l me, I thanked him
for his courtesy and left the office. A fresh idea had occurred to me
which I thought might lead to something, and I resolved to put it into
practice without any further waste of time.

CHAPTER IV

It would be a truism to declare that human nature is about as
complicated a piece of machinery as could be found in the human world.
And yet I do not know why it should be considered so. All things and all
men do not run in grooves. A man to be a criminal need not be hopelessly
bad in every other sense. I have met murderers who did not possess
sufficient nerve to kill a rabbit, burglars who would rob a poor man of
all his possessions in the world, and yet would not despoil a little
child of a halfpenny. The fact of the matter is we all have our better
points, our own innate knowledge of good and evil. Hayle had betrayed
Kitwater and Codd in the cruellest fashion possible, and by so doing had
condemned them to the most fiendish torture the mind of man could
conceive. Yet it was through his one good point, his weakness, if I
might so describe it, that I was enabled to come to my first grip
with him.

It was between the hours of two and three that I entered the gates of
Brompton Cemetery and commenced my examination of the various graves
therein contained. Up one path I wandered and down another in search of
the resting-place of the poor crippled sister of whom Gideon Hayle had
been so fond. It was a long time before I found it, but at last I was
successful. To my astonishment the stone was plainly a new one, and the
grave was tastefully decorated with flowers. As a matter of fact it was
one of the prettiest in its neighbourhood, and to me this told its own
tale. I went in search of the necessary official and put the case to
him. He informed me that I was correct in my supposition, and that the
stone had only lately been erected, and, what was more to the point, he
informed me that the gentleman who had given the order for it, had only
the week before paid the necessary sum for insuring the decoration of
the grave for many years to come.

"I gather from your words, that the gentleman, who must be a relative of
the deceased, has been here lately," I said.

"He was here last Sunday afternoon," the man replied. "He is a most
kindly and generous gentleman, and must have been very fond of his
sister. The way he stood and looked at that stone the last time he was
here was touching to see. He'd been in for