ord has been murdered."

"Who says so?"

"Some people have come on from the theatres, and men from the clubs.
The streets are full of it--and evening papers have brought out
midnight editions which are selling like hot cakes."

"And do they say that Luke has killed Philip de Mountford?"

"No"--with some hesitation--"they don't say that."

"But they hint at it."

"Newspaper tittle-tattle."

"How much is actual fact?"

"I understand," he explained, "that at nine o'clock or thereabouts two
men in evening dress hailed a passing taxicab just outside the Lyric
Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue and told the chauffeur to drive to Hyde
Park corner, just by the railings of the Green Park. The driver drew
up there and one of the two men got out. As he reclosed the door of
the cab he leaned toward the interior and said cheerfully, "S'long old
man. See you to-morrow." Then he told the chauffeur to drive on to 1
Cromwell Road opposite the museum, and turning on his heel disappeared
in the fog. When the chauffeur drew up for the second time no one
alighted from the cab. So he got down from his box and opened the
door."

"The other man," murmured Louisa vaguely, "was in the cab--dead!"

"That's about it."

"With his throat pierced from ear to ear by a sharp instrument which
might have been a skewer."

"You have heard it all then?"

"No, no!" she said hurriedly.

The room was swaying round her: the furniture started hopping and
dancing. Louisa, who had never fainted in her life, felt as if the
floor was giving way under her feet. Memory was unloading one of her
storehouses, looking over the contents of a hidden cell, wherein she
had put away a strange winter scene in Brussels, a taxicab, the
ill-lighted boulevard, the chauffeur getting down from his box and
finding a man crouched in the farther corner of the cab--dead--with
his throat pierced from ear to ear by an instrument which might have
been a skewer. And memory was raking out that cell, clearing it in
every corner, trying to find the recollection of a certain morning in
Battersea Park a year ago, when Louisa recounted her impressions of
that weird scene and told the tale of this crime which she had almost
witnessed. Memory found a distinct impression that she had told the
tale at full length and with all the details which she knew. She
remembered talking it all over, and, that when she did so, the ground
in Battersea Park was crisp with the frost under her feet, and