. Startled by her looks Susan hurried forward and gazed
searchingly into the face. There was no sign of recognition in the
wide, staring eyes. Susan, quivering with dread, touched Miss Loach's
shoulder. Her touch upset the body and it rolled on the floor. The
woman was dead. With a shriek Susan recoiled and fell on her knees.
Her cry speedily brought the other servants.

"Look!" cried Susan pointing, "she is dead--murdered!"

Geraldine and Mrs. Pill shrieked with horror. Thomas preserved his
stolid look of composure.

CHAPTER III

A MYSTERIOUS DEATH

To be the husband of a celebrated woman is not an unmixed blessing.
Mr. Peter Octagon found it to be so, when he married Mrs. Saxon, the
widow of an eminent Q.C. She was a fine Junoesque tragic woman, who
modelled herself on the portraits of the late Mrs. Siddons. Peter, on
the contrary, was a small, meek, light-haired, short-sighted man, who
had never done anything in his unromantic life, save accumulate a
fortune as a law-stationer. For many years he lived in single
blessedness, but when he retired with an assured income of three
thousand a year, he thought he would marry. He had no relatives,
having been brought up in a Foundling Hospital, and consequently, found
life rather lonely in his fine Kensington house. He really did not
care about living in such a mansion, and had purchased the property as
a speculation, intending to sell it at a profit. But having fallen in
with Mrs. Saxon, then a hard-up widow, she not only induced him to
marry her, but, when married, she insisted that the house should be
retained, so that she could dispense hospitality to a literary circle.

Mrs. Octagon was very literary. She had published several novels under
the nom-de-plume of "Rowena." She had produced a volume of poems; she
had written a play which had been produced at a matinee; and finally
her pamphlets on political questions stamped her, in the opinion of her
immediate circle, as a William Pitt in petticoats. She looked upon
herself as the George Eliot of the twentieth century, and dated events
from the time of her first success. "That happened before I became
famous," she would say. "No, it was after I took the public by storm."
And her immediate circle, who appreciated her cakes and ale, would
agree with everything she said. The Kensington house was called "The
Shrine of the Muses!" and this title was stamped on her envelopes and
writing-paper, to