d one or two witnesses were
again examined, chief among these being the foreman of the glassworks.
He had turned up at the Rubens Studios at 9 o'clock, and been in
business all day. He averred positively that he did not specially notice
any suspicious-looking individual crossing the hall that day. 'But,' he
remarked with a smile, 'I don't sit and watch every one who goes up and
downstairs. I am too busy for that. The street door is always left open;
any one can walk in, up or down, who knows the way.'

"That there was a mystery in connection with Mrs. Owen's death--of that
the police have remained perfectly convinced; whether young Greenhill
held the key of that mystery or not they have never found out to this
day.

"I could enlighten them as to the cause of the young lithographer's
anxiety at the magisterial inquiry, but, I assure you, I do not care to
do the work of the police for them. Why should I? Greenhill will never
suffer from unjust suspicions. He and his father alone--besides
myself--know in what a terribly tight corner he all but found himself.

"The young man did not reach home till nearly _five_ o'clock that
morning. His last train had gone; he had to walk, lost his way, and
wandered about Hampstead for hours. Think what his position would have
been if the worthy confectioners of Percy Street had not seen Mrs. Owen
'wrapped up in a shawl, on her knees, doing the front steps.'

"Moreover, Mr. Greenhill senior is a solicitor, who has a small office
in John Street, Bedford Row. The afternoon before her death Mrs. Owen
had been to that office and had there made a will by which she left all
her savings to young Arthur Greenhill, lithographer. Had that will been
in other than paternal hands, it would have been proved, in the natural
course of such things, and one other link would have been added to the
chain which nearly dragged Arthur Greenhill to the gallows--'the link of
a very strong motive.'

"Can you wonder that the young man turned livid, until such time as it
was proved beyond a doubt that the murdered woman was alive hours after
he had reached the safe shelter of his home?

"I saw you smile when I used the word 'murdered,'" continued the man in
the corner, growing quite excited now that he was approaching the
_denouement_ of his story. "I know that the public, after the magistrate
had discharged Arthur Greenhill, were quite satisfied to think that the
mystery in Percy Street was a case of accident-