that account. The girl showed us how to write the letter,
too--she said she'd often heard of anonymous letters being written that
way--and she brought out three different pens and a bottle of ink and a
writing pad. After we'd agreed what to write, she showed us how to do it,
each one printing a letter on the paper in turn, and using a different
pen each time."

"You took care to leave no finger-prints," said Inspector Chippenfield.

"We used a handkerchief to wrap our hands in," said Hill. "Birchill got
tired of passing the paper from one to another and wrote all his letters,
leaving spaces for the girl and me to write in ours. When the letter was
written we wrote the address on the envelope the same way, and stamped
it. Then I went out and posted the letter in a pillar-box."

"At Covent Garden?" suggested Inspector Chippenfield.

"Yes, at Covent Garden," said Hill.

"When I got home my wife was awake and in a terrible fright. She wanted
to know where I'd been, but I didn't tell her. I told her, though, that
my very life depended on nobody knowing I'd been out of my own home that
night, and I made her swear that no matter who questioned her she'd stick
to the story that I'd been at home all night, and in bed. She begged me
to tell her why, and as I knew that she'd have to be told the next day, I
told her that Sir Horace Fewbanks had been murdered. She buried her face
in her pillow with a moan, but when I took an oath that I had had no hand
in it she recovered, and promised not to tell a living soul that I had
been out of the house and I knew I could depend on her.

"Next morning, as soon as I got up, I hurried off to a little wine tavern
and asked to see the morning papers. It was a foolish thing to do,
because I might have known that nothing could have been discovered in
time to get into the morning papers, for I hadn't posted the letter until
nearly four o'clock. But I was all nervous and upset, and as I couldn't
face my wife or settle to anything until I knew the police had got the
letter and found the body, I--though a strictly temperate man in the
ordinary course of life, sir--sat down in one of the little compartments
of the place and ordered a glass of wine to pass the time till the first
editions of the evening papers came out--they are usually out here about
noon. But there was no news in the first editions, and so I stayed there,
drinking port wine and buying the papers as fast as they came out. But it
w