ile as an athlete. Moreover,
Burchill, during his secretaryship to Jacob Herapath, had constantly
visited Mr. Halfpenny's office, and was as well acquainted with its ins
and outs as its tenant; he knew where, in those dark stairs there was
a side stair which led to a private door in a neighbouring alley. And
while the pursuers blundered this way and that, he calmly slipped out to
freedom, and, in a couple of minutes was mingling with the crowds in a
busy thoroughfare, safe for that time.

Then Davidge, cursing his men and his luck, took Barthorpe Herapath away,
and Triffitt rushed headlong to Fleet Street, seething with excitement and
brimming with news.

CHAPTER XXV

PROFESSIONAL ANALYSIS

The _Argus_ came out in great style next morning, and it and Triffitt
continued to give its vast circle of readers a similar feast of
excitement for a good ten days. Triffitt, in fact, went almost foodless
and sleepless; there was so much to do. To begin with, there was the
daily hue and cry after Burchill, who had disappeared as completely as
if his familiar evil spirits had carried him bodily away from the very
door of Halfpenny and Farthing's office. Then there was the bringing up
of Barthorpe Herapath before the magistrate at Bow Street, and the
proceedings at the adjourned coroner's inquest. It was not until the
tenth day that anything like a breathing space came. But the position of
affairs on that tenth day was a fairly clear one. The coroner's jury had
returned a verdict of wilful murder against Barthorpe Herapath and Frank
Burchill; the magistrate had committed Barthorpe for trial; the police
were still hunting high and low for Burchill. And there was scarcely a
soul who had heard the evidence before the coroner and the magistrate
who did not believe that both the suspected men were guilty and that
both--when Burchill had been caught--would ere long stand in the Old
Bailey dock and eventually hear themselves sentenced to the scaffold.

One man, however, believed nothing of the sort, and that man was
Professor Cox-Raythwaite. His big, burly form had been very much in
evidence at all the proceedings before coroner and magistrate. He had
followed every scrap of testimony with the most scrupulous care; he had
made notes from time to time; he had given up his leisure moments, and
stolen some from his proper pursuits, to a deep consideration of the
case as presented by the police. And on the afternoon which saw
Barth