ting on
the platform. Several pushed past him into the compartment. He did not
heed them. He sat in a deep reverie, his paper unfolded in his hand, past
scenes flowing through his brain as the train sped on towards London. The
carriage and its occupants receded from his vision, and he was back again
on the Cornwall cliffs with Sisily. Her face appeared before his eyes just
as he had seen it in their last parting.

He came back with an effort to the world of events, and unfolded his
newspaper. That was a daily ordeal from which he shrank, yet dared not
evade. During the past week he had faced it in all sorts of places: street
corners, public squares, obscure restaurants, the burrowed windings of
Underground stations, and once in the dark interior of a cinema where he
had followed a girl with a vague resemblance to Sisily. As the days went
on and he read nothing to alarm him, his tension grew less. It really
looked as if Scotland Yard and the newspapers had forgotten all about the
Cornwall murder, or had relegated it to the list of undiscoverable
mysteries.

He now glanced at the headlines listlessly enough. The editor could offer
nothing better on his front page that night than Ireland and the
industrial situation. Charles opened the sheet and looked inside. His
listlessness vanished as his eye fell upon his own name. In the guise of
fat black capitals it headed a half-column article about his uncle's
death. Charles read it through, slowly and deliberately, to the end. He
learnt that there had been what the writer called fresh developments in
the case. The police were now looking for another suspect--himself. The
detective engaged upon the case had suspicions of the murdered man's
nephew for some time past, but had his reasons for reticence--reasons
which had now so completely disappeared that Scotland Yard had made public
a full description of the young man and the additional information that he
was supposed to be in London. Charles found himself reading the
description of himself with the detached, slightly wondering air with
which a man might be supposed to read his own death notice. He weighed the
personal details quite critically. Young and tall. Yes. Good-looking. Was
he? Dark blue eyes. Were they? He had never thought about them. Of
gentlemanly appearance. That read like the advertisement of a Cheapside
tailor--what was a gentlemanly appearance, if he had it? He had always
associated it with a cheap lounge suit a