"You were at The Universe last night?"

"Certainly I was."

"Did anything occur?"

"The Prince was there."

"Nothing has happened to the Prince?" said Chiltern.

"His name has not been mentioned to me," said Mr. Low. "Was there not
a quarrel?"

"Yes;"--said Phineas. "I quarrelled with Mr. Bonteen."

"What then?"

"He behaved like a brute;--as he always does. Thrashing a brute
hardly answers nowadays, but if ever a man deserved a thrashing he
does."

"He has been murdered," said Mr. Low.

The reader need hardly be told that, as regards this great offence,
Phineas Finn was as white as snow. The maintenance of any doubt on
that matter,--were it even desirable to maintain a doubt,--would be
altogether beyond the power of the present writer. The reader has
probably perceived, from the first moment of the discovery of the
body on the steps at the end of the passage, that Mr. Bonteen had
been killed by that ingenious gentleman, the Rev. Mr. Emilius, who
found it to be worth his while to take the step with the view of
suppressing his enemy's evidence as to his former marriage. But Mr.
Low, when he entered the room, had been inclined to think that his
friend had done the deed. Laurence Fitzgibbon, who had been one of
the first to hear the story, and who had summoned Erle to go with him
and Major Mackintosh to Downing Street, had, in the first place, gone
to the house in Carey Street, in which Bunce was wont to work, and
had sent him to Mr. Low. He, Fitzgibbon, had not thought it safe that
he himself should warn his countryman, but he could not bear to think
that the hare should be knocked over on its form, or that his friend
should be taken by policemen without notice. So he had sent Bunce to
Mr. Low, and Mr. Low had now come with his tidings.

"Murdered!" exclaimed Phineas.

"Who has murdered him?" said Lord Chiltern, looking first at Mr. Low
and then at Phineas.

"That is what the police are now endeavouring to find out." Then
there was a pause, and Phineas stood up with his hand on his
forehead, looking savagely from one to the other. A glimmer of an
idea of the truth was beginning to cross his brain. Mr. Low was there
with the object of asking him whether he had murdered the man! "Mr.
Fitzgibbon was with you last night," continued Mr. Low.

"Of course he was."

"It was he who has sent me to you."

"What does it all mean?" asked Lord Chiltern. "I suppose they do not
intend to say that--our friend, here-