y said that once or twice
when she had had occasion to go into his room (to dun the poor wretch
for his rent, most likely), he would keep her at the door for about a
minute, and that when she came in she would find him putting away his
tin box in the corner by the window; I suppose he had become possessed
with the idea of some great treasure, and fancied himself a wealthy man
in the midst of all his misery. _Explicit_, my tale is ended, and you
see that though I knew Black, I know nothing of his wife or of the
history of her death.--That's the Harlesden case, Salisbury, and I think
it interests me all the more deeply because there does not seem the
shadow of a possibility that I or any one else will ever know more about
it. What do you think of it?'

'Well, Dyson, I must say that I think you have contrived to surround the
whole thing with a mystery of your own making. I go for the doctor's
solution: Black murdered his wife, being himself in all probability an
undeveloped lunatic.'

'What? Do you believe, then, that this woman was something too awful,
too terrible to be allowed to remain on the earth? You will remember
that the doctor said it was the brain of a devil?'

'Yes, yes, but he was speaking, of course, metaphorically. It's really
quite a simple matter if you only look at it like that.'

'Ah, well, you may be right; but yet I am sure you are not. Well, well,
it's no good discussing it any more. A little more Benedictine? That's
right; try some of this tobacco. Didn't you say that you had been
bothered by something--something which happened that night we dined
together?'

'Yes, I have been worried, Dyson, worried a great deal. I----But it's
such a trivial matter--indeed, such an absurdity--that I feel ashamed to
trouble you with it.'

'Never mind, let's have it, absurd or not.'

With many hesitations, and with much inward resentment of the folly of
the thing, Salisbury told his tale, and repeated reluctantly the absurd
intelligence and the absurder doggerel of the scrap of paper, expecting
to hear Dyson burst out into a roar of laughter.

'Isn't it too bad that I should let myself be bothered by such stuff as
that?' he asked, when he had stuttered out the jingle of once, and
twice, and thrice.

Dyson listened to it all gravely, even to the end, and meditated for a
few minutes in silence.

'Yes,' he said at length, 'it was a curious chance, your taking shelter
in that archway just as those two went by