shadows; six high-backed chairs reared
themselves here and there against the walls; between prodigious windows
a gigantic press lifted its massive head. Reckoning the little table
bearing the lamp, and a pair of easy-chairs, that is a ready inventory.
A heavy carpet and curtains of the same dull red certainly excluded the
draughts. For all that, it was not a chamber in which to sit apart
from the fire. The marshal hated the place openly, and, on being
rallied by the Judge, had confessed that it "got on his nerves." He
had even suggested that it was haunted. Mr. Justice Molehill had
laughed him to scorn.

His lordship, then, was gazing upon the fire. After, perhaps, about
two minutes of time, he crossed his knees suddenly and flung up his
hand in a little gesture of impatience.

"Anthony Lyveden," he muttered. "Where on earth have I heard that
name?"

The expression upon his face was that of a man absorbed in searching
his memory. He was, indeed, so much engrossed in this occupation that
the keen grey eyes went straying whither they listed.

Let us follow those eyes.

From the light of the fire in its cage to the toe of his lordship's
pump, up to the chiselled mantel and the cigarette-box--the
marshal's--perched on the narrow ledge, down to the heavy bell-pull by
the side of the hearth, on to a high-backed chair against the wall,
down again to the floor--all black here, for the light is too distant
to show the carpet's hue--on into the shadows, where something--the
table, of course--shows like a grim bas-relief hewn out of the
darkness, on to its ponderous top, where the candles...

It was upon the top of the table that the keen grey eyes came to
rest--idly. The next moment his lordship's frame stiffened with a
shock.

The radiance of two wax candles was illuminating the bitterness of
death upon a man's face. It was an old face, long, gaunt,
clean-shaven, and the ill-fitting wig that gaped about the shrunken
temples gave it the queer pinched look which tells of a starved belly.
Eyes red-rimmed and staring, a long thin nose, and an unearthly pallor
made it displeasing: the dropped jaw, showing the toothless gums, made
it repulsive.

The hair upon Mr. Justice Molehill's head began to rise.

For a moment the face stayed motionless. Then the grey lids flickered,
and a trembling hand stole up out of the darkness to twitch at the
lower lip. A paper upon the table appeared to claim the attention of
thos