d I fancy the
magistrate felt some sympathy for his strenuous endeavours on his son's
behalf. He granted a week's adjournment, which seemed to satisfy Mr.
Greenhill completely.

"In the meanwhile the papers had talked of and almost exhausted the
subject of the mystery in Percy Street. There had been, as you no doubt
know from personal experience, innumerable arguments on the puzzling
alternatives:--

"Accident?

"Suicide?

"Murder?

"A week went by, and then the case against young Greenhill was resumed.
Of course the court was crowded. It needed no great penetration to
remark at once that the prisoner looked more hopeful, and his father
quite elated.

"Again a great deal of minor evidence was taken, and then came the turn
of the defence. Mr. Greenhill called Mrs. Hall, confectioner, of Percy
Street, opposite the Rubens Studios. She deposed that at 8 o'clock in
the morning of February 2nd, while she was tidying her shop window, she
saw the caretaker of the Studios opposite, as usual, on her knees, her
head and body wrapped in a shawl, cleaning her front steps. Her husband
also saw Mrs. Owen, and Mrs. Hall remarked to her husband how thankful
she was that her own shop had tiled steps, which did not need scrubbing
on so cold a morning.

"Mr. Hall, confectioner, of the same address, corroborated this
statement, and Mr. Greenhill, with absolute triumph, produced a third
witness, Mrs. Martin, of Percy Street, who from her window on the second
floor had, at 7.30 a.m., seen the caretaker shaking mats outside her
front door. The description this witness gave of Mrs. Owen's get-up,
with the shawl round her head, coincided point by point with that given
by Mr. and Mrs. Hall.

"After that Mr. Greenhill's task became an easy one; his son was at home
having his breakfast at 8 o'clock that morning--not only himself, but
his servants would testify to that.

"The weather had been so bitter that the whole of that day Arthur had
not stirred from his own fireside. Mrs. Owen was murdered after 8 a.m.
on that day, since she was seen alive by three people at that hour,
therefore his son could not have murdered Mrs. Owen. The police must
find the criminal elsewhere, or else bow to the opinion originally
expressed by the public that Mrs. Owen had met with a terrible untoward
accident, or that perhaps she may have wilfully sought her own death in
that extraordinary and tragic fashion.

"Before young Greenhill was finally discharge