but the Thames Embankment or
the mortuary in front of him. I've had my eyes opened--I've talked to
some of these poor devils in this Christian city. But what's the good of
telling you this? I've been down to the gutter myself the last few days,
falling each day to lower depths, tramping hungry and footsore in the
midst of herds of respectable human brutes, slinking away from the eye
of every policeman, pawning clothes for the price of a verminous bed, to
lie awake all night knowing that I would be murdered by the
vulture-faced degenerates sleeping in the same hovel, if they had caught
a glimpse of the necklace.

"How many wild schemes have I planned in the night for raising money on
the necklace in the morning! Once I went into a pawnshop, but the
pawnbroker's eyes glittered when I spoke of pearls, and I got away as
quickly as I could. I suppose there was a reward, and he was on the look
out for me. One way and another I have been through hell. I feel like a
man in a fever. I was drenched through yesterday, and I've had no food
for twenty-four hours."

He ceased, and sat staring into vacancy as though he were again passing
through the horror of his wanderings. Then another fit of coughing
seized him, prolonged and violent. When it had subsided he looked at
Colwyn with bloodshot eyes.

"I feel pretty bad," he said weakly.

That fact had been apparent to the detective for some time past.
Nepcote's frequent fits of coughing and a peculiar nasal intensity of
utterance suggested symptoms of pneumonia. As Colwyn lifted the
telephone receiver to summon a doctor, the thought occurred to him that,
if the immediate problem of the disposal of Nepcote had been settled by
his illness, his inability to answer questions necessitated his own
return to the moat-house without delay. In any case, that course was
inevitable after what he had just heard. It was only at the place where
the murder had been committed that he could hope to judge between the
probabilities of Nepcote's strange story and Hazel Rath's confession. It
was there, unless he was very much mistaken, that the final solution of
the Heredith mystery must be sought.

CHAPTER XXVI

It was late afternoon when Colwyn reached Heredith the following day.
The brief English summer, dying under the intolerable doom of
evanescence for all things beautiful, presented the spectacle of
creeping decay in a hectic flare of russet and crimson, like a withered
woman striving