rmy to get her
religion properly fixed up."

"The effects of fright, no doubt," said Calton, dryly. "I've met a good
many examples of these sudden conversions, but they never last long as
a rule--it's a case of 'the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be,'
more than anything else. Good-looking?"

"So-so, I believe," replied Kilsip, shrugging his shoulders.

"Very ignorant--could neither read nor write."

"That accounts for her not asking for Fitzgerald when she called at the
Club--she probably did not know whom she had been sent for. It will
resolve itself into a question of identification, I expect. However, if
the police can't find her, we will put an advertisement in the papers
offering a reward, and send out handbills to the same effect. She must
be found. Brian Fitzgerald's life hangs on a thread, and that thread is
Sal Rawlins."

"Yes!" assented Kilsip, rubbing his hands together. "Even if Mr.
Fitzgerald acknowledges that he was at Mother Guttersnipe's on the
night in question, she will have to prove that he was there, as no one
else saw him."

"Are you sure of that?"

"As sure as anyone can be in such a case. It was a late hour when he
came, and everyone seems to have been asleep except the dying woman and
Sal; and as one is dead, the other is the only person that can prove
that he was there at the time when the murder was being committed in
the hansom."

"And Mother Guttersnipe?"

"Was drunk, as she acknowledged last night. She thought that if a
gentleman did call it must have been the other one."

"The other one?" repeated Calton, in 8 puzzled voice. "What other one?"

"Oliver Whyte."

Calton arose from his seat with a blank air of astonishment.

"Oliver Whyte!" he said, as soon as he could find his voice. "Was he in
the habit of going there?"

Kilsip curled himself up in his seat like a sleek cat, and pushing
forward his head till his nose looked like the beak of a bird of prey,
looked keenly at Calton.

"Look here, sir," he said, in his low, purring voice, "there's a good
deal in this case which don't seem plain--in fact, the further we go
into it,--the more mixed up it seems to get. I went to see Mother
Guttersnipe this morning, and she told me that Whyte had visited the
'Queen' several times while she lay ill, and that he seemed to be
pretty well acquainted with her."

"But who the deuce is this woman they call the 'Queen'?" said Calton,
irritably. "She seems to be at the bottom of