ery quiet, and most of
the offices were deserted. He found a pale young typewriter, a slave of
the machine, in a room rather larger than an alderman's coffin, and
obtained threepence in coppers for the widow and family of the late
lamented William John Elphinston. He passed along a dim passage, and came
to one of the larger apartments fronting the main street. It was
evidently one of a suite. On the door was a brass plate bearing the name.
"Henry Berryman."

The Rev. Andrew Rowbottom knocked on his door a meek, appealing summons.
He received no reply. Confident that he had heard a movement in the room
Andrew knocked again. Still on answer. The Rev Andrew Rowbottorn turned
the knob, opened the door a foot or so, and thrust his benignant
countenance into the room.

The face when it first appeared to the occupant was lit with a smile,
suffused with a tender benevolence, a moment later it was stark and
white, drawn with horror, a horror that chilled the blood, and gripped at
the heart with a hand of iron.

What the Rev. Andrew Rowbottom saw was a tall, handsome,
fashionably-dressed woman of about thirty-six resting with her back to an
office table, the position was crouching, her fingers clung to the
table's edge; her eyes, large, dark, and instinct with mortal terror,
were fixed upon the stranger in the doorway. At her feet was the body of
a man, a stout man of perhaps forty. The body lay on its right side, the
face turned to the floor, and from somewhere in the breast flowed a red
stream that massed in a dark, clammy pool upon the slate coloured
linoleum.

Nickie saw a faint, flutter of movement in the limbs of the man on the
floor, and his eyes rose to the face of the woman again. Her dry tongue
passed over her parched lips, she seemed to be making an effort to speak.
On the table near her right hand was a knife.

Nicholas Crips slipped into the room, the door closed softly behind him.
He had recognised the woman. She was his Mary Stuart of the Mask Ball.
The man on the floor he remembered in the guise of Henry VIII.

For a terrible half-minute the two stared at each other over the dead
man.

"You killed him!" whispered Nickie.

The woman tried to moisten her lips again, made an effort to speak, and
her voice broke in her throat. She nodded dumbly.

"My God!"

"You-you-what are you going to do?" whispered the woman. "Why don't you
call out?" There was a wild hope in her dilated eyes. "You don't! You
don't!"