awford and Lady
Stavornell turned and looked, he was standing with both hands on his
hips, looking frowningly down on the spot where the Hon. Mrs. Brinkworth
lay, curled up in a limp, unconscious heap, with a pair of handcuffs
locked on her folded wrists.

"I said that when the murderer was found, Mr. Narkom," he said as the
superintendent moved toward him, "it would be no man you ever saw or
ever heard of in all your life. I knew it was a woman from the bungling,
unmanlike way that pistol was laid in the dead hand; the only question I
had to answer was _which_ woman--Fifi, Lady Stavornell, or this wretched
little hypocrite. Here's your 'little dark man', here's the assassin.
The Norfolk suit and the false moustache are in her room at the hydro.
She made Stavornell think that she, too, was going to the fancy ball,
and that the surprise Fifi had planned was for her to meet him as she
did and travel with him. When the train was under way she shot him. Why?
Easily explained, my dear chap. His death made her little son heir to
the estates. During his minority she would have the handling of the
funds; with them she and her precious husband would have a gay life of
it in their own selfish little way!"

"Her what? Lord, man, do you mean to say that she and the colonel----"

"Were privately married seven weeks ago, Mr. Narkom. The certificate of
their union was tucked away in Colonel Murchison's private effects,
where it was found this evening."

* * * * *

"How was the escape from the compartment managed after the murder was
accomplished?" said Cleek, answering Narkom's query, as they whizzed
home through the darkness together by the last up train that night.
"Simplest thing in the world. As you know, the 5.28 from London Bridge
runs without stop to Anerley. Well, the 5.18 from the same
starting-point runs to the Crystal Palace Low Level, taking the main
line tracks as far as Sydenham, where it branches off at the switch and
curves away in an opposite direction. That is to say, for a considerable
distance they run parallel, but eventually diverge.

"Now, as the 5.18 is a train with several stops, the 5.28, being a
through one, overtakes her, and several times between Brockley and
Sydenham they run side by side, at so steady a pace and on such narrow
gauge that the footboard running along the side of the one train is not
more than two and a half feet separated from the other. Their pace is s