landlord of the Rubens Studios; and a
month after the New Year, without further warning, he gave her a week's
notice to quit his house.

"'Mrs. Owen did not seem the least bit upset when I gave her notice,'
Mr. Allman declared in his evidence at the inquest; 'on the contrary,
she told me that she had ample means, and had only worked latterly for
the sake of something to do. She added that she had plenty of friends
who would look after her, for she had a nice little pile to leave to any
one who would know how "to get the right side of her."'

"Nevertheless, in spite of this cheerful interview, Miss Bedford, the
tenant of No. 6 Studio, had stated that when she took her key to the
caretaker's room at 6.30 that afternoon she found Mrs. Owen in tears.
The caretaker refused to be comforted, nor would she speak of her
trouble to Miss Bedford.

"Twenty-four hours later she was found dead.

"The coroner's jury returned an open verdict, and Detective-Inspector
Jones was charged by the police to make some inquiries about young Mr.
Greenhill, whose intimacy with the unfortunate woman had been
universally commented upon.

"The detective, however, pushed his investigations as far as the
Birkbeck Bank. There he discovered that after her interview with Mr.
Allman, Mrs. Owen had withdrawn what money she had on deposit, some
L800, the result of twenty-five years' saving and thrift.

"But the immediate result of Detective-Inspector Jones's labours was
that Mr. Arthur Greenhill, lithographer, was brought before the
magistrate at Bow Street on the charge of being concerned in the death
of Mrs. Owen, caretaker of the Rubens Studios, Percy Street.

"Now that magisterial inquiry is one of the few interesting ones which I
had the misfortune to miss," continued the man in the corner, with a
nervous shake of the shoulders. "But you know as well as I do how the
attitude of the young prisoner impressed the magistrate and police so
unfavourably that, with every new witness brought forward, his position
became more and more unfortunate.

"Yet he was a good-looking, rather coarsely built young fellow, with
one of those awful Cockney accents which literally make one jump. But he
looked painfully nervous, stammered at every word spoken, and repeatedly
gave answers entirely at random.

"His father acted as lawyer for him, a rough-looking elderly man, who
had the appearance of a common country attorney rather than of a London
solicitor.

"The