mother's and the kid's. But men like you and
Cantercot--it ain't right that you should be peggin' away at low
material things. Not that I think Cantercot's gospel's any value to the
masses. The Beautiful is all very well for folks who've got nothing else
to think of, but give me the True. You're the man for my money,
Mortlake. No reference to the funds, Tom, to which I contribute little
enough, Heaven knows; though how a place can know anything, Heaven alone
knows. You give us the Useful, Tom; that's what the world wants more
than the Beautiful."

"Socrates said that the Useful is the Beautiful," said Denzil.

"That may be," said Peter, "but the Beautiful ain't the Useful."

"Nonsense!" said Denzil. "What about Jessie--I mean Miss Dymond? There's
a combination for you. She always reminds me of Grace Darling. How is
she, Tom?"

"She's dead!" snapped Tom.

"What?" Denzil turned as white as a Christmas ghost.

"It was in the papers," said Tom; "all about her and the lifeboat."

"Oh, you mean Grace Darling," said Denzil, visibly relieved. "I meant
Miss Dymond."

"You needn't be so interested in her," said Tom, surlily. "She don't
appreciate it. Ah, the shower is over. I must be going."

"No, stay a little longer, Tom," pleaded Peter. "I see a lot about you
in the papers, but very little of your dear old phiz now. I can't spare
the time to go and hear you. But I really must give myself a treat.
When's your next show?"

"Oh, I am always giving shows," said Tom, smiling a little. "But my next
big performance is on the twenty-first of January, when that picture of
poor Mr. Constant is to be unveiled at the Bow Break o' Day Club. They
have written to Gladstone and other big pots to come down. I do hope the
old man accepts. A non-political gathering like this is the only
occasion we could both speak at, and I have never been on the same
platform with Gladstone."

He forgot his depression and ill-temper in the prospect, and spoke with
more animation.

"No, I should hope not, Tom," said Peter. "What with his Fads about the
Bible being a Rock, and Monarchy being the right thing, he is a most
dangerous man to lead the Radicals. He never lays his ax to the root of
anything--except oak trees."

"Mr. Cantycot!" It was Mrs. Crowl's voice that broke in upon the tirade.
"There's a gentleman to see you." The astonishment Mrs. Crowl put into
the "gentleman" was delightful. It was almost as good as a week's rent
to her to give vent to her feelings. The controversial couple had moved
away from the window when Tom entered, and had not noticed the immediate
advent of another visitor who had spent his time profitably in listening
to Mrs. Crowl before asking to see the presumable object of his visit.

"Ask him up if it's a friend of yours, Cantercot," said Peter. It was
Wimp. Denzil was rather dubious as to the friendship, but he preferred
to take Wimp diluted. "Mortlake's upstairs," he said. "Will you come up
and see him?"

Wimp had intended a duologue, but he made no objection, so he, too,
stumbled through the nine brats to Mrs. Crowl's bedroom. It was a queer
quartette. Wimp had hardly expected to find anybody at the house on
Boxing Day, but he did not care to waste a day. Was not Grodman, too, on
the track? How lucky it was that Denzil had made the first overtures, so
that he could approach him without exciting suspicion.

Mortlake scowled when he saw the detective. He objected to the
police--on principle. But Crowl had no idea who the visitor was, even
when told his name. He was rather pleased to meet one of Denzil's
high-class friends, and welcomed him warmly. Probably he was some famous
editor, which would account for his name stirring vague recollections.
He summoned the eldest brat and sent him for beer (people would have
their Fads), and not without trepidation called down to "Mother" for
glasses. "Mother" observed at night (in the same apartment) that the
beer money might have paid the week's school fees for half the family.

"We were just talking of poor Mr. Constant's portrait, Mr. Wimp," said
the unconscious Crowl; "they're going to unveil it, Mortlake tells me,
on the twenty-first of next month at the Bow Break o' Day Club."

"Ah," said Wimp, elated at being spared the trouble of maneuvering the
conversation; "mysterious affair that, Mr. Crowl."

"No; it's the right thing," said Peter. "There ought to be some memorial
of the man in the district where he worked and where he died, poor
chap." The cobbler brushed away a tear.

"Yes, it's only right," echoed Mortlake a whit eagerly. "He was a noble
fellow, a true philanthropist. The only thoroughly unselfish worker I've
ever met."

"He was that," said Peter; "and it's a rare pattern is unselfishness.
Poor fellow, poor fellow. He preached the Useful, too. I've never met
his like. Ah, I wish there was a Heaven for him to go to!" He blew his
nose violently with a red pocket-handkerchief.

"Well, he's there, if there _is_," said Tom.

"I hope he is," added Wimp fervently; "but I shouldn't like to go there
the way he did."

"You were the last person to see him, Tom, weren't you?" said Denzil.

"Oh, no," answered Tom quickly. "You remember he went out after me; at
least, so Mrs. Drabdump said at the inquest."

"That last conversation he had with you, Tom," said Denzil. "He didn't
say anything to you that would lead you to suppose--"

"No, of course not!" interrupted Mortlake impatiently.

"Do you really think he was murdered, Tom?" said Denzil.

"Mr. Wimp's opinion on that point is more valuable than mine," replied
Tom, testily. "It may have been suicide. Men often get sick of
life--especially if they are bored," he added meaningly.

"Ah, but you were the last person known to be with him," said Denzil.

Crowl laughed. "Had you there, Tom."

But they did not have Tom there much longer, for he departed, looking
even worse-tempered than when he came. Wimp went soon after, and Crowl
and Denzil were left to their interminable argumentation concerning the
Useful and the Beautiful.

Wimp went west. He had several strings (or cords) to his bow, and he
ultimately found himself at Kensal Green Cemetery. Being there, he went
down the avenues of the dead to a grave to note down the exact date of a
death. It was a day on which the dead seemed enviable. The dull, sodden
sky, the dripping, leafless trees, the wet spongy soil, the reeking
grass--everything combined to make one long to be in a warm, comfortable
grave, away from the leaden ennui of life. Suddenly the detective's keen
eye caught sight of a figure that made his heart throb with sudden
excitement. It was that of a woman in a gray shawl and a brown bonnet
standing before a railed-in grave. She had no umbrella. The rain plashed
mournfully upon her, but left no trace on her soaking garments. Wimp
crept up behind her, but she paid no heed to him. Her eyes were lowered
to the grave, which seemed to be drawing them toward it by some strange
morbid fascination. His eyes followed hers. The simple headstone bore
the name: "Arthur Constant."

Wimp tapped her suddenly on the shoulder.

Mrs. Drabdump went deadly white. She turned round, staring at Wimp
without any recognition.

"You remember me, surely," he said. "I've been down once or twice to
your place about that poor gentleman's papers." His eye indicated the
grave.

"Lor! I remember you now," said Mrs. Drabdump.

"Won't you come under my umbrella? You must be drenched to the skin."

"It don't matter, sir. I can't take no hurt. I've had the rheumatics
this twenty year."

Mrs. Drabdump shrank from accepting Wimp's attentions, not so much
perhaps because he was a man as because he was a gentleman. Mrs.
Drabdump liked to see the fine folks keep their place, and not
contaminate their skirts by contact with the lower castes. "It's set
wet, it'll rain right into the new year," she announced. "And they say a
bad beginnin' makes a worse endin'." Mrs. Drabdump was one of those
persons who give you the idea that they just missed being born
barometers.

"But what are you doing in this miserable spot, so far from home?"
queried the detective.

"It's Bank Holiday," Mrs. Drabdump reminded him in tones of acute
surprise. "I always make a hexcursion on Bank Holiday."

CHAPTER VIII.

The New Year brought Mrs. Drabdump a new lodger. He was an old gentleman
with a long gray beard. He rented the rooms of the late Mr. Constant,
and lived a very retired life. Haunted rooms--or rooms that ought to be
haunted if the ghosts of those murdered in them had any
self-respect--are supposed to fetch a lower rent in the market. The
whole Irish problem might be solved if the spirits of "Mr. Balfour's
victims" would only depreciate the value of property to a point
consistent with the support of an agricultural population. But Mrs.
Drabdump's new lodger paid so much for his rooms that he laid himself
open to a suspicion of special interest in ghosts. Perhaps he was a
member of the Psychical Society. The neighborhood imagined him another
mad philanthropist, but as he did not appear to be doing any good to
anybody it relented and conceded his sanity. Mortlake, who occasionally
stumbled across him in the passage, did not trouble himself to think
about him at all. He was too full of other troubles and cares. Though he
worked harder than ever, the spirit seemed to have gone out of him.
Sometimes he forgot himself in a fine rapture of eloquence--lashing
himself up into a divine resentment of injustice or a passion of
sympathy with the sufferings of his brethren--but mostly he plodded on
in dull, mechanical fashion. He still made brief provincial tours,
starring a day here and a day there, and everywhere his admirers
remarked how jaded and overworked he looked. There was talk of starting
a subscription to give him a holiday on the Continent--a luxury
obviously unobtainable on the few pounds allowed him per week. The new
lodger would doubtless have been pleased to subscribe, for he seemed
quite to like occupying Mortlake's chamber the nights he was absent,
though he was thoughtful enough not to disturb the hardworked landlady
in the adjoining room by unseemly noise. Wimp was always a quiet man.

Meantime the 21st of the month approached, and the East End was in
excitement. Mr. Gladstone had consented to be present at the ceremony of
unveiling the portrait of Arthur Constant, presented by an unknown donor
to the Bow Break o' Day Club, and it was to be a great function. The
whole affair was outside the lines of party politics, so that even
Conservatives and Socialists considered themselves justified in
pestering the committee for tickets. To say nothing of ladies. As the
committee desired to be present themselves, nine-tenths of the
applications for admission had to be refused, as is usual on these
occasions. The committee agreed among themselves to exclude the fair sex
altogether as the only way of disposing of their womankind who were
making speeches as long as Mr. Gladstone's. Each committeeman told his
sisters, female cousins and aunts that the other committeemen had
insisted on divesting the function of all grace; and what could a man do
when he was in a minority of one?

Crowl, who was not a member of the Break o' Day Club, was particularly
anxious to hear the great orator whom he despised; fortunately Mortlake
remembered the cobbler's anxiety to hear himself, and on the eve of the
ceremony sent him a ticket. Crowl was in the first flush of possession
when Denzil Cantercot returned, after a sudden and unannounced absence
of three days. His clothes were muddy and tattered, his cocked hat was
deformed, his cavalier beard was matted, and his eyes were bloodshot.
The cobbler nearly dropped the ticket at the sight of him. "Hullo,
Cantercot!" he gasped. "Why, where have you been all these days?"

"Terribly busy!" said Denzil. "Here, give me a glass of water. I'm dry
as the Sahara."

Crowl ran inside and got the water, trying hard not to inform Mrs. Crowl
of their lodger's return. "Mother" had expressed herself freely on the
subject of the poet during his absence, and not in terms which would
have commended themselves to the poet's fastidious literary sense.
Indeed, she did not hesitate to call him a sponger and a low swindler,
who had run away to avoid paying the piper. Her fool of a husband might
be quite sure he would never set eyes on the scoundrel again. However,
Mrs. Crowl was wrong. Here was Denzil back again. And yet Mr. Crowl felt
no sense of victory. He had no desire to crow over his partner and to
utter that "See! didn't I tell you so?" which is a greater consolation
than religion in most of the misfortunes of life. Unfortunately, to get
the water, Crowl had to go to the kitchen; and as he was usually such a
temperate man, this desire for drink in the middle of the day attracted
the attention of the lady in possession. Crowl had to explain the
situation. Mrs. Crowl ran into the shop to improve it. Mr. Crowl
followed in dismay, leaving a trail of spilled water in his wake.

"You good-for-nothing, disreputable scarecrow, where have----"

"Hush, mother. Let him drink. Mr. Cantercot is thirsty."

"Does he care if my children are hungry?"

Denzil tossed the water greedily down his throat almost at a gulp, as if
it were brandy.

"Madam," he said, smacking his lips, "I do care. I care intensely. Few
things in life would grieve me more deeply than to hear that a child, a
dear little child--the Beautiful in a nutshell--had suffered hunger. You
wrong me." His voice was tremulous with the sense of injury. Tears stood
in his eyes.

"Wrong you? I've no wish to wrong you," said Mrs. Crowl. "I should like
to hang you."

"Don't talk of such ugly things," said Denzil, touching his throat
nervously.

"Well, what have you been doin' all this time?"

"Why, what should I be doing?"

"How should I know what became of you? I thought it was another murder."

"What!" Denzil's glass dashed to fragments on the floor. "What do you
mean?"

But Mrs. Crowl was glaring too viciously at Mr. Crowl to reply. He
understood the message as if it were printed. It ran: "You have broken
one of my best glasses. You have annihilated threepence, or a week's
school fees for half the family." Peter wished she would turn the
lightning upon Denzil, a conductor down whom it would run innocuously.
He stooped down and picked up the pieces as carefully as if they were
cuttings from the Koh-i-noor. Thus the lightning passed harmlessly over
his head and flew toward Cantercot.

"What do I mean?" Mrs. Crowl echoed, as if there had been no interval.
"I mean that it would be a good thing if you had been murdered."

