's form and stature.
It was what I should have expected, and provided for, in London streets
at night!

"If I have been mad, it was then I was worst. I suppose by that time it
must have been too late to get back home, but I never thought of that. I
ran the streets the whole night, like a fool, hunting for Mayes. I kept
on all day yesterday. I waited and watched hours at the two houses he
had visited; and it was not till early this morning that I flung myself
on a bed in a private hotel in Euston Road. I slept a little, and my
paroxysm was over. Perhaps I am more fortunate than I am disposed to
think, since I am as yet in no danger of trial for murder."

This passionate, wayward, stricken man was plainly the object of
fascinated interest to Hewitt. My friend waited a moment, and then
said--"The houses he called at--I should like to know them. And where
you lost sight of him."

Peytral sat back, and gazed thoughtfully for fully half a minute in
Hewitt's face. "Do you know," he said at length, "I don't think I'll
answer that question now. I'd like to leave it for a day or two.
Yesterday I wouldn't have told you, even on the rack--no, not a word! I
should have said, 'Take your own chances, and get him if you can. As for
me, I consider him _my_ prey, and what scent I have picked up I shall
use myself!' A mad fancy, you will think, perhaps. For me the question
is, was I sanest then or now? I will take a day or two to think."

V

In less than a day or two the identity of the victim of the burnt barn
was established. For Hewitt had his idea, and he communicated with
Plummer, of Scotland Yard. The man with the buttoned boots and the
sketch-book was the artist who had been staying at the cottage in the
village, but who, singularly enough, had never been seen to draw, and
had left no drawings behind him. He had warned the people of the cottage
that he might be away for a night or two, and he had stayed away for two
nights before; so that his disappearance did not disturb them, and when
they heard that Mr. Peytral's body had been found in the barn they
accepted the news as fact. They recognised at once a photograph produced
by Plummer as that of their late lodger. And the photograph had been
procured from Messrs. Kingsley, Bell and Dalton, the intended victims in
the bond case, and it was one of Henning, their vanished correspondence
clerk!

That his death would be convenient to Mayes, the greater scoundrel, was
pla