was an ex-Guardsman and a six-footer at that,
plucked her off her feet and carried her, still struggling, still
imploring with piteous cries, over the threshold into the house:
Matthews followed behind.

The shutters of the tap-room were still closed. Only a strip of
the dirty floor, strewn with sawdust, was illuminated by a bar of
reddish light from the daybreak outside. On the table a candle,
burnt down to the socket of its brass candlestick, flared and
puttered in a riot of running wag. Half in the bar of daylight
from outside, half in the darkness beyond the open door, against
which the flickering candlelight struggled feebly, lay the body
of a yellow-faced, undersized man with a bullet wound through the
temple.

Without effort Harrison deposited his light burden on her feet by
the table. Instantly, the girl fled, like some frightened animal
of the woods, to the farthest corner of the room. Here she
dropped sobbing on her knees, rocking herself to and fro in a
sort of paroxysm of hysteria. Harrison moved quickly round the
table after her; but he was checked by a cry from Matthews who
was kneeling by the body.

"Let her be," said Matthews, "she's scared of this and no wonder!
Come here a minute, Harrison, and see if you know, this chap!"

Harrison crossed the room and looked down at the still figure. He
whistled softly.

"My word!" he said, "but he copped it all right, sir! Ay, I know
him well enough! He's Rass, the landlord of this pub, that's who
he is, as harmless a sort of chap as ever was! Who did it, d'you
think, sir?"

Matthews, who had been going through the dead man's pockets, now
rose to his feet.

"Nothing worth writing home about there," he said half aloud.
Then to Harrison, he added: "That's what we've got to
discover... hullo, who's this?"

The door leading from the bar to the tap-room was thrust open.
Gordon put his head in.

"I left Bates on guard outside, sir," he said in answer to an
interrogatory glance from Matthews, "I've been all over the
ground floor and there's not a soul here..."

He checked himself suddenly.

"God bless my soul!" he exclaimed, his eyes on the figure
crouching in the corner, "you don't mean to say you've got her? A
pretty dance she led Dug and myself! Well, sir, it looks to me
like a good night's work!".

Matthews smiled a self-satisfied smile.

"I fancy the Chief will be pleased," he said, "though the rest of
'em seem to have given us the slip. Gordon, y