of his favourite companions. The only son of a great tragic actor,
he possessed much of the genius of his late father, from whom he
inherited, also, his finely-cut features, like some old ivory carving,
his coal-black hair, and that sweet, humorous, yet sardonic smile that
relieved, like a sparkle in dark waters, his somewhat sinister good
looks.

Arthur Mervyn lived in a large, luxuriously furnished flat in
Bloomsbury. The decorations were miracles of Morris: obviously they
dated back about twenty years ago. Mervyn was not, however, a young man
who was keen about his surroundings: he was indifferent to them; they
had been chosen by his father, to whom background and all visible things
had been of the first importance. The faintly outlined involuted plants
on the wall-papers, the black oak friezes and old prints gave Arthur
neither more nor less pleasure than he would have received from striped
silk, white paint, and other whims of Waring. There were no swords,
foils, signed photographs of royalties, pet dogs, or babies, invitation
cards on the mantelpiece, nor any of the other luxuries usually seen in
illustrated papers as characteristic of "Celebrities at Home". A palm,
on its last legs, draped in shabby green silk, was dying by the window.
The gloom was mitigated by an air of cosiness. There were books,
first-rate and second-hand. Books (their outsides) were a hobby with
Mervyn. Smoking in this den seemed as natural as breathing, and rather
easier, though its owner never touched tobacco. On the Chesterfield sofa
there was one jarring note. It was a new, perfectly clean satin cushion,
of a brilliant salmon-pink, covered with embroidered muslin. Evidently
it was that well-known womanly touch that has such a fatal effect in
the rooms of a young man.

Woodville found Mervyn neither studying a part, reading his notices, nor
looking in the glass. He had, as usual, the noble air of a student
occupied with an Idea, and seemed absorbed.

"I say, Woodville, what do you think I've got?"

"A piece of rope that somebody wasn't hanged with?" asked Woodville.
Arthur's curious craze for souvenirs of crime was a standing joke with
them both.

"Better than that, old chap!" Mervyn spoke slowly, and always paused
between each sentence. "What do you think I did yesterday? You know
Jackson--chap who murdered people in a farm? I found out where he went
to school in the north of England--and I said to myself--this fellow
must have be