so well-satisfied with himself, that he is no longer
conscious of other emotions.

"Poor fellow," I commented aloud, as I folded up these words; "he
reckoned without you, George. By to-morrow he will be in the hands of
the police."

"Poor fellow?" he repeated. "Better say 'Poor Miss Challoner!' They tell
me she was one of those perfect women who reconcile even the pessimist
to humanity and the age we live in. Why any one should want to kill
her is a mystery; but why this man should--There! no one professes to
explain it. They simply go by the facts. To-morrow surely must bring
strange revelations."

And with this sentence ringing in my mind, I lay down and endeavoured
to sleep. But it was not till very late that rest came. The noise of
passing feet, though muffled beyond their wont, roused me in spite of
myself. These footsteps might be those of some late arrival, or they
might be those of some wary detective intent on business far removed
from the usual routine of life in this great hotel.

I recalled the glimpse I had had of the writing-room in the early
evening, and imagined it as it was with Miss Challoner's body removed
and the incongruous flitting of strange and busy figures across its
fatal floors, measuring distances and peering into corners, while
hundreds slept above and about them in undisturbed repose.

Then I thought of him, the suspected and possibly guilty one. In
visions over which I had little if any control, I saw him in all the
restlessness of a slowly dying down excitement--the surroundings strange
and unknown to me, the figure not--seeking for quiet; facing the past;
facing the future; knowing, perhaps, for the first time in his life what
it was for crime and remorse to murder sleep. I could not think of him
as lying still--slumbering like the rest of mankind, in the hope and
expectation of a busy morrow. Crime perpetrated looms so large in the
soul, and this man had a soul as big as his body; of that I was assured.
That its instincts were cruel and inherently evil, did not lessen its
capacity for suffering. And he was suffering now; I could not doubt it,
remembering the lovely face and fragrant memory of the noble woman he
had, under some unknown impulse, sent to an unmerited doom.

At last I slept, but it was only to rouse again with the same quick
realisation of my surroundings, which I had experienced on my recovery
from my fainting fit of hours before. Someone had stopped at our door
b