t wealth which he had come a very long way
to seek, but which Fate and a murderer's hand had snatched with
appalling suddenness from him.

And in the private sitting room at the Langham, Louisa Harris sat
opposite her father at breakfast, a pile of morning papers beside her
plate, she herself silent and absorbed.

"That's a queer tale," Colonel Harris was saying, "the papers tell
about that murder in Brussels a year ago--though I must say that to my
mind there appears some truth in what they say. What do you think,
Louisa?"

"I hardly know," she replied absently, "what to think."

"The details of that crime, which was committed about a year ago, are
exactly the same as those which relate to this infernal business of
last night."

"Are they really?"

No one could have said--and Louisa herself least of all--why she was
unwilling to speak on that subject. She had never told her father, or
any one for a matter of that, except----that she had been so near to
the actual scene of that mysterious crime in Brussels, and that she
had known its every detail.

"And I must say," reiterated Colonel Harris emphatically, "that I
agree with the leading article in the _Times_. One crime begets
another. If that hooligan--or whatever he was--in Brussels had not
invented this new and dastardly way of murdering a man in a cab and
then making himself scarce and sending the cab spinning on its way, no
doubt Philip de Mountford would be alive now. Not that that would be a
matter for great rejoicings. Still a crime is a crime, and if we were
going to allow blackguards to be murdered all over the place by other
blackguards, where would law and order be?"

He was talking more loudly and volubly than was his wont, and he took
almost ostentatiously quantities of food on his plate, which it was
quite obvious he never meant to eat. He also steadily avoided meeting
his daughter's eyes. But at this juncture she put both elbows on the
table, rested her chin in her hands, and looked straight across at her
father.

"It's no use, dear," she said simply.

"No use what?" he queried with ungrammatical directness.

"No use your pretending to talk at random and to be eating a hearty
breakfast, when your thoughts are just as much absorbed as mine are."

"Hm!" he grunted evasively, but was glad enough to push aside the
plateful of eggs and bacon which, indeed, he had no desire to eat.

"You have," she continued gently, "read all the papers, just a