tly tumble. Besides, a telephone message would send a
man from the _Watchman_ to the mortuary. This sort of thing was not in
his line now, now--

"You'll be for getting one o' them big play-cards out with something
about a mystery on it," suggested Driscoll. "You never know what lies
at the bottom o' these affairs, no more you don't."

That last observation decided Spargo; moreover, the old instinct for
getting news began to assert itself.

"All right," he said. "I'll go along with you."

And re-lighting his pipe he followed the little cortege through the
streets, still deserted and quiet, and as he walked behind he reflected
on the unobtrusive fashion in which murder could stalk about. Here was
the work of murder, no doubt, and it was being quietly carried along a
principal London thoroughfare, without fuss or noise, by officials to
whom the dealing with it was all a matter of routine. Surely--

"My opinion," said a voice at Spargo's elbow, "my opinion is that it
was done elsewhere. Not there! He was put there. That's what I say."
Spargo turned and saw that the porter was at his side. He, too, was
accompanying the body.

"Oh!" said Spargo. "You think--"

"I think he was struck down elsewhere and carried there," said the
porter. "In somebody's chambers, maybe. I've known of some queer games
in our bit of London! Well!--he never came in at my lodge last
night--I'll stand to that. And who is he, I should like to know? From
what I see of him, not the sort to be about our place."

"That's what we shall hear presently," said Spargo. "They're going to
search him."

But Spargo was presently made aware that the searchers had found
nothing. The police-surgeon said that the dead man had, without doubt,
been struck down from behind by a terrible blow which had fractured the
skull and caused death almost instantaneously. In Driscoll's opinion,
the murder had been committed for the sake of plunder. For there was
nothing whatever on the body. It was reasonable to suppose that a man
who is well dressed would possess a watch and chain, and have money in
his pockets, and possibly rings on his fingers. But there was nothing
valuable to be found; in fact there was nothing at all to be found that
could lead to identification--no letters, no papers, nothing. It was
plain that whoever had struck the dead man down had subsequently
stripped him of whatever was on him. The only clue to possible identity
lay in the fact that a soft ca