"What unbeautiful ideas you have, to be sure!" murmured Denzil.

"Yes; but they'd be useful," said Mrs. Crowl, who had not lived with
Peter all these years for nothing. "And if you haven't been murdered
what have you been doing?"

"My dear, my dear," put in Crowl, deprecatingly, looking up from his
quadrupedal position like a sad dog, "you are not Cantercot's keeper."

"Oh, ain't I?" flashed his spouse. "Who else keeps him I should like to
know?"

Peter went on picking up the pieces of the Koh-i-noor.

"I have no secrets from Mrs. Crowl" Denzil explained courteously. "I
have been working day and night bringing out a new paper. Haven't had a
wink of sleep for three nights."

Peter looked up at his bloodshot eyes with respectful interest.

"The capitalist met me in the street--an old friend of mine--I was
overjoyed at the _rencontre_ and told him the idea I'd been brooding
over for months and he promised to stand all the racket."

"What sort of a paper?" said Peter.

"Can you ask? To what do you think I've been devoting my days and nights
but to the cultivation of the Beautiful?"

"Is that what the paper will be devoted to?"

"Yes. To the Beautiful."

"I know," snorted Mrs. Crowl, "with portraits of actresses."

"Portraits? Oh, no!" said Denzil. "That would be the True--not the
Beautiful."

"And what's the name of the paper?" asked Crowl.

"Ah, that's a secret, Peter. Like Scott, I prefer to remain anonymous."

"Just like your Fads. I'm only a plain man, and I want to know where the
fun of anonymity comes in? If I had any gifts, I should like to get the
credit. It's a right and natural feeling, to my thinking."

"Unnatural, Peter; unnatural. We're all born anonymous, and I'm for
sticking close to Nature. Enough for me that I disseminate the
Beautiful. Any letters come during my absence, Mrs. Crowl?"

"No," she snapped. "But a gent named Grodman called. He said you hadn't
been to see him for some time, and looked annoyed to hear you'd
disappeared. How much have you let him in for?"

"The man's in my debt," said Denzil, annoyed. "I wrote a book for him
and he's taken all the credit for it, the rogue! My name doesn't appear
even in the Preface. What's that ticket you're looking so lovingly at,
Peter?"

"That's for to-night--the unveiling of Constant's portrait. Gladstone
speaks. Awful demand for places."

"Gladstone!" sneered Denzil. "Who wants to hear Gladstone? A man who's
devoted his life to pulling down the pillars of Church and State."

"A man's who's devoted his whole life to propping up the crumbling Fads
of Religion and Monarchy. But, for all that, the man has his gifts, and
I'm burnin' to hear him."

"I wouldn't go out of my way an inch to hear him," said Denzil; and went
up to his room, and when Mrs. Crowl sent him up a cup of nice strong tea
at tea time, the brat who bore it found him lying dressed on the bed,
snoring unbeautifully.

The evening wore on. It was fine frosty weather. The Whitechapel Road
swarmed, with noisy life, as though it were a Saturday night. The stars
flared in the sky like the lights of celestial costermongers. Everybody
was on the alert for the advent of Mr. Gladstone. He must surely come
through the Road on his journey from the West Bow-wards. But nobody saw
him or his carriage, except those about the Hall. Probably he went by
tram most of the way. He would have caught cold in an open carriage, or
bobbing his head out of the window of a closed.

"If he had only been a German prince, or a cannibal king," said Crowl
bitterly, as he plodded toward the Club, "we should have disguised Mile
End in bunting and blue fire. But perhaps it's a compliment. He knows
his London, and it's no use trying to hide the facts from him. They must
have queer notions of cities, those monarchs. They must fancy everybody
lives in a flutter of flags and walks about under triumphal arches, like
as if I were to stitch shoes in my Sunday clothes." By a defiance of
chronology Crowl had them on to-day, and they seemed to accentuate the
simile.

"And why shouldn't life be fuller of the Beautiful," said Denzil. The
poet had brushed the reluctant mud off his garments to the extent it was
willing to go, and had washed his face, but his eyes were still
bloodshot from the cultivation of the Beautiful. Denzil was accompanying
Crowl to the door of the Club out of good-fellowship. Denzil was himself
accompanied by Grodman, though less obtrusively. Least obtrusively was
he accompanied by his usual Scotland Yard shadows, Wimp's agents. There
was a surging nondescript crowd about the Club, and the police, and the
door-keeper, and the stewards could with difficulty keep out the tide of
the ticketless, through which the current of the privileged had equal
difficulty in permeating. The streets all around were thronged with
people longing for a glimpse of Gladstone. Mortlake drove up in a hansom
(his head a self-conscious pendulum of popularity, swaying and bowing to
right and left) and received all the pent-up enthusiasm.

"Well, good-by, Cantercot," said Crowl.

"No, I'll see you to the door, Peter."

They fought their way shoulder to shoulder.

Now that Grodman had found Denzil he was not going to lose him again. He
had only found him by accident, for he was himself bound to the
unveiling ceremony, to which he had been invited in view of his known
devotion to the task of unveiling the Mystery. He spoke to one of the
policemen about, who said, "Ay, ay, sir," and he was prepared to follow
Denzil, if necessary, and to give up the pleasure of hearing Gladstone
for an acuter thrill. The arrest must be delayed no longer.

But Denzil seemed as if he were going in on the heels of Crowl. This
would suit Grodman better. He could then have the two pleasures. But
Denzil was stopped half-way through the door.

"Ticket, sir!"

Denzil drew himself up to his full height.

"Press," he said, majestically. All the glories and grandeurs of the
Fourth Estate were concentrated in that haughty monosyllable. Heaven
itself is full of journalists who have overawed St. Peter. But the
door-keeper was a veritable dragon.

"What paper, sir?"

"'New Pork Herald,'" said Denzil sharply. He did not relish his word
being distrusted.

"'New York Herald,'" said one of the bystanding stewards, scarce
catching the sounds. "Pass him in."

And in the twinkling of an eye, Denzil had eagerly slipped inside.

But during the brief altercation Wimp had come up. Even he could not
make his face quite impassive, and there was a suppressed intensity in
the eyes and a quiver about the mouth. He went in on Denzil's heels,
blocking up the doorway with Grodman. The two men were so full of their
coming _coups_ that they struggled for some seconds, side by side,
before they recognized each other. Then they shook hands heartily.

"That was Cantercot just went in, wasn't it, Grodman?" said Wimp.

"I didn't notice," said Grodman, in tones of utter indifference.

At bottom Wimp was terribly excited. He felt that his _coup_ was going
to be executed under very sensational circumstances. Everything would
combine to turn the eyes of the country upon him--nay, of the world, for
had not the Big Bow Mystery been discussed in every language under the
sun? In these electric times the criminal achieves a cosmopolitan
reputation. It is a privilege he shares with few other artists. This
time Wimp would be one of them; and, he felt, deservedly so. If the
criminal had been cunning to the point of genius in planning the murder,
he had been acute to the point of divination in detecting it. Never
before had he pieced together so broken a chain. He could not resist the
unique opportunity of setting a sensational scheme in a sensational
frame-work. The dramatic instinct was strong in him; he felt like a
playwright who has constructed a strong melodramatic plot, and has the
Drury Lane stage suddenly offered him to present it on. It would be
folly to deny himself the luxury, though the presence of Mr. Gladstone
and the nature of the ceremony should perhaps have given him pause. Yet,
on the other hand, these were the very factors of the temptation. Wimp
went in and took a seat behind Denzil. All the seats were numbered, so
that everybody might have the satisfaction of occupying somebody else's.
Denzil was in the special reserved places in the front row just by the
central gangway; Crowl was squeezed into a corner behind a pillar near
the back of the hall. Grodman had been honored with a seat on the
platform, which was accessible by steps on the right and left, but he
kept his eye on Denzil. The picture of the poor idealist hung on the
wall behind Grodman's head, covered by its curtain of brown holland.
There was a subdued buzz of excitement about the hall, which swelled
into cheers every now and again as some gentleman known to fame or Bow
took his place upon the platform. It was occupied by several local M.
P.'s of varying politics, a number of other Parliamentary satellites of
the great man, three or four labor leaders, a peer or two of
philanthropic pretensions, a sprinkling of Toynbee and Oxford Hall men,
the president and other honorary officials, some of the family and
friends of the deceased, together with the inevitable percentage of
persons who had no claim to be there save cheek. Gladstone was
late--later than Mortlake, who was cheered to the echo when he arrived,
someone starting "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," as if it were a
political meeting. Gladstone came in just in time to acknowledge the
compliment. The noise of the song, trolled out from iron lungs, had
drowned the huzzahs heralding the old man's advent. The convivial chorus
went to Mortlake's head, as if champagne had really preceded it. His
eyes grew moist and dim. He saw himself swimming to the Millenium on
waves of enthusiasm. Ah, how his brother-toilers should be rewarded for
their trust in him!

With his usual courtesy and consideration, Mr. Gladstone had refused to
perform the actual unveiling of Arthur Constant's portrait. "That," he
said in his postcard, "will fall most appropriately to Mr. Mortlake, a
gentleman who has, I am given to understand, enjoyed the personal
friendship of the late Mr. Constant, and has co-operated with him in
various schemes for the organization of skilled and unskilled classes of
labor, as well as for the diffusion of better ideals--ideals of
self-culture and self-restraint--among the workingmen of Bow, who have
been fortunate, so far as I can perceive, in the possession (if in one
case unhappily only temporary possession) of two such men of undoubted
ability and honesty to direct their divided counsels and to lead them
along a road, which, though I cannot pledge myself to approve of it in
all its turnings and windings, is yet not unfitted to bring them
somewhat nearer to goals to which there are few of us but would extend
some measure of hope that the working classes of this great Empire may
in due course, yet with no unnecessary delay, be enabled to arrive."

Mr. Gladstone's speech was an expansion of his postcard, punctuated by
cheers. The only new thing in it was the graceful and touching way in
which he revealed what had been a secret up till then--that the portrait
had been painted and presented to the Bow Break o' Day Club, by Lucy
Brent, who in the fulness of time would have been Arthur Constant's
wife. It was a painting for which he had sat to her while alive, and she
had stifled yet pampered her grief by working hard at it since his
death. The fact added the last touch of pathos to the occasion. Crowl's
face was hidden behind his red handkerchief; even the fire of excitement
in Wimp's eye was quenched for a moment by a tear-drop, as he thought of
Mrs. Wimp and Wilfred. As for Grodman, there was almost a lump in his
throat. Denzil Cantercot was the only unmoved man in the room. He
thought the episode quite too Beautiful, and was already weaving it into
rhyme.

At the conclusion of his speech Mr. Gladstone called upon Tom Mortlake
to unveil the portrait. Tom rose, pale and excited. His hand faltered as
he touched the cord. He seemed overcome with emotion. Was it the mention
of Lucy Brent that had moved him to his depths?

The brown holland fell away--the dead stood revealed as he had been in
life. Every feature, painted by the hand of Love, was instinct with
vitality: the fine, earnest face, the sad kindly eyes, the noble brow
seeming still a-throb with the thought of Humanity. A thrill ran through
the room--there was a low, undefinable murmur. O, the pathos and the
tragedy of it! Every eye was fixed, misty with emotion, upon the dead
man in the picture and the living man who stood, pale and agitated, and
visibly unable to commence his speech, at the side of the canvas.
Suddenly a hand was laid upon the labor leader's shoulder, and there
rang through the hall in Wimp's clear, decisive tones the words: "Tom
Mortlake, I arrest you for the murder of Arthur Constant!"

CHAPTER IX.

For a moment there was an acute, terrible silence. Mortlake's face was
that of a corpse; the face of the dead man at his side was flushed with
the hues of life. To the overstrung nerves of the onlookers, the
brooding eyes of the picture seemed sad and stern with menace, and
charged with the lightnings of doom.

It was a horrible contrast. For Wimp, alone, the painted face had
fuller, more tragical, meanings. The audience seemed turned to stone.
They sat or stood--in every variety of attitude--frozen, rigid. Arthur
Constant's picture dominated the scene, the only living thing in a hall
of the dead.

But only for a moment. Mortlake shook off the detective's hand.

"Boys!" he cried, in accents of infinite indignation, "this is a police
conspiracy."

His words relaxed the tension. The stony figures were agitated. A dull,
excited hubbub answered him. The little cobbler darted from behind his
pillar, and leaped upon a bench. The cords of his brow were swollen with
excitement. He seemed a giant overshadowing the hall.

"Boys!" he roared, in his best Victoria Park voice, "listen to me. This
charge is a foul and damnable lie."

"Bravo!" "Hear, hear!" "Hooray!" "It is!" was roared back at him from
all parts of the room. Everybody rose and stood in tentative attitudes,
excited to the last degree.

"Boys!" Peter roared on, "you all know me. I'm a plain man, and I want
to know if it's likely a man would murder his best friend."

"No," in a mighty volume of sound.

Wimp had scarcely calculated upon Mortlake's popularity. He stood on the
platform, pale and anxious as his prisoner.

"And if he did, why didn't they prove it the first time?"

