as talked about
him and his first career. It was not the case (as anybody might have
ascertained) that he had been struck off the rolls in connection with the
first great scandal in which he was professionally concerned. Nor was
there much more truth in the report that he drank, in the ordinary
interpretation of the term.

It is true, however, that Mr. Thrush had a tall tumbler on his
dressing-table, to help him shave for the evening of that fateful Friday.
He was dressing for an early dinner before a first night. His
dressing-room, in which he also slept in Spartan simplicity, was the
original powder-closet of the panelled library out of which it led. There
was a third room in which his man Mullins prepared breakfast and spent the
day. But the whole was a glorified garret, at the top of such stairs as
might have sent a nervous client back for an escort.

Mullins, with the expression of an undertaker's mute (a calling he had
followed in his day), was laying out his master's clothes as mournfully as
though his master were in them, instead of chatting genially as he shaved.

"I'm sorry to have missed your evidence, Mullins, but if we go into this
case it's no use letting the police smell the competitive rat too soon.
Inquests are not in my line, and they'd have wondered what the devil I was
doing there, especially as you refrained from saying you were in my
service."

"I had no call, sir."

"Quite right, Mullins! An ideal witness, I can see you were. So you'd
only to describe the finding of the body?"

"That was all, sir."

"And your description was really largely founded on fact?"

Mullins stood like a funereal grenadier at his gentleman's shaving elbow.
"I told the truth, sir, and nothing but the truth," said he, with sombre
dignity.

"But not the whole truth, eh, Mullins! What about the little souvenirs
you showed me yesterday?"

"There was no call to name them either, sir. The cheroot-end I must have
picked up a hundred yards away, and even the medicine-cork wasn't on the
actual scene of the murder."

"That's all right, Mullins. I don't see what they could possibly have to
do with it, myself; and really, but for the fluke of your being the one to
find the body, and picking the first-fruits for what they're worth, it's
the last kind of case that I should dream of touching with a ten-foot
pole. By the way, I suppose they won't require you at the adjourned
inquest?"

"They may not require me, s