in a purposeless mood to
read up the accounts given in several journals. He became intrigued; his
imagination began to work, in a manner strange to him, upon facts; an
excitement took hold of him such as he had only known before in his
bursts of art-inspiration or of personal adventure. At the end of the
day he wrote and dispatched a long letter to the editor of the Record,
which he chose only because it had contained the fullest and most
intelligent version of the facts.

In this letter he did very much what Poe had done in the case of the
murder of Mary Rogers. With nothing but the newspapers to guide him,
he drew attention to the significance of certain apparently negligible
facts, and ranged the evidence in such a manner as to throw grave
suspicion upon a man who had presented himself as a witness. Sir James
Molloy had printed this letter in leaded type. The same evening he
was able to announce in the Sun the arrest and full confession of the
incriminated man.

Sir James, who knew all the worlds of London, had lost no time in making
Trent's acquaintance. The two men got on well, for Trent possessed
some secret of native tact which had the effect of almost abolishing
differences of age between himself and others. The great rotary presses
in the basement of the Record building had filled him with a new
enthusiasm. He had painted there, and Sir James had bought at sight,
what he called a machinery-scape in the manner of Heinrich Kley.

Then a few months later came the affair known as the Ilkley mystery. Sir
James had invited Trent to an emollient dinner, and thereafter offered
him what seemed to the young man a fantastically large sum for his
temporary services as special representative of the Record at Ilkley.

'You could do it,' the editor had urged. 'You can write good stuff,
and you know how to talk to people, and I can teach you all the
technicalities of a reporter's job in half an hour. And you have a head
for a mystery; you have imagination and cool judgement along with it.
Think how it would feel if you pulled it off!'

Trent had admitted that it would be rather a lark. He had smoked,
frowned, and at last convinced himself that the only thing that held him
back was fear of an unfamiliar task. To react against fear had become a
fixed moral habit with him, and he had accepted Sir James's offer.

He had pulled it off. For the second time he had given the authorities
a start and a beating, and his name was o