rilous climb
down the side of the house, and then straightened himself to look
loweringly at his captors. He was a tall, slender young fellow of about
twenty-five or twenty-six, clean-shaven, with a fresh complexion and a
rather effeminate air. He was well dressed in a grey lounge suit, a soft
shirt, with a high double collar and