"Hear, hear!"

"And if they want to arrest him, why couldn't they leave it till the
ceremony was over? Tom Mortlake's not the man to run away."

"Tom Mortlake! Tom Mortlake! Three cheers for Tom Mortlake! Hip, hip,
hip, hooray!"

"Three groans for the police." "Hoo! Oo! Oo!"

Wimp's melodrama was not going well. He felt like the author to whose
ears is borne the ominous sibilance of the pit. He almost wished he had
not followed the curtain-raiser with his own stronger drama.
Unconsciously the police, scattered about the hall, drew together. The
people on the platform knew not what to do. They had all risen and stood
in a densely-packed mass. Even Mr. Gladstone's speech failed him in
circumstances so novel. The groans died away; the cheers for Mortlake
rose and swelled and fell and rose again. Sticks and umbrellas were
banged and rattled, handkerchiefs were waved, the thunder deepened. The
motley crowd still surging about the hall took up the cheers, and for
hundreds of yards around people were going black in the face out of mere
irresponsible enthusiasm. At last Tom waved his hand--the thunder
dwindled, died. The prisoner was master of the situation.

Grodman stood on the platform, grasping the back of his chair, a curious
mocking Mephistophelian glitter about his eyes, his lips wreathed into a
half smile. There was no hurry for him to get Denzil Cantercot arrested
now. Wimp had made an egregious, a colossal blunder. In Grodman's heart
there was a great glad calm as of a man who has strained his sinews to
win in a famous match, and has heard the judge's word. He felt almost
kindly to Denzil now.

Tom Mortlake spoke. His face was set and stony. His tall figure was
drawn up haughtily to its full height. He pushed the black mane back
from his forehead with a characteristic gesture. The fevered audience
hung upon his lips--the men at the back leaned eagerly forward--the
reporters were breathless with fear lest they should miss a word. What
would the great labor leader have to say at this supreme moment?

"Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: It is to me a melancholy pleasure to have
been honored with the task of unveiling to-night this portrait of a
great benefactor to Bow and a true friend to the laboring classes.
Except that he honored me with his friendship while living, and that the
aspirations of my life have, in my small and restricted way, been
identical with his, there is little reason why this honorable duty
should have fallen upon me. Gentlemen, I trust that we shall all find an
inspiring influence in the daily vision of the dead, who yet liveth in
our hearts and in this noble work of art--wrought, as Mr. Gladstone has
told us, by the hand of one who loved him." The speaker paused a moment,
his low vibrant tones faltering into silence. "If we humble workingmen
of Bow can never hope to exert individually a tithe of the beneficial
influence wielded by Arthur Constant, it is yet possible for each of us
to walk in the light he has kindled in our midst--a perpetual lamp of
self-sacrifice and brotherhood."

That was all. The room rang with cheers. Tom Mortlake resumed his seat.
To Wimp the man's audacity verged on the Sublime; to Denzil on the
Beautiful. Again there was a breathless hush. Mr. Gladstone's mobile
face was working with excitement. No such extraordinary scene had
occurred in the whole of his extraordinary experience. He seemed about
to rise. The cheering subsided to a painful stillness. Wimp cut the
situation by laying his hand again upon Tom's shoulder.

"Come quietly with me," he said. The words were almost a whisper, but in
the supreme silence they traveled to the ends of the hall.

"Don't you go, Tom!" The trumpet tones were Peter's. The call thrilled
an answering chord of defiance in every breast, and a low, ominous
murmur swept through the hall.

Tom rose, and there was silence again. "Boys," he said, "let me go.
Don't make any noise about it. I shall be with you again to-morrow."

But the blood of the Break o' Day boys was at fever heat. A hurtling
mass of men struggled confusedly from their seats. In a moment all was
chaos. Tom did not move. Half-a-dozen men, headed by Peter, scaled the
platform. Wimp was thrown to one side, and the invaders formed a ring
round Tom's chair. The platform people scampered like mice from the
center. Some huddled together in the corners, others slipped out at the
rear. The committee congratulated themselves on having had the
self-denial to exclude ladies. Mr. Gladstone's satellites hurried the
old man off and into his carriage; though the fight promised to become
Homeric. Grodman stood at the side of the platform secretly more amused
than ever, concerning himself no more with Denzil Cantercot, who was
already strengthening his nerves at the bar upstairs. The police about
the hall blew their whistles, and policemen came rushing in from outside
and the neighborhood. An Irish M. P. on the platform was waving his
gingham like a shillalah in sheer excitement, forgetting his new-found
respectability and dreaming himself back at Donnybrook Fair. Him a
conscientious constable floored with a truncheon. But a shower of fists
fell on the zealot's face, and he tottered back bleeding. Then the storm
broke in all its fury. The upper air was black with staves, sticks, and
umbrellas, mingled with the pallid hailstones of knobby fists. Yells and
groans and hoots and battle-cries blent in grotesque chorus, like one of
Dvorák's weird diabolical movements. Mortlake stood impassive, with arms
folded, making no further effort, and the battle raged round him as the
water swirls around some steadfast rock. A posse of police from the back
fought their way steadily toward him, and charged up the heights of the
platform steps, only to be sent tumbling backward, as their leader was
hurled at them like a battering ram. Upon the top of the heap fell he,
surmounting the strata of policemen. But others clambered upon them,
escalading the platform. A moment more and Mortlake would have been
taken, after being well shaken. Then the miracle happened.

As when of old a reputable goddess _ex machina_ saw her favorite hero in
dire peril, straightway she drew down a cloud from the celestial stores
of Jupiter and enveloped her fondling in kindly night, so that his
adversary strove with the darkness, so did Crowl, the cunning cobbler,
the much-daring, essay to insure his friend's safety. He turned off the
gas at the meter.

An Arctic night--unpreceded by twilight--fell, and there dawned the
sabbath of the witches. The darkness could be felt--and it left blood
and bruises behind it. When the lights were turned on again, Mortlake
was gone. But several of the rioters were arrested, triumphantly.

And through all, and over all, the face of the dead man who had sought
to bring peace on earth, brooded.

Crowl sat meekly eating his supper of bread and cheese, with his head
bandaged, while Denzil Cantercot told him the story of how he had
rescued Tom Mortlake. He had been among the first to scale the height,
and had never budged from Tom's side or from the forefront of the battle
till he had seen him safely outside and into a by-street.

[Illustration: Crowl sat meekly eating his supper of bread and cheese.]

"I am so glad you saw that he got away safely," said Crowl, "I wasn't
quite sure he would."

"Yes; but I wish some cowardly fool hadn't turned off the gas. I like
men to see that they are beaten."

"But it seemed--easier," faltered Crowl.

"Easier!" echoed Denzil, taking a deep draught of bitter. "Really,
Peter, I'm sorry to find you always will take such low views. It may be
easier, but it's shabby. It shocks one's sense of the Beautiful."

Crowl ate his bread and cheese shame-facedly.

"But what was the use of breaking your head to save him?" said Mrs.
Crowl with an unconscious pun. "He must be caught."

"Ah, I don't see how the Useful does come in, now," said Peter
thoughtfully. "But I didn't think of that at the time."

He swallowed his water quickly and it went the wrong way and added to
his confusion. It also began to dawn upon him that he might be called to
account. Let it be said at once that he wasn't. He had taken too
prominent a part.

Meantime, Mrs. Wimp was bathing Mr. Wimp's eye, and rubbing him
generally with arnica. Wimp's melodrama had been, indeed, a sight for
the gods. Only, virtue was vanquished and vice triumphant. The villain
had escaped, and without striking a blow.

CHAPTER X.

There was matter and to spare for the papers the next day. The striking
ceremony--Mr. Gladstone's speech--the sensational arrest--these would of
themselves have made excellent themes for reports and leaders. But the
personality of the man arrested, and the Big Bow Mystery Battle--as it
came to be called--gave additional piquancy to the paragraphs and the
posters. The behavior of Mortlake put the last touch to the
picturesqueness of the position. He left the hall when the lights went
out, and walked unnoticed and unmolested through pleiads of policemen to
the nearest police station, where the superintendent was almost too
excited to take any notice of his demand to be arrested. But to do him
justice, the official yielded as soon as he understood the situation. It
seems inconceivable that he did not violate some red-tape regulation in
so doing. To some this self-surrender was limpid proof of innocence; to
others it was the damning token of despairing guilt.

The morning papers were pleasant reading for Grodman, who chuckled as
continuously over his morning egg, as if he had laid it. Jane was
alarmed for the sanity of her saturnine master. As her husband would
have said, Grodman's grins were not Beautiful. But he made no effort to
suppress them. Not only had Wimp perpetrated a grotesque blunder, but
the journalists to a man were down on his great sensation tableau,
though their denunciations did not appear in the dramatic columns. The
Liberal papers said that he had endangered Mr. Gladstone's life; the
Conservative that he had unloosed the raging elements of Bow
blackguardism, and set in motion forces which might have easily swelled
to a riot, involving severe destruction of property. But "Tom Mortlake,"
was, after all, the thought swamping every other. It was, in a sense, a
triumph for the man.

But Wimp's turn came when Mortlake, who reserved his defense, was
brought up before a magistrate, and, by force of the new evidence, fully
committed for trial on the charge of murdering Arthur Constant. Then
men's thoughts centered again on the Mystery, and the solution of the
inexplicable problem agitated mankind from China to Peru.

In the middle of February, the great trial befell. It was another of the
opportunities which the Chancellor of the Exchequer neglects. So
stirring a drama might have easily cleared its expenses--despite the
length of the cast, the salaries of the stars, and the rent of the
house--in mere advance booking. For it was a drama which (by the rights
of Magna Charta) could never be repeated; a drama which ladies of
fashion would have given their earrings to witness, even with the
central figure not a woman. And there was a woman in it anyhow, to judge
by the little that had transpired at the magisterial examination, and
the fact that the country was placarded with bills offering a reward for
information concerning a Miss Jessie Dymond. Mortlake was defended by
Sir Charles Brown-Harland, Q. C., retained at the expense of the
Mortlake Defense Fund (subscriptions to which came also from Australia
and the Continent), and set on his mettle by the fact that he was the
accepted labor candidate for an East-end constituency. Their Majesties,
Victoria and the Law, were represented by Mr. Robert Spigot, Q. C.

Mr. Spigot, Q. C., in presenting his case, said: "I propose to show that
the prisoner murdered his friend and fellow-lodger, Mr. Arthur Constant,
in cold blood, and with the most careful premeditation; premeditation so
studied, as to leave the circumstances of the death an impenetrable
mystery for weeks to all the world, though fortunately without
altogether baffling the almost superhuman ingenuity of Mr. Edward Wimp,
of the Scotland Yard Detective Department. I propose to show that the
motives of the prisoner were jealousy and revenge; jealousy not only of
his friend's superior influence over the workingmen he himself aspired
to lead, but the more commonplace animosity engendered by the disturbing
element of a woman having relations to both. If, before my case is
complete, it will be my painful duty to show that the murdered man was
not the saint the world has agreed to paint him, I shall not shrink from
unveiling the truer picture, in the interests of justice, which cannot
say _nil nisi bonum_ even of the dead. I propose to show that the murder
was committed by the prisoner shortly before half-past six on the
morning of December 4th, and that the prisoner having, with the
remarkable ingenuity which he has shown throughout, attempted to prepare
an alibi by feigning to leave London by the first train to Liverpool,
returned home, got in with his latch-key through the street-door, which
he had left on the latch, unlocked his victim's bedroom with a key which
he possessed, cut the sleeping man's throat, pocketed his razor, locked
the door again, and gave it the appearance of being bolted, went
downstairs, unslipped the bolt of the big lock, closed the door behind
him, and got to Euston in time for the second train to Liverpool. The
fog helped his proceedings throughout." Such was in sum the theory of
the prosecution. The pale defiant figure in the dock winced perceptibly
under parts of it.

Mrs. Drabdump was the first witness called for the prosecution. She was
quite used to legal inquisitiveness by this time, but did not appear in
good spirits.

"On the night of December 3d, you gave the prisoner a letter?"

"Yes, your ludship."

"How did he behave when he read it?"

"He turned very pale and excited. He went up to the poor gentleman's
room, and I'm afraid he quarreled with him. He might have left his last
hours peaceful." (Amusement.)

"What happened then?"

"Mr. Mortlake went out in a passion, and came in again in about an
hour."

"He told you he was going away to Liverpool very early the next
morning."

"No, your ludship, he said he was going to Devonport." (Sensation.)

"What time did you get up the next morning?"

"Half-past six."

"That is not your usual time?"

"No, I always get up at six."

"How do you account for the extra sleepiness?"

"Misfortunes will happen."

"It wasn't the dull, foggy weather?"

"No, my lud, else I should never get up early." (Laughter.)

"You drink something before going to bed?"

"I like my cup o' tea. I take it strong, without sugar. It always
steadies my nerves."

"Quite so. Where were you when the prisoner told you he was going to
Devonport?"

"Drinkin' my tea in the kitchen."

"What should you say if prisoner dropped something in it to make you
sleep late?"

Witness (startled): "He ought to be shot."

"He might have done it without your noticing it, I suppose?"

