d Arthur
Skelmerton's guests that night.

"Until 10.45 Lord Arthur was playing cards; a quarter of an hour later
the police were on the scene, and the murder had been committed. In the
meanwhile Colonel McIntosh's evidence proved conclusively that the
accused had been sitting with him, smoking a cigar. It was obvious,
therefore, clear as daylight, concluded the great lawyer, that his
client was entitled to a full discharge; nay, more, he thought that the
police should have been more careful before they harrowed up public
feeling by arresting a high-born gentleman on such insufficient evidence
as they had brought forward.

"The question of the knife remained certainly, but Sir Marmaduke passed
over it with guarded eloquence, placing that strange question in the
category of those inexplicable coincidences which tend to puzzle the
ablest detectives, and cause them to commit such unpardonable blunders
as the present one had been. After all, the footman may have been
mistaken. The pattern of that knife was not an exclusive one, and he, on
behalf of his client, flatly denied that it had ever belonged to him.

"Well," continued the man in the corner, with the chuckle peculiar to
him in moments of excitement, "the noble prisoner was discharged.
Perhaps it would be invidious to say that he left the court without a
stain on his character, for I daresay you know from experience that the
crime known as the York Mystery has never been satisfactorily cleared
up.

"Many people shook their heads dubiously when they remembered that,
after all, Charles Lavender was killed with a knife which one witness
had sworn belonged to Lord Arthur; others, again, reverted to the
original theory that George Higgins was the murderer, that he and James
Terry had concocted the story of Lavender's attempt at blackmail on Lord
Arthur, and that the murder had been committed for the sole purpose of
robbery.

"Be that as it may, the police have not so far been able to collect
sufficient evidence against Higgins or Terry, and the crime has been
classed by press and public alike in the category of so-called
impenetrable mysteries."

CHAPTER IX

A BROKEN-HEARTED WOMAN

The man in the corner called for another glass of milk, and drank it
down slowly before he resumed:

"Now Lord Arthur lives mostly abroad," he said. "His poor, suffering
wife died the day after he was liberated by the magistrate. She never
recovered consciousness even suffici