s behind him. He laid his hand on the man's shoulder and forced him
to turn round. It was an old, wrinkled face with gentle, rather watery
eyes.

We were both so taken aback that for a moment we could say nothing. My
friend stammered out an apology about having mistaken the house, and
rejoined me. At the corner we burst out laughing almost
simultaneously. And then my friend suddenly stopped and stared at me.

"Hepworth's old clerk!" he said. "Ellenby!"

* * *

It seemed to him monstrous. The man had been more than a clerk. The
family had treated him as a friend. Hepworth's father had set him up
in business. For the murdered lad he had had a sincere attachment; he
had left that conviction on all of them. What was the meaning of it?

A directory was on the mantelpiece. It was the next afternoon. I had
called upon him in his chambers. It was just an idea that came to me.
I crossed over and opened it, and there was his name, "Ellenby and Co.,
Ships' Furnishers," in a court off the Minories.

Was he helping her for the sake of his dead master--trying to get her
away from the man. But why? The woman had stood by and watched the
lad murdered. How could he bear even to look on her again?

Unless there had been that something that had not come out--something
he had learnt later--that excused even that monstrous callousness of
hers.

Yet what could there be? It had all been so planned, so cold-blooded.
That shaving in the dining-room! It was that seemed most to stick in
his throat. She must have brought him down a looking-glass; there was
not one in the room. Why couldn't he have gone upstairs into the
bathroom, where Hepworth always shaved himself, where he would have
found everything to his hand?

He had been moving about the room, talking disjointedly as he paced,
and suddenly he stopped and looked at me.

"Why in the dining-room?" he demanded of me.

He was jingling some keys in his pocket. It was a habit of his when
cross-examining, and I felt as if somehow I knew; and, without
thinking--so it seemed to me--I answered him.

"Perhaps," I said, "it was easier to bring a razor down than to carry a
dead man up."

He leant with his arms across the table, his eyes glittering with
excitement.

"Can't you see it?" he said. "That little back parlour with its fussy
ornaments. The three of them standing round the table, Hepworth's
hands nervously clutching a