"If he was clever enough to murder the poor gentleman, he was clever
enough to try and poison me."

The Judge: "The witness in her replies must confine herself to the
evidence."

Mr. Spigot, Q. C.: "I must submit to your lordship that it is a very
logical answer, and exactly illustrates the interdependence of the
probabilities. Now, Mrs. Drabdump, let us know what happened when you
awoke at half-past six the next morning."

Thereupon Mrs. Drabdump recapitulated the evidence (with new
redundancies, but slight variations) given by her at the inquest. How
she became alarmed--how she found the street-door locked by the big
lock--how she roused Grodman, and got him to burst open the door--how
they found the body--all this with which the public was already familiar
_ad nauseam_ was extorted from her afresh.

"Look at this key" (key passed to the witness). "Do you recognize it?"

"Yes; how did you get it? It's the key of my first-floor front. I am
sure I left it sticking in the door."

"Did you know a Miss Dymond?"

"Yes, Mr. Mortlake's sweetheart. But I knew he would never marry her,
poor thing." (Sensation.)

"Why not?"

"He was getting too grand for her." (Amusement).

"You don't mean anything more than that?"

"I don't know; she only came to my place once or twice. The last time I
set eyes on her must have been in October."

"How did she appear?"

"She was very miserable, but she wouldn't let you see it." (Laughter.)

"How has the prisoner behaved since the murder?"

"He always seemed very glum and sorry for it."

Cross-examined: "Did not the prisoner once occupy the bedroom of Mr.
Constant, and give it up to him, so that Mr. Constant might have the two
rooms on the same floor?"

"Yes, but he didn't pay as much."

"And, while occupying this front bedroom, did not the prisoner once lose
his key and have another made?"

"He did; he was very careless."

"Do you know what the prisoner and Mr. Constant spoke about on the night
of December 3d?"

"No; I couldn't hear."

"Then how did you know they were quarreling?"

"They were talkin' so loud."

Sir Charles Brown-Harland, Q. C. (sharply): "But I'm talking loudly to
you now. Should you say I was quarreling?"

"It takes two to make a quarrel." (Laughter.)

"Was the prisoner the sort of man who, in your opinion, would commit a
murder?"

"No, I never should ha' guessed it was him."

"He always struck you as a thorough gentleman?"

"No, my lud. I knew he was only a comp."

"You say the prisoner has seemed depressed since the murder. Might not
that have been due to the disappearance of his sweetheart?"

"No, he'd more likely be glad to get rid of her."

"Then he wouldn't be jealous if Mr. Constant took her off his hands?"
(Sensation.)

"Men are dog-in-the-mangers."

"Never mind about men, Mrs. Drabdump. Had the prisoner ceased to care
for Miss Dymond?"

"He didn't seem to think of her, my lud. When he got a letter in her
handwriting among his heap he used to throw it aside till he'd torn open
the others."

Brown-Harland, Q. C. (with a triumphant ring in his voice): "Thank you,
Mrs. Drabdump. You may sit down."

Spigot, Q. C.: "One moment, Mrs. Drabdump. You say the prisoner had
ceased to care for Miss Dymond. Might not this have been in consequence
of his suspecting for some time that she had relations with Mr.
Constant?"

The Judge: "That is not a fair question."

Spigot, Q. C.: "That will do, thank you, Mrs. Drabdump."

Brown-Harland, Q. C.: "No; one question more, Mrs. Drabdump. Did you
ever see anything--say when Miss Dymond came to your house--to make you
suspect anything between Mr. Constant and the prisoner's sweetheart?"

"She did meet him once when Mr. Mortlake was out." (Sensation.)

"Where did she meet him?"

"In the passage. He was going out when she knocked and he opened the
door." (Amusement.)

"You didn't hear what they said?"

"I ain't a eavesdropper. They spoke friendly and went away together."

Mr. George Grodman was called and repeated his evidence at the inquest.
Cross-examined, he testified to the warm friendship between Mr. Constant
and the prisoner. He knew very little about Miss Dymond, having scarcely
seen her. Prisoner had never spoken to him much about her. He should not
think she was much in prisoner's thoughts. Naturally the prisoner had
been depressed by the death of his friend. Besides, he was overworked.
Witness thought highly of Mortlake's character. It was incredible that
Constant had had improper relations of any kind with his friend's
promised wife. Grodman's evidence made a very favorable impression on
the jury; the prisoner looked his gratitude; and the prosecution felt
sorry it had been necessary to call this witness.

Inspector Howlett and Sergeant Runnymede had also to repeat their
evidence. Dr. Robinson, police-surgeon, likewise retendered his evidence
as to the nature of the wound, and the approximate hour of death. But
this time he was much more severely examined. He would not bind himself
down to state the time within an hour or two. He thought life had been
extinct two or three hours when he arrived, so that the deed had been
committed between seven and eight. Under gentle pressure from the
prosecuting counsel, he admitted that it might possibly have been
between six and seven. Cross-examined, he reiterated his impression in
favor of the later hour.

Supplementary evidence from medical experts proved as dubious and
uncertain as if the court had confined itself to the original witness.
It seemed to be generally agreed that the data for determining the time
of death of anybody were too complex and variable to admit of very
precise inference; _rigor mortis_ and other symptoms setting in within
very wide limits and differing largely in different persons. All agreed
that death from such a cut must have been practically instantaneous, and
the theory of suicide was rejected by all. As a whole the medical
evidence tended to fix the time of death, with a high degree of
probability, between the hours of six and half-past eight. The efforts
of the Prosecution were bent upon throwing back the time of death to as
early as possible after about half-past five. The Defense spent all its
strength upon pinning the experts to the conclusion that death could not
have been earlier than seven. Evidently the Prosecution was going to
fight hard for the hypothesis that Mortlake had committed the crime in
the interval between the first and second trains for Liverpool; while
the Defense was concentrating itself on an alibi, showing that the
prisoner had traveled by the second train which left Euston Station at a
quarter-past seven, so that there could have been no possible time for
the passage between Bow and Euston. It was an exciting struggle. As yet
the contending forces seemed equally matched. The evidence had gone as
much for as against the prisoner. But everybody knew that worse lay
behind.

"Call Edward Wimp."

The story Edward Wimp had to tell began tamely enough with
thrice-threshed-out facts. But at last the new facts came.

"In consequence of suspicions that had formed in your mind you took up
your quarters, disguised, in the late Mr. Constant's rooms?"

"I did; at the commencement of the year. My suspicions had gradually
gathered against the occupants of No. 11, Glover Street, and I resolved
to quash or confirm these suspicions once for all."

"Will you tell the jury what followed?"

"Whenever the prisoner was away for the night I searched his room. I
found the key of Mr. Constant's bedroom buried deeply in the side of
prisoner's leather sofa. I found what I imagine to be the letter he
received on December 3d, in the pages of a 'Bradshaw' lying under the
same sofa. There were two razors about."

Mr. Spigot, Q. C., said: "The key has already been identified by Mrs.
Drabdump. The letter I now propose to read."

It was undated, and ran as follows:

     "Dear Tom--This is to bid you farewell. It is the best for us all.
     I am going a long way, dearest. Do not seek to find me, for it will
     be useless. Think of me as one swallowed up by the waters, and be
     assured that it is only to spare you shame and humiliation in the
     future that I tear myself from you and all the sweetness of life.
     Darling, there is no other way. I feel you could never marry me
     now. I have felt it for months. Dear Tom, you will understand what
     I mean. We must look facts in the face. I hope you will always be
     friends with Mr. Constant. Good by, dear. God bless you! May you
     always be happy, and find a worthier wife than I. Perhaps when you
     are great, and rich, and famous, as you deserve, you will sometimes
     think not unkindly of one who, however faulty and unworthy of you,
     will at least love you till the end. Yours, till death,

     "Jessie."

By the time this letter was finished numerous old gentlemen, with wigs
or without, were observed to be polishing their glasses. Mr. Wimp's
examination was resumed.

"After making these discoveries what did you do?"

"I made inquiries about Miss Dymond, and found Mr. Constant had visited
her once or twice in the evening. I imagined there would be some traces
of a pecuniary connection. I was allowed by the family to inspect Mr.
Constant's check-book, and found a paid check made out for £25 in the
name of Miss Dymond. By inquiry at the Bank, I found it had been cashed
on November 12th of last year. I then applied for a warrant against the
prisoner."

Cross-examined: "Do you suggest that the prisoner opened Mr. Constant's
bedroom with the key you found?"

"Certainly."

Brown-Harland, Q. C. (sarcastically): "And locked the door from within
with it on leaving?"

"Certainly."

"Will you have the goodness to explain how the trick was done?"

"It wasn't done. (Laughter.) The prisoner probably locked the door from
the outside. Those who broke it open naturally imagined it had been
locked from the inside when they found the key inside. The key would, on
this theory, be on the floor as the outside locking could not have been
effected if it had been in the lock. The first persons to enter the room
would naturally believe it had been thrown down in the bursting of the
door. Or it might have been left sticking very loosely inside the lock
so as not to interfere with the turning of the outside key in which case
it would also probably have been thrown to the ground."

"Indeed. Very ingenious. And can you also explain how the prisoner could
have bolted the door within from the outside?"

"I can. (Renewed sensation.) There is only one way in which it was
possible--and that was, of course, a mere conjurer's illusion. To cause
a locked door to appear bolted in addition, it would only be necessary
for the person on the inside of the door to wrest the staple containing
the bolt from the woodwork. The bolt in Mr. Constant's bedroom worked
perpendicularly. When the staple was torn off, it would simply remain at
rest on the pin of the bolt instead of supporting it or keeping it
fixed. A person bursting open the door and finding the staple resting on
the pin and torn away from the lintel of the door, would, of course,
imagine he had torn it away, never dreaming the wresting off had been
done beforehand." (Applause in court, which was instantly checked by the
ushers.) The counsel for the defense felt he had been entrapped in
attempting to be sarcastic with the redoubtable detective. Grodman
seemed green with envy. It was the one thing he had not thought of.

Mrs. Drabdump, Grodman, Inspector Howlett, and Sergeant Runnymede were
recalled and re-examined by the embarrassed Sir Charles Brown-Harland as
to the exact condition of the lock and the bolt and the position of the
key. It turned out as Wimp had suggested; so prepossessed were the
witnesses with the conviction that the door was locked and bolted from
the inside when it was burst open that they were a little hazy about the
exact details. The damage had been repaired, so that it was all a
question of precise past observation. The inspector and the sergeant
testified that the key was in the lock when they saw it, though both the
mortise and the bolt were broken. They were not prepared to say that
Wimp's theory was impossible; they would even admit it was quite
possible that the staple of the bolt had been torn off beforehand. Mrs.
Drabdump could give no clear account of such petty facts in view of her
immediate engrossing interest in the horrible sight of the corpse.
Grodman alone was positive that the key was in the door when he burst it
open. No, he did not remember picking it up from the floor and putting
it in. And he was certain that the staple of the bolt was not broken,
from the resistance he experienced in trying to shake the upper panels
of the door.

By the Prosecution: "Don't you think, from the comparative ease with
which the door yielded to your onslaught, that it is highly probable
that the pin of the bolt was not in a firmly fixed staple, but in one
already detached from the woodwork of the lintel?"

"The door did not yield so easily."

"But you must be a Hercules."

"Not quite; the bolt was old, and the woodwork crumbling; the lock was
new and shoddy. But I have always been a strong man."

"Very well, Mr. Grodman. I hope you will never appear at the
music-halls." (Laughter.)

Jessie Dymond's landlady was the next witness for the prosecution. She
corroborated Wimp's statements as to Constant's occasional visits, and
narrated how the girl had been enlisted by the dead philanthropist as a
collaborator in some of his enterprises. But the most telling portion of
her evidence was the story of how, late at night, on December 3d, the
prisoner called upon her and inquired wildly about the whereabouts of
his sweetheart. He said he had just received a mysterious letter from
Miss Dymond saying she was gone. She (the landlady) replied that she
could have told him that weeks ago, as her ungrateful lodger was gone
now some three weeks without leaving a hint behind her. In answer to his
most ungentlemanly raging and raving, she told him it served him right,
as he should have looked after her better, and not kept away for so
long. She reminded him that there were as good fish in the sea as ever
came out, and a girl of Jessie's attractions need not pine away (as she
had seemed to be pining away) for lack of appreciation. He then called
her a liar and left her, and she hoped never to see his face again,
though she was not surprised to see it in the dock.

Mr. Fitzjames Montgomery, a bank clerk, remembered cashing the check
produced. He particularly remembered it, because he paid the money to a
very pretty girl. She took the entire amount in gold. At this point the
case was adjourned.

Denzil Cantercot was the first witness called for the prosecution on the
resumption of the trial. Pressed as to whether he had not told Mr. Wimp
that he had overheard the prisoner denouncing Mr. Constant, he could not
say. He had not actually heard the prisoner's denunciations; he might
have given Mr. Wimp a false impression, but then Mr. Wimp was so
prosaically literal. (Laughter.) Mr. Crowl had told him something of the
kind. Cross-examined, he said Jessie Dymond was a rare spirit and she
always reminded him of Joan of Arc.

Mr. Crowl, being called, was extremely agitated. He refused to take the
oath, and informed the court that the Bible was a Fad. He could not
swear by anything so self-contradictory. He would affirm. He could not
deny--though he looked like wishing to--that the prisoner had at first
been rather mistrustful of Mr. Constant, but he was certain that the
feeling had quickly worn off. Yes, he was a great friend of the
prisoner, but he didn't see why that should invalidate his testimony,
especially as he had not taken an oath. Certainly the prisoner seemed
rather depressed when he saw him on Bank Holiday, but it was overwork on
behalf of the people and for the demolition of the Fads.

Several other familiars of the prisoner gave more or less reluctant
testimony as to his sometime prejudice against the amateur rival labor
leader. His expressions of dislike had been strong and bitter. The
Prosecution also produced a poster announcing that the prisoner would
preside at a great meeting of clerks on December 4th. He had not turned
up at this meeting nor sent any explanation. Finally, there was the
evidence of the detectives who originally arrested him at Liverpool
Docks in view of his suspicious demeanor. This completed the case for
the prosecution.

Sir Charles Brown-Harland, Q. C., rose with a swagger and a rustle of
his silk gown, and proceeded to set forth the theory of the defense. He
said he did not purpose to call any witnesses. The hypothesis of the
prosecution was so inherently childish and inconsequential, and so
dependent upon a bundle of interdependent probabilities that it crumbled
away at the merest touch. The prisoner's character was of unblemished
integrity, his last public appearance had been made on the same platform
with Mr. Gladstone, and his honesty and highmindedness had been vouched
for by statesmen of the highest standing. His movements could be
accounted for from hour to hour--and those with which the prosecution
credited him rested on no tangible evidence whatever. He was also
credited with superhuman ingenuity and diabolical cunning of which he
had shown no previous symptom. Hypothesis was piled on hypothesis, as in
the old Oriental legend, where the world rested on the elephant and the
elephant on the tortoise. It might be worth while, however, to point out
that it was at least quite likely that the death of Mr. Constant had not
taken place before seven, and as the prisoner left Euston Station at
7:15 a. m. for Liverpool, he could certainly not have got there from Bow
in the time; also that it was hardly possible for the prisoner, who
could prove being at Euston Station at 5:25 a. m., to travel backward
and forward to Glover Street and commit the crime all within less than
two hours. "The real facts," said Sir Charles impressively, "are most
simple. The prisoner, partly from pressure of work, partly (he had no
wish to conceal) from worldly ambition, had begun to neglect Miss
Dymond, to whom he was engaged to be married. The man was but human, and
his head was a little turned by his growing importance. Nevertheless, at
heart he was still deeply attached to Miss Dymond. She, however, appears
to have jumped to the conclusion that he had ceased to love her, that
she was unworthy of him, unfitted by education to take her place side by
side with him in the new spheres to which he was mounting--that, in
short, she was a drag on his career. Being, by all accounts, a girl of
remarkable force of character, she resolved to cut the Gordian knot by
leaving London, and, fearing lest her affianced husband's
conscientiousness should induce him to sacrifice himself to her;
dreading also, perhaps, her own weakness, she made the parting absolute,
and the place of her refuge a mystery. A theory has been suggested which
drags an honored name in the mire--a theory so superfluous that I shall
only allude to it. That Arthur Constant could have seduced, or had any
improper relations with his friend's betrothed is a hypothesis to which
the lives of both give the lie. Before leaving London--or England--Miss
Dymond wrote to her aunt in Devonport--her only living relative in this
country--asking her as a great favor to forward an addressed letter to
the prisoner, a fortnight after receipt. The aunt obeyed implicitly.
This was the letter which fell like a thunderbolt on the prisoner on the
night of December 3d. All his old love returned--he was full of
self-reproach and pity for the poor girl. The letter read ominously.
Perhaps she was going to put an end to herself. His first thought was to
rush up to his friend, Constant, to seek his advice. Perhaps Constant
knew something of the affair. The prisoner knew the two were in not
infrequent communication. It is possible--my lord and gentlemen of the
jury, I do not wish to follow the methods of the prosecution and confuse
theory with fact, so I say it is possible--that Mr. Constant had
supplied her with the £25 to leave the country. He was like a brother to
her, perhaps even acted imprudently in calling upon her, though neither
dreamed of evil. It is possible that he may have encouraged her in her
abnegation and in her altruistic aspirations, perhaps even without
knowing their exact drift, for does he not speak in his very last letter
of the fine female characters he was meeting, and the influence for good
he had over individual human souls? Still, this we can now never know,
unless the dead speak or the absent return. It is also not impossible
that Miss Dymond was entrusted with the £25 for charitable purposes. But
to come back to certainties. The prisoner consulted Mr. Constant about
the letter. He then ran to Miss Dymond's lodgings in Stepney Green,
knowing beforehand his trouble would be futile. The letter bore the
postmark of Devonport. He knew the girl had an aunt there; possibly she
might have gone to her. He could not telegraph, for he was ignorant of
the address. He consulted his 'Bradshaw,' and resolved to leave by the
5:30 a. m. from Paddington, and told his landlady so. He left the letter
in the 'Bradshaw,' which ultimately got thrust among a pile of papers
under the sofa, so that he had to get another. He was careless and
disorderly, and the key found by Mr. Wimp in his sofa must have lain
there for some years, having been lost there in the days when he
occupied the bedroom afterward rented by Mr. Constant. Afraid to miss
his train, he did not undress on that distressful night. Meantime the
thought occurred to him that Jessie was too clever a girl to leave so
easy a trail, and he jumped to the conclusion that she would be going to
her married brother in America, and had gone to Devonport merely to bid
her aunt farewell. He determined therefore to get to Liverpool, without
wasting time at Devonport, to institute inquiries. Not suspecting the
delay in the transit of the letter, he thought he might yet stop her,
even at the landing-stage or on the tender. Unfortunately his cab went
slowly in the fog, he missed the first train, and wandered about
brooding disconsolately in the mist till the second. At Liverpool his
suspicious, excited demeanor procured his momentary arrest. Since then
the thought of the lost girl has haunted and broken him. That is the
whole, the plain, and the sufficing story." The effective witnesses for
the defense were, indeed, few. It is so hard to prove a negative. There
was Jessie's aunt, who bore out the statement of the counsel for the
defense. There were the porters who saw him leave Euston by the 7:15
train for Liverpool, and arrive just too late for the 5:15; there was
the cabman (2,138), who drove him to Euston just in time, he (witness)
thought, to catch the 5:15 a. m. Under cross-examination, the cabman got
a little confused; he was asked whether, if he really picked up the
prisoner at Bow Railway Station at about 4:30, he ought not to have
caught the first train at Euston. He said the fog made him drive rather
slowly, but admitted the mist was transparent enough to warrant full
speed. He also admitted being a strong trade unionist, Spigot, Q. C.,
artfully extorting the admission as if it were of the utmost
significance. Finally, there were numerous witnesses--of all sorts and
conditions--to the prisoner's high character, as well as to Arthur
Constant's blameless and moral life.

In his closing speech on the third day of the trial, Sir Charles pointed
out with great exhaustiveness and cogency the flimsiness of the case for
the prosecution, the number of hypotheses it involved, and their mutual
interdependence. Mrs. Drabdump was a witness whose evidence must be
accepted with extreme caution. The jury must remember that she was
unable to dissociate her observations from her inferences, and thought
that the prisoner and Mr. Constant were quarreling merely because they
were agitated. He dissected her evidence, and showed that it entirely
bore out the story of the defense. He asked the jury to bear in mind
that no positive evidence (whether of cabmen or others) had been given
of the various and complicated movements attributed to the prisoner on
the morning of December 4th, between the hours of 5:25 and 7:15 a. m.,
and that the most important witness on the theory of the prosecution--he
meant, of course, Miss Dymond--had not been produced. Even if she were
dead, and her body were found, no countenance would be given to the
theory of the prosecution, for the mere conviction that her lover had
deserted her would be a sufficient explanation of her suicide. Beyond
the ambiguous letter, no tittle of evidence of her dishonor--on which
the bulk of the case against the prisoner rested--had been adduced. As
for the motive of political jealousy that had been a mere passing cloud.
The two men had become fast friends. As to the circumstances of the
alleged crime, the medical evidence was on the whole in favor of the
time of death being late; and the prisoner had left London at a quarter
past seven. The drugging theory was absurd, and as for the too clever
bolt and lock theories, Mr. Grodman, a trained scientific observer, had
pooh-poohed them. He would solemnly exhort the jury to remember that if
they condemned the prisoner they would not only send an innocent man to
an ignominious death on the flimsiest circumstantial evidence, but they
would deprive the workingmen of this country of one of their truest
friends and their ablest leader.

The conclusion of Sir Charles' vigorous speech was greeted with
irrepressible applause.

Mr. Spigot, Q. C., in closing the case for the prosecution, asked the
jury to return a verdict against the prisoner for as malicious and
premeditated a crime as ever disgraced the annals of any civilized
country. His cleverness and education had only been utilized for the
devil's ends, while his reputation had been used as a cloak. Everything
pointed strongly to the prisoner's guilt. On receiving Miss Dymond's
letter announcing her shame, and (probably) her intention to commit
suicide, he had hastened upstairs to denounce Constant. He had then
rushed to the girl's lodgings, and, finding his worst fears confirmed,
planned at once his diabolically ingenious scheme of revenge. He told
his landlady he was going to Devonport, so that if he bungled, the
police would be put temporarily off his track. His real destination was
Liverpool, for he intended to leave the country. Lest, however, his plan
should break down here, too, he arranged an ingenious alibi by being
driven to Euston for the 5:15 train to Liverpool. The cabman would not
know he did not intend to go by it, but meant to return to 11, Glover
Street, there to perpetrate this foul crime, interruption to which he
had possibly barred by drugging his landlady. His presence at Liverpool
(whither he really went by the second train) would corroborate the
cabman's story. That night he had not undressed nor gone to bed; he had
plotted out his devilish scheme till it was perfect; the fog came as an
unexpected ally to cover his movements. Jealousy, outraged affection,
the desire for revenge, the lust for political power--these were human.
They might pity the criminal, they could not find him innocent of the
crime.

Mr. Justice Crogie, summing up, began dead against the prisoner.
Reviewing the evidence, he pointed out that plausible hypotheses neatly
dove-tailed did not necessarily weaken one another, the fitting so well
together of the whole rather making for the truth of the parts. Besides,
the case for the prosecution was as far from being all hypothesis as the
case for the defense was from excluding hypothesis. The key, the letter,
the reluctance to produce the letter, the heated interview with
Constant, the misstatement about the prisoner's destination, the flight
to Liverpool, the false tale about searching for a "him," the
denunciations of Constant, all these were facts. On the other hand,
there were various lacunae and hypotheses in the case for the defense.
Even conceding the somewhat dubious alibi afforded by the prisoner's
presence at Euston at 5:25 a. m., there was no attempt to account for
his movements between that and 7:15 a. m. It was as possible that he
returned to Bow as that he lingered about Euston. There was nothing in
the medical evidence to make his guilt impossible. Nor was there
anything inherently impossible in Constant's yielding to the sudden
temptation of a beautiful girl, nor in a working-girl deeming herself
deserted, temporarily succumbing to the fascinations of a gentleman and
regretting it bitterly afterward. What had become of the girl was a
mystery. Hers might have been one of those nameless corpses which the
tide swirls up on slimy river banks. The jury must remember, too, that
the relation might not have actually passed into dishonor, it might have
been just grave enough to smite the girl's conscience, and to induce her
to behave as she had done. It was enough that her letter should have
excited the jealousy of the prisoner. There was one other point which he
would like to impress on the jury, and which the counsel for the
prosecution had not sufficiently insisted upon. This was that the
prisoner's guiltiness was the only plausible solution that had ever been
advanced of the Bow Mystery. The medical evidence agreed that Mr.
Constant did not die by his own hand. Someone must therefore have
murdered him. The number of people who could have had any possible
reason or opportunity to murder him was extremely small. The prisoner
had both reason and opportunity. By what logicians called the method of
exclusion, suspicion would attach to him on even slight evidence. The
actual evidence was strong and plausible, and now that Mr. Wimp's
ingenious theory had enabled them to understand how the door could have
been apparently locked and bolted from within, the last difficulty and
the last argument for suicide had been removed. The prisoner's guilt was
as clear as circumstantial evidence could make it. If they let him go
free, the Bow Mystery might henceforward be placed among the archives of
unavenged assassinations. Having thus well-nigh hung the prisoner, the
judge wound up by insisting on the high probability of the story for the
defense, though that, too, was dependent in important details upon the
prisoner's mere private statements to his counsel. The jury, being by
this time sufficiently muddled by his impartiality, were dismissed, with
the exhortation to allow due weight to every fact and probability in
determining their righteous verdict.

The minutes ran into hours, but the jury did not return. The shadows of
night fell across the reeking, fevered court before they announced their
verdict--

"Guilty."

The judge put on his black cap.

The great reception arranged outside was a fiasco; the evening banquet
was indefinitely postponed. Wimp had won; Grodman felt like a whipped
cur.

CHAPTER XI.

"So you were right," Denzil could not help saying as he greeted Grodman
a week afterward. "I shall not live to tell the story of how you
discovered the Bow murderer."

"Sit down," growled Grodman; "perhaps you will after all." There was a
dangerous gleam in his eyes. Denzil was sorry he had spoken.

"I sent for you," Grodman said, "to tell you that on the night Wimp
arrested Mortlake I had made preparations for your arrest."

Denzil gasped, "What for?"

"My dear Denzil, there is a little law in this country invented for the
confusion of the poetic. The greatest exponent of the Beautiful is only
allowed the same number of wives as the greengrocer. I do not blame you
for not being satisfied with Jane--she is a good servant but a bad
mistress--but it was cruel to Kitty not to inform her that Jane had a
prior right in you, and unjust to Jane not to let her know of the
contract with Kitty."

"They both know it now well enough, curse 'em," said the poet.

"Yes; your secrets are like your situations--you can't keep them long.
My poor poet, I pity you--betwixt the devil and the deep sea."

"They're a pair of harpies, each holding over me the Damocles sword of
an arrest for bigamy. Neither loves me."

"I should think they would come in very useful to you. You plant one in
my house to tell my secrets to Wimp, and you plant one in Wimp's house
to tell Wimp's secrets to me, I suppose. Out with some, then."

"Upon my honor you wrong me. Jane brought me here, not I Jane. As for
Kitty, I never had such a shock in my life as at finding her installed
in Wimp's house."

"She thought it safer to have the law handy for your arrest. Besides,
she probably desired to occupy a parallel position to Jane's. She must
do something for a living; you wouldn't do anything for hers. And so you
couldn't go anywhere without meeting a wife! Ha! ha! ha! Serve you
right, my polygamous poet."

"But why should you arrest me?"

"Revenge, Denzil. I have been the best friend you ever had in this cold,
prosaic world. You have eaten my bread, drunk my claret, written my
book, smoked my cigars, and pocketed my money. And yet, when you have an
important piece of information bearing on a mystery about which I am
thinking day and night, you calmly go and sell it to Wimp."

"I did-didn't," stammered Denzil.

"Liar! Do you think Kitty has any secrets from me? As soon as I
discovered your two marriages I determined to have you arrested
for--your treachery. But when I found you had, as I thought, put Wimp on
the wrong scent, when I felt sure that by arresting Mortlake he was
going to make a greater ass of himself than even nature had been able to
do, then I forgave you. I let you walk about the earth--and
drink--freely. Now it is Wimp who crows--everybody pats him on the
back--they call him the mystery man of the Scotland-Yard tribe. Poor Tom
Mortlake will be hanged, and all through your telling Wimp about Jessie
Dymond!"

"It was you yourself," said Denzil sullenly. "Everybody was giving it
up. But you said 'Let us find out all that Arthur Constant did in the
last few months of his life.' Wimp couldn't miss stumbling on Jessie
sooner or later. I'd have throttled Constant, if I had known he'd
touched her," he wound up with irrelevant indignation.

Grodman winced at the idea that he himself had worked _ad majorem
gloriam_ of Wimp. And yet, had not Mrs. Wimp let out as much at the
Christmas dinner?

"What's past is past," he said gruffly. "But if Tom Mortlake hangs, you
go to Portland."

"How can I help Tom hanging?"

"Help the agitation as much as you can. Write letters under all sorts of
names to all the papers. Get everybody you know to sign the great
petition. Find out where Jessie Dymond is--the girl who holds the proof
of Tom Mortlake's innocence."

"You really believe him innocent?"

"Don't be satirical, Denzil. Haven't I taken the chair at all the
meetings? Am I not the most copious correspondent of the Press?"

"I thought it was only to spite Wimp."

"Rubbish. It's to save poor Tom. He no more murdered Arthur Constant
than--you did!" He laughed an unpleasant laugh.

Denzil bade him farewell, frigid with fear.

Grodman was up to his ears in letters and telegrams. Somehow he had
become the leader of the rescue party--suggestions, subscriptions came
from all sides. The suggestions were burnt, the subscriptions
acknowledged in the papers and used for hunting up the missing girl.
Lucy Brent headed the list with a hundred pounds. It was a fine
testimony to her faith in her dead lover's honor.

The release of the Jury had unloosed "The Greater Jury," which always
now sits upon the smaller. Every means was taken to nullify the value of
the "palladium of British liberty." The foreman and the jurors were
interviewed, the judge was judged, and by those who were no judges. The
Home Secretary (who had done nothing beyond accepting office under the
Crown) was vituperated, and sundry provincial persons wrote
confidentially to the Queen. Arthur Constant's backsliding cheered many
by convincing them that others were as bad as themselves; and well-to-do
tradesmen saw in Mortlake's wickedness the pernicious effects of
socialism. A dozen new theories were afloat. Constant had committed
suicide by Esoteric Buddhism, as witness his devotion to Mme. Blavatsky,
or he had been murdered by his Mahatma, or victimized by Hypnotism,
Mesmerism, Somnambulism, and other weird abstractions. Grodman's great
point was--Jessie Dymond must be produced, dead or alive. The electric
current scoured the civilized world in search of her. What wonder if the
shrewder sort divined that the indomitable detective had fixed his last
hope on the girl's guilt? If Jessie had wrongs why should she not have
avenged them herself? Did she not always remind the poet of Joan of Arc?

Another week passed; the shadow of the gallows crept over the days; on,
on, remorselessly drawing nearer, as the last ray of hope sank below the
horizon. The Home Secretary remained inflexible; the great petitions
discharged their signatures at him in vain. He was a Conservative,
sternly conscientious; and the mere insinuation that his obstinacy was
due to the politics of the condemned only hardened him against the
temptation of a cheap reputation for magnanimity. He would not even
grant a respite, to increase the chances of the discovery of Jessie
Dymond. In the last of the three weeks there was a final monster meeting
of protest. Grodman again took the chair, and several distinguished
faddists were present, as well as numerous respectable members of
society. The Home Secretary acknowledged the receipt of their
resolutions. The Trade Unions were divided in their allegiance; some
whispered of faith and hope, others of financial defalcations. The
former essayed to organize a procession and an indignation meeting on
the Sunday preceding the Tuesday fixed for the execution, but it fell
through on a rumor of confession. The Monday papers contained a last
masterly letter from Grodman exposing the weakness of the evidence, but
they knew nothing of a confession. The prisoner was mute and disdainful,
professing little regard for a life empty of love and burdened with
self-reproach. He refused to see clergymen. He was accorded an interview
with Miss Brent in the presence of a jailer, and solemnly asseverated
his respect for her dead lover's memory. Monday buzzed with rumors; the
evening papers chronicled them hour by hour. A poignant anxiety was
abroad. The girl would be found. Some miracle would happen. A reprieve
would arrive. The sentence would be commuted. But the short day darkened
into night even as Mortlake's short day was darkening. And the shadow of
the gallows crept on and on and seemed to mingle with the twilight.

Crowl stood at the door of his shop, unable to work. His big gray eyes
were heavy with unshed tears. The dingy wintry road seemed one vast
cemetery; the street lamps twinkled like corpse-lights. The confused
sounds of the street-life reached his ear as from another world. He did
not see the people who flitted to and fro amid the gathering shadows of
the cold, dreary night. One ghastly vision flashed and faded and flashed
upon the background of the duskiness.

Denzil stood beside him, smoking in silence. A cold fear was at his
heart. That terrible Grodman! As the hangman's cord was tightening round
Mortlake, he felt the convict's chains tightening round himself. And yet
there was one gleam of hope, feeble as the yellow flicker of the
gas-lamp across the way. Grodman had obtained an interview with the
condemned late that afternoon, and the parting had been painful, but the
evening paper, that in its turn had obtained an interview with the
ex-detective, announced on its placard:

     "GRODMAN STILL CONFIDENT,"

and the thousands who yet pinned their faith on this extraordinary man
refused to extinguish the last sparks of hope. Denzil had bought the
paper and scanned it eagerly, but there was nothing save the vague
assurance that the indefatigable Grodman was still almost pathetically
expectant of the miracle. Denzil did not share the expectation; he
meditated flight.

"Peter," he said at last, "I'm afraid it's all over."

Crowl nodded, heart-broken. "All over!" he repeated, "and to think that
he dies--and it is--all over!"

He looked despairingly at the blank winter sky, where leaden clouds shut
out the stars. "Poor, poor young fellow! To-night alive and thinking.
To-morrow night a clod, with no more sense or motion than a bit of
leather! No compensation nowhere for being cut off innocent in the pride
of youth and strength! A man who has always preached the Useful day and
night, and toiled and suffered for his fellows. Where's the justice of
it, where's the justice of it?" he demanded fiercely. Again his wet eyes
wandered upward toward heaven, that heaven away from which the soul of a
dead saint at the Antipodes was speeding into infinite space.

"Well, where was the justice for Arthur Constant if he, too, was
innocent?" said Denzil. "Really, Peter, I don't see why you should take
it for granted that Tom is so dreadfully injured. Your horny-handed
labor leaders are, after all, men of no aesthetic refinement, with no
sense of the Beautiful; you cannot expect them to be exempt from the
coarser forms of crime. Humanity must look to for other leaders--to the
seers and the poets!"

"Cantercot, if you say Tom's guilty I'll knock you down." The little
cobbler turned upon his tall friend like a roused lion. Then he added,
"I beg your pardon, Cantercot, I don't mean that. After all, I've no
grounds. The judge is an honest man, and with gifts I can't lay claim
to. But I believe in Tom with all my heart. And if Tom is guilty I
believe in the Cause of the People with all my heart all the same. The
Fads are doomed to death, they may be reprieved, but they must die at
last."

He drew a deep sigh, and looked along the dreary Road. It was quite dark
now, but by the light of the lamps and the gas in the shop windows the
dull, monotonous Road lay revealed in all its sordid, familiar outlines;
with its long stretches of chill pavement, its unlovely architecture,
and its endless stream of prosaic pedestrians.

A sudden consciousness of the futility of his existence pierced the
little cobbler like an icy wind. He saw his own life, and a hundred
million lives like his, swelling and breaking like bubbles on a dark
ocean, unheeded, uncared for.

A newsboy passed along, clamoring "The Bow murderer, preparations for
the hexecution!"

A terrible shudder shook the cobbler's frame. His eyes ranged
sightlessly after the boy; the merciful tears filled them at last.

"The Cause of the People," he murmured, brokenly, "I believe in the
Cause of the People. There is nothing else."

"Peter, come in to tea, you'll catch cold," said Mrs. Crowl.

Denzil went in to tea and Peter followed.

Meantime, round the house of the Home Secretary, who was in town, an
ever-augmenting crowd was gathered, eager to catch the first whisper of
a reprieve.

The house was guarded by a cordon of police, for there was no
inconsiderable danger of a popular riot. At times a section of the crowd
groaned and hooted. Once a volley of stones was discharged at the
windows. The news-boys were busy vending their special editions, and the
reporters struggled through the crowd, clutching descriptive pencils,
and ready to rush off to telegraph offices should anything "extra
special" occur. Telegraph boys were coming up every now and again with
threats, messages, petitions and exhortations from all parts of the
country to the unfortunate Home Secretary, who was striving to keep his
aching head cool as he went through the voluminous evidence for the last
time and pondered over the more important letters which "The Greater
Jury" had contributed to the obscuration of the problem. Grodman's
letter in that morning's paper shook him most; under his scientific
analysis the circumstantial chain seemed forged of painted cardboard.
Then the poor man read the judge's summing up, and the chain became
tempered steel. The noise of the crowd outside broke upon his ear in his
study like the roar of a distant ocean. The more the rabble hooted him,
the more he essayed to hold scrupulously the scales of life and death.
And the crowd grew and grew, as men came away from their work. There
were many that loved the man who lay in the jaws of death, and a spirit
of mad revolt surged in their breasts. And the sky was gray, and the
bleak night deepened and the shadow of the gallows crept on.

Suddenly a strange inarticulate murmur spread through the crowd, a vague
whisper of no one knew what. Something had happened. Somebody was
coming. A second later and one of the outskirts of the throng was
agitated, and a convulsive cheer went up from it, and was taken up
infectiously all along the street. The crowd parted--a hansom dashed
through the center. "Grodman! Grodman!" shouted those who recognized the
occupant. "Grodman! Hurrah!" Grodman was outwardly calm and pale, but
his eyes glittered; he waved his hand encouragingly as the hansom dashed
up to the door, cleaving the turbulent crowd as a canoe cleaves the
waters. Grodman sprang out, the constables at the portal made way for
him respectfully. He knocked imperatively, the door was opened
cautiously; a boy rushed up and delivered a telegram; Grodman forced his
way in, gave his name, and insisted on seeing the Home Secretary on a
matter of life and death. Those near the door heard his words and
cheered, and the crowd divined the good omen, and the air throbbed with
cannonades of joyous sound. The cheers rang in Grodman's ears as the
door slammed behind him. The reporters struggled to the front. An
excited knot of working men pressed round the arrested hansom, they took
the horse out. A dozen enthusiasts struggled for the honor of placing
themselves between the shafts. And the crowd awaited Grodman.

CHAPTER XII.

Grodman was ushered into the conscientious Minister's study. The doughty
chief of the agitation was, perhaps, the one man who could not be
denied. As he entered, the Home Secretary's face seemed lit up with
relief. At a sign from his master, the amanuensis who had brought in the
last telegram took it back with him into the outer room where he worked.
Needless to say not a tithe of the Minister's correspondence ever came
under his own eyes.

"You have a valid reason for troubling me, I suppose, Mr. Grodman?" said
the Home Secretary, almost cheerfully. "Of course it is about Mortlake?"

"It is; and I have the best of all reasons."

"Take a seat. Proceed."

"Pray do not consider me impertinent, but have you ever given any
attention to the science of evidence?"

"How do you mean?" asked the Home Secretary, rather puzzled, adding,
with a melancholy smile, "I have had to lately. Of course, I've never
been a criminal lawyer, like some of my predecessors. But I should
hardly speak of it as a science; I look upon it as a question of
common-sense."

"Pardon me, sir. It is the most subtle and difficult of all the
sciences. It is, indeed, rather the science of the sciences. What is the
whole of Inductive Logic, as laid down, say, by Bacon and Mill, but an
attempt to appraise the value of evidence, the said evidence being the
trails left by the Creator, so to speak? The Creator has--I say it in
all reverence--drawn a myriad red herrings across the track, but the
true scientist refuses to be baffled by superficial appearances in
detecting the secrets of Nature. The vulgar herd catches at the gross
apparent fact, but the man of insight knows that what lies on the
surface does lie."

"Very interesting, Mr. Grodman, but really----"

"Bear with me, sir. The science of evidence being thus so extremely
subtle, and demanding the most acute and trained observation of facts,
the most comprehensive understanding of human psychology, is naturally
given over to professors who have not the remotest idea that 'things are
not what they seem,' and that everything is other than it appears; to
professors, most of whom, by their year-long devotion to the
shop-counter or the desk, have acquired an intimate acquaintance with
all the infinite shades and complexities of things and human nature.
When twelve of these professors are put in a box, it is called a jury.
When one of these professors is put in a box by himself, he is called a
witness. The retailing of evidence--the observation of the facts--is
given over to people who go through their lives without eyes; the
appreciation of evidence--the judging of these facts--is surrendered to
people who may possibly be adepts in weighing out pounds of sugar. Apart
from their sheer inability to fulfill either function--to observe, or to
judge--their observation and their judgment alike are vitiated by all
sorts of irrelevant prejudices."

"You are attacking trial by jury."

"Not necessarily. I am prepared to accept that scientifically, on the
ground that, as there are, as a rule, only two alternatives, the balance
of probability is slightly in favor of the true decision being come to.
Then, in cases where experts like myself have got up the evidence, the
jury can be made to see through trained eyes."

The Home Secretary tapped impatiently with his foot.

"I can't listen to abstract theorizing," he said. "Have you any fresh
concrete evidence?"

"Sir, everything depends on our getting down to the root of the matter.
What percentage of average evidence should you think is thorough, plain,
simple, unvarnished fact, 'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth'?"

"Fifty?" said the Minister, humoring him a little.

"Not five. I say nothing of lapses of memory, of inborn defects of
observational power--though the suspiciously precise recollection of
dates and events possessed by ordinary witnesses in important trials
taking place years after the occurrences involved, is one of the most
amazing things in the curiosities of modern jurisprudence. I defy you,
sir, to tell me what you had for dinner last Monday, or what exactly you
were saying and doing at five o'clock last Tuesday afternoon. Nobody
whose life does not run in mechanical grooves can do anything of the
sort; unless, of course, the facts have been very impressive. But this
by the way. The great obstacle to veracious observation is the element
of prepossession in all vision. Has it ever struck you, sir, that we
never see anyone more than once, if that? The first time we meet a man
we may possibly see him as he is; the second time our vision is colored
and modified by the memory of the first. Do our friends appear to us as
they appear to strangers? Do our rooms, our furniture, our pipes strike
our eye as they would strike the eye of an outsider, looking on them for
the first time? Can a mother see her babe's ugliness, or a lover his
mistress' shortcomings, though they stare everybody else in the face?
Can we see ourselves as others see us? No; habit, prepossession changes
all. The mind is a large factor of every so-called external fact. The
eye sees, sometimes, what it wishes to see, more often what it expects
to see. You follow me, sir?"

The Home Secretary nodded his head less impatiently. He was beginning to
be interested. The hubbub from without broke faintly upon their ears.

"To give you a definite example. Mr. Wimp says that when I burst open
the door of Mr. Constant's room on the morning of December 4th, and saw
that the staple of the bolt had been wrested by the pin from the lintel,
I jumped at once to the conclusion that I had broken the bolt. Now I
admit that this was so, only in things like this you do not seem to
conclude, you jump so fast that you see, or seem to. On the other hand,
when you see a standing ring of fire produced by whirling a burning
stick, you do not believe in its continuous existence. It is the same
when witnessing a legerdemain performance. Seeing is not always
believing, despite the proverb; but believing is often seeing. It is not
to the point that in that little matter of the door Wimp was as
hopelessly and incurably wrong as he has been in everything all along.
Though the door was securely bolted, I confess that I should have seen
that I had broken the bolt in forcing the door, even if it had been
broken beforehand. Never once since December 4th did this possibility
occur to me, till Wimp with perverted ingenuity suggested it. If this is
the case with a trained observer, one moreover fully conscious of this
ineradicable tendency of the human mind, how must it be with an
untrained observer?"

"Come to the point, come to the point," said the Home Secretary, putting
out his hand as if it itched to touch the bell on the writing-table.

"Such as," went on Grodman imperturbably, "such as--Mrs. Drabdump. That
worthy person is unable, by repeated violent knocking, to arouse her
lodger who yet desires to be aroused; she becomes alarmed, she rushes
across to get my assistance; I burst open the door--what do you think
the good lady expected to see?"

"Mr. Constant murdered, I suppose," murmured the Home Secretary,
wonderingly.

"Exactly. And so she saw it. And what should you think was the condition
of Arthur Constant when the door yielded to my violent exertions and
flew open?"

"Why, was he not dead?" gasped the Home Secretary, his heart fluttering
violently.

"Dead? A young, healthy fellow like that! When the door flew open Arthur
Constant was sleeping the sleep of the just. It was a deep, a very deep
sleep, of course, else the blows at his door would long since have
awakened him. But all the while Mrs. Drabdump's fancy was picturing her
lodger cold and stark the poor young fellow was lying in bed in a nice
warm sleep."

"You mean to say you found Arthur Constant alive?"

"As you were last night."

The minister was silent, striving confusedly to take in the situation.
Outside the crowd was cheering again. It was probably to pass the time.

"Then, when was he murdered?"

"Immediately afterward."

"By whom?"

"Well, that is, if you will pardon me, not a very intelligent question.
Science and common-sense are in accord for once. Try the method of
exhaustion. It must have been either by Mrs. Drabdump or by myself."

"You mean to say that Mrs. Drabdump----!"

"Poor dear Mrs. Drabdump, you don't deserve this of your Home Secretary!
The idea of that good lady!"

"It was you!"

"Calm yourself, my dear Home Secretary. There is nothing to be alarmed
at. It was a solitary experiment, and I intend it to remain so." The
noise without grew louder. "Three cheers for Grodman! Hip, hip, hip,
hooray," fell faintly on their ears.

But the Minister, pallid and deeply moved, touched the bell. The Home
Secretary's home secretary appeared. He looked at the great man's
agitated face with suppressed surprise.

"Thank you for calling in your amanuensis," said Grodman. "I intended to
ask you to lend me his services. I suppose he can write shorthand."

The minister nodded, speechless.

"That is well. I intend this statement to form the basis of an appendix
to the twenty-fifth edition--sort of silver wedding--of my book,
'Criminals I Have Caught,' Mr. Denzil Cantercot, who, by the will I have
made to-day, is appointed my literary executor, will have the task of
working it up with literary and dramatic touches after the model of the
other chapters of my book. I have every confidence he will be able to do
me as much justice, from a literary point of view, as you, sir, no doubt
will from a legal. I feel certain he will succeed in catching the style
of the other chapters to perfection."

"Templeton," whispered the Home Secretary, "this man may be a lunatic.
The effort to solve the Big Bow Mystery may have addled his brain.
Still," he added aloud, "it will be as well for you to take down his
statement in shorthand."

"Thank you, sir," said Grodman, heartily. "Ready, Mr. Templeton? Here
goes. My career till I left the Scotland-Yard Detective Department is
known to all the world. Is that too fast for you, Mr. Templeton? A
little? Well, I'll go slower; but pull me up if I forget to keep the
brake on. When I retired, I discovered that I was a bachelor. But it was
too late to marry. Time hung on my hands. The preparation of my book,
'Criminals I Have Caught,' kept me occupied for some months. When it was
published I had nothing more to do but think. I had plenty of money, and
it was safely invested; there was no call for speculation. The future
was meaningless to me; I regretted I had not elected to die in harness.
As idle old men must, I lived in the past. I went over and over again my
ancient exploits; I re-read my book. And as I thought and thought, away
from the excitement of the actual hunt, and seeing the facts in a truer
perspective, so it grew daily clearer to me that criminals were more
fools than rogues. Every crime I had traced, however cleverly
perpetrated, was from the point of view of penetrability a weak failure.
Traces and trails were left on all sides--ragged edges, rough-hewn
corners; in short, the job was botched, artistic completeness
unattained. To the vulgar, my feats might seem marvelous--the average
man is mystified to grasp how you detect the letter 'e' in a simple
cryptogram--to myself they were as commonplace as the crimes they
unveiled. To me now, with my lifelong study of the science of evidence,
it seemed possible to commit not merely one, but a thousand crimes that
should be absolutely undiscoverable. And yet criminals would go on
sinning, and giving themselves away, in the same old grooves--no
originality, no dash, no individual insight, no fresh conception! One
would imagine there were an Academy of crime with forty thousand
armchairs. And gradually, as I pondered and brooded over the thought,
there came upon me the desire to commit a crime that should baffle
detection. I could invent hundreds of such crimes, and please myself by
imagining them done; but would they really work out in practice?
Evidently the sole performer of my experiment must be myself; the
subject--whom or what? Accident should determine. I itched to commence
with murder--to tackle the stiffest problems first, and I burned to
startle and baffle the world--especially the world of which I had ceased
to be. Outwardly I was calm, and spoke to the people about me as usual.
Inwardly I was on fire with a consuming scientific passion. I sported
with my pet theories, and fitted them mentally on everyone I met. Every
friend or acquaintance I sat and gossiped with, I was plotting how to
murder without leaving a clue. There is not one of my friends or
acquaintances I have not done away with in thought. There is no public
man--have no fear, my dear Home Secretary--I have not planned to
assassinate secretly, mysteriously, unintelligibly, undiscoverably. Ah,
how I could give the stock criminals points--with their second-hand
motives, their conventional conceptions, their commonplace details,
their lack of artistic feeling and restraint.

"The late Arthur Constant came to live nearly opposite me. I cultivated
his acquaintance--he was a lovable young fellow, an excellent subject
for experiment. I do not know when I have ever taken to a man more. From
the moment I first set eyes on him, there was a peculiar sympathy
between us. We were drawn to each other. I felt instinctively he would
be the man. I loved to hear him speak enthusiastically of the
Brotherhood of Man--I, who knew the brotherhood of man was to the ape,
the serpent, and the tiger--and he seemed to find a pleasure in stealing
a moment's chat with me from his engrossing self-appointed duties. It is
a pity humanity should have been robbed of so valuable a life. But it
had to be. At a quarter to ten on the night of December 3d he came to
me. Naturally I said nothing about this visit at the inquest or the
trial. His object was to consult me mysteriously about some girl. He
said he had privately lent her money--which she was to repay at her
convenience. What the money was for he did not know, except that it was
somehow connected with an act of abnegation in which he had vaguely
encouraged her. The girl had since disappeared, and he was in distress
about her. He would not tell me who it was--of course now, sir, you know
as well as I it was Jessie Dymond--but asked for advice as to how to set
about finding her. He mentioned that Mortlake was leaving for Devonport
by the first train on the next day. Of old I should have connected these
two facts and sought the thread; now, as he spoke, all my thoughts were
dyed red. He was suffering perceptibly from toothache, and in answer to
my sympathetic inquiries told me it had been allowing him very little
sleep. Everything combined to invite the trial of one of my favorite
theories. I spoke to him in a fatherly way, and when I had tendered some
vague advice about the girl, and made him promise to secure a night's
rest (before he faced the arduous tram-men's meeting in the morning) by
taking a sleeping-draught, I gave him some sulfonal in a phial. It is a
new drug, which produces protracted sleep without disturbing the
digestion, and which I use myself. He promised faithfully to take the
draught; and I also exhorted him earnestly to bolt and bar and lock
himself in so as to stop up every chink or aperture by which the cold
air of the winter's night might creep into the room. I remonstrated with
him on the careless manner he treated his body, and he laughed in his
good-humored, gentle way, and promised to obey me in all things. And he
did. That Mrs. Drabdump, failing to rouse him, would cry 'Murder!' I
took for certain. She is built that way. As even Sir Charles
Brown-Harland remarked, she habitually takes her prepossessions for
facts, her inferences for observations. She forecasts the future in
gray. Most women of Mrs. Drabdump's class would have behaved as she did.
She happened to be a peculiarly favorable specimen for working on by
'suggestion,' but I would have undertaken to produce the same effect on
almost any woman under similar conditions. The only uncertain link in
the chain was: Would Mrs. Drabdump rush across to get me to break open
the door? Women always rush for a man. I was well-nigh the nearest, and
certainly the most authoritative man in the street, and I took it for
granted she would."

"But suppose she hadn't?" the Home Secretary could not help asking.

"Then the murder wouldn't have happened, that's all. In due course
Arthur Constant would have awoke, or somebody else breaking open the
door would have found him sleeping; no harm done, nobody any the wiser.
I could hardly sleep myself that night. The thought of the extraordinary
crime I was about to commit--a burning curiosity to know whether Wimp
would detect the _modus operandi_--the prospect of sharing the feelings
of murderers with whom I had been in contact all my life without being
in touch with the terrible joys of their inner life--the fear lest I
should be too fast asleep to hear Mrs. Drabdump's knock--these things
agitated me and disturbed my rest. I lay tossing on my bed, planning
every detail of poor Constant's end. The hours dragged slowly and
wretchedly on toward the misty dawn. I was racked with suspense. Was I
to be disappointed after all? At last the welcome sound came--the
rat-tat-tat of murder. The echoes of that knock are yet in my ear. 'Come
over and kill him!' I put my night-capped head out of the window and
told her to wait for me. I dressed hurriedly, took my razor, and went
across to 11 Glover Street. As I broke open the door of the bedroom in
which Arthur Constant lay sleeping, his head resting on his hands, I
cried, 'My God!' as if I saw some awful vision. A mist as of blood
swam before Mrs. Drabdump's eyes. She cowered back, for an instant
(I divined rather than saw the action) she shut off the dreaded
sight with her hands. In that instant I had made my cut--precisely,
scientifically--made so deep a cut and drew out the weapon so sharply
that there was scarce a drop of blood on it; then there came from the
throat a jet of blood which Mrs. Drabdump, conscious only of the horrid
gash, saw but vaguely. I covered up the face quickly with a handkerchief
to hide any convulsive distortion. But as the medical evidence (in this
detail accurate) testified, death was instantaneous. I pocketed the
razor and the empty sulfonal phial. With a woman like Mrs. Drabdump to
watch me, I could do anything I pleased. I got her to draw my attention
to the fact that both the windows were fastened. Some fool, by the by,
thought there was a discrepancy in the evidence because the police found
only one window fastened, forgetting that, in my innocence, I took care
not to fasten the window I had opened to call for aid. Naturally I did
not call for aid before a considerable time had elapsed. There was Mrs.
Drabdump to quiet, and the excuse of making notes--as an old hand. My
object was to gain time. I wanted the body to be fairly cold and stiff
before being discovered, though there was not much danger here; for, as
you saw by the medical evidence, there is no telling the time of death
to an hour or two. The frank way in which I said the death was very
recent disarmed all suspicion, and even Dr. Robinson was unconsciously
worked upon, in adjudging the time of death, by the knowledge (query
here, Mr. Templeton) that it had preceded my advent on the scene.

"Before leaving Mrs. Drabdump there is just one point I should like to
say a word about. You have listened so patiently, sir, to my lectures on
the science of sciences that you will not refuse to hear the last. A
good deal of importance has been attached to Mrs. Drabdump's
oversleeping herself by half an hour. It happens that this (like the
innocent fog which has also been made responsible for much) is a purely
accidental and irrelevant circumstance. In all works on inductive logic
it is thoroughly recognized that only some of the circumstances of a
phenomenon are of its essence and causally interconnected; there is
always a certain proportion of heterogeneous accompaniments which have
no intimate relation whatever with the phenomenon. Yet so crude is as
yet the comprehension of the science of evidence, that every feature of
the phenomenon under investigation is made equally important, and sought
to be linked with the chain of evidence. To attempt to explain
everything is always the mark of the tyro. The fog and Mrs. Drabdump's
oversleeping herself were mere accidents. There are always these
irrelevant accompaniments, and the true scientist allows for this
element of (so to speak) chemically unrelated detail. Even I never
counted on the unfortunate series of accidental phenomena which have led
to Mortlake's implication in a network of suspicion. On the other hand,
the fact that my servant Jane, who usually goes about ten, left a few
minutes earlier on the night of December 3d, so that she didn't know of
Constant's visit, was a relevant accident. In fact, just as the art of
the artist or the editor consists largely in knowing what to leave out,
so does the art of the scientific detector of crime consist in knowing
what details to ignore. In short, to explain everything is to explain
too much. And too much is worse than too little. To return to my
experiment. My success exceeded my wildest dreams. None had an inkling
of the truth. The insolubility of the Big Bow Mystery teased the acutest
minds in Europe and the civilized world. That a man could have been
murdered in a thoroughly inaccessible room savored of the ages of magic.
The redoubtable Wimp, who had been blazoned as my successor, fell back
on the theory of suicide. The mystery would have slept till my death,
but--I fear--for my own ingenuity. I tried to stand outside myself, and
to look at the crime with the eyes of another, or of my old self. I
found the work of art so perfect as to leave only one sublimely simple
solution. The very terms of the problem were so inconceivable that, had
I not been the murderer, I should have suspected myself, in conjunction
of course with Mrs. Drabdump. The first persons to enter the room would
have seemed to me guilty. I wrote at once (in a disguised hand and over
the signature of 'One Who Looks Through His Own Spectacles') to the
'Pell Mell Press' to suggest this. By associating myself thus with Mrs.
Drabdump I made it difficult for people to dissociate the two who
entered the room together. To dash a half-truth in the world's eyes is
the surest way of blinding it altogether. This letter of mine I
contradicted myself (in my own name) the next day, and in the course of
the long letter which I was tempted to write I adduced fresh evidence
against the theory of suicide. I was disgusted with the open verdict,
and wanted men to be up and doing and trying to find me out. I enjoyed
the hunt more. Unfortunately, Wimp, set on the chase again by my own
letter, by dint of persistent blundering, blundered into a track
which--by a devilish tissue of coincidences I had neither foreseen nor
dreamt of--seemed to the world the true. Mortlake was arrested and
condemned. Wimp had apparently crowned his reputation. This was too
much. I had taken all this trouble merely to put a feather in Wimp's
cap, whereas I had expected to shake his reputation by it. It was bad
enough that an innocent man should suffer; but that Wimp should achieve
a reputation he did not deserve, and overshadow all his predecessors by
dint of a colossal mistake, this seemed to me intolerable. I have moved
heaven and earth to get the verdict set aside and to save the prisoner;
I have exposed the weakness of the evidence; I have had the world
searched for the missing girl; I have petitioned and agitated. In vain.
I have failed. Now I play my last card. As the overweening Wimp could
not be allowed to go down to posterity as the solver of this terrible
mystery, I decided that the condemned man might just as well profit by
his exposure. That is the reason I make the exposure to-night, before it
is too late to save Mortlake."

"So that is the reason?" said the Home Secretary with a suspicion of
mockery in his tones.

"The sole reason."

Even as he spoke a deeper roar than ever penetrated the study. The crowd
had again started cheering. Impatient as the watchers were, they felt
that no news was good news. The longer the interview accorded by the
Home Secretary to the chairman of the Defense Committee, the greater the
hope his obduracy was melting. The idol of the people would be saved,
and "Grodman" and "Tom Mortlake" were mingled in the exultant plaudits.

"Templeton," said the Minister, "have you got down every word of Mr.
Grodman's confession?"

"Every word, sir."

"Then bring in the cable you received just as Mr. Grodman entered the
house."

Templeton went back into the outer room and brought back the cablegram
that had been lying on the Minister's writing-table when Grodman came
in. The Home Secretary silently handed it to his visitor. It was from
the Chief of Police of Melbourne, announcing that Jessie Dymond had just
arrived in that city in a sailing vessel, ignorant of all that had
occurred, and had been immediately dispatched back to England, having
made a statement entirely corroborating the theory of the defense.

"Pending further inquiries into this," said the Home Secretary, not
without appreciation of the grim humor of the situation as he glanced at
Grodman's ashen cheeks, "I have reprieved the prisoner. Mr. Templeton
was about to dispatch the messenger to the governor of Newgate as you
entered this room. Mr. Wimp's card-castle would have tumbled to pieces
without your assistance. Your still undiscoverable crime would have
shaken his reputation as you intended."

A sudden explosion shook the room and blent with the cheers of the
populace. Grodman had shot himself--very scientifically--in the heart.
He fell at the Home Secretary's feet, stone dead.

[Illustration: He fell at the Home Secretary's feet, stone dead.]

Some of the workingmen who had been standing waiting by the shafts of
the hansom helped to bear the stretcher.

THE END.

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    MAROONED. Russell.
    MARRIAGE AT SEA. Russell.
    MARTIN HEWITT. Morrison.
    MASTER OF BALLANTRAE. Stevenson.
    MASTER OF THE MINE. Buchanan.
    MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE. Hardy.
    MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN. Dumas.
    MERZE. Ryan.
    MICAH CLARKE. Doyle.
    MICHAEL'S CRAG. Allen.
    MIDDLEMARCH. Eliot.
    MILL ON THE FLOSS. Eliot.
    MINE OWN PEOPLE AND IN BLACK AND WHITE. Kipling.
    MONASTERY, THE Scott.
    MRS. ANNIE GREEN. Read.
    MY LADY NICOTINE. Barrie.
    NEWCOMES. Thackeray.
    NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. Dickens.
    NORTH AGAINST SOUTH. Verne.
    OLD MORTALITY. Scott.
    ONE OF THE FORTY. Daudet.
    ON THE HEIGHTS. Auerbach.
    ORIGIN OF SPECIES. Darwin.
    OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. Dickens.
    PAGAN OF THE ALLEGHANIES. Ryan.
    PATHFINDER. Cooper.
    PAUL CLIFFORD. Lytton.
    PELHAM. Lytton.
    PERE GORIOT. Balzac.
    PHANTOM RICKSHAW. Kipling.
    PICKWICK PAPERS. Dickens.
    PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. Lytton.
    PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. Bunyan.
    PIONEERS. Cooper.
    PIRATE. Scott.
    PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS. Kipling.
    PRAIRIE. Cooper.
    PRETTY MICHAL. Jokai.
    PRINCE OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID. Ingraham.
    QUENTIN DURWARD. Scott.
    RED GAUNTLET. Scott.
    REPROACH OF ANNESLEY. Grey.
    RETURN OF THE NATIVE. Hardy.
    RIENZI. Lytton.
    ROBINSON CRUSOE. Defoe.
    ROB ROY. Scott.
    ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS. Corelli.
    ROMOLA. Eliot.
    ST. RONAN'S WELL. Scott.
    SARCHEDON. Whyte-Melville.
    SCARLET LETTER. Hawthorne.
    SCOTT'S POEMS. Scott.
    SCOTTISH CHIEFS. Porter.
    SEA WOLVES. Pemberton.
    SHADOW OF A CRIME. Caine.
    SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH HER HUSBAND. Werner.
    SIGN OF THE FOUR. Doyle.
    SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. Grey.
    SKETCH BOOK. Irving.
    SOLDIERS THREE. Kipling.
    SON OF HAGAR. Caine.
    SONG OF HIAWATHA. Longfellow.
    SQUAW ELOUISE. Ryan.
    STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM. Schreiner.
    STRANGE STORY. Lytton.
    STRONGER THAN DEATH. Gautier.
    STUDY IN SCARLET. Doyle.
    STUDY OF GENIUS. Royse.
    SURGEON'S DAUGHTER. Scott.
    SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON. Wyss.
    TALE OF TWO CITIES. Dickens.
    TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE. Lamb.
    TALISMAN. Scott.
    THADDEUS OF WARSAW. Porter.
    THELMA. Corelli.
    THREE MEN IN A BOAT. Jerome.
    TOILERS OF THE SEA. Hugo.
    TOLD IN THE HILLS. Ryan.
    TOM BROWN AT OXFORD. Hughes.
    TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS. Hughes.
    TREASURE ISLAND. Stevenson.
    UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Stowe.
    UNDER THE DEODARS AND STORY OF THE GADSBYS. Kipling.
    UNDER TWO FLAGS. Ouida.
    UP TERRAPIN RIVER. Read.
    VANITY FAIR. Thackeray.
    VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. Goldsmith.
    WAVERLY. Scott.
    WEE WILLIE WINKIE. Kipling.
    WESTWARD HO. Kingsley.
    WE TWO. Lyall.
    WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE. Allen.
    WHITE COMPANY. Doyle.
    WOODLANDERS. Hardy.
    WOODSTOCK. Scott.
    ZANONI. Lytton.