ly. "I suppose all my old duds
are still in the locker of the limousine, aren't they? Good! I
thought so. Give Lennard the signal, will you? I must risk the old
car in an emergency like this. Take me first to the cable office,
please; then to the mortuary, and afterward to Miss Valmond's home.
I hate to torture her further, poor girl, but I must get all the
facts of this, first hand."

He did. The limousine was summoned at once, and inside of an hour it
set him down (looking the very picture of a solicitor's clerk) at
the cable office, then picked up and set him down at the Hampstead
mortuary, this time, making so good a counterpart of Petrie that
even Hammond, who was on guard beside the dead man, said "Hullo,
Pete, that you? Thought you was off duty to-day," as he came in with
the superintendent.

"Jim Peabody fast enough, Mr. Narkom," commented Cleek, when they
were left together beside the dead man. "Changed, of course, in
all the years, but still poor old Jim. Good-hearted, honest, but
illiterate. Could barely more than write his name, and even that
without a capital, poor chap. Let me look at the hand. A violet
smudge on the top of the thumb as well as those marks on the palm, I
see. Hum-m-m! Any letters or writing of any sort in the pockets
when found? None, eh? That old bone-handled pocket knife there
his? Yes, I'd like to look at it. Open it, please. Thanks. I thought
so, I thought so. Those the socks he had on? Poor wretch! Down to
that at last, eh?--down to that! Let me have one of them for a
day or so, will you? and--yes--the photographs of the other four,
please. Thanks very much. No, that's all. Now then, to call on
Miss Valmond, if you don't mind. Right you are. Let her go, Lennard.
Down with the blinds and open with the locker again, Mr. Narkom,
and we'll 'dig' Mr. George Headland out of his two-months' old
grave." And at exactly ten minutes after eight o'clock, Mr. George
Headland _was_ 'dug up' and was standing with Mr. Narkom in Rose
Valmond's house listening to Rose Valmond's story from her own lips,
and saying to himself, the while, that here surely was that often
talked-of, seldom-seen creature, a woman with an angel's face.

How it distressed her, to tell again this story which might take away
a human life, was manifest from the trembling of her sweet voice, the
painful twitching of her tender mouth, and the tears that rose so
readily to her soft eyes.

"Oh, Mr. Headland, I can hardly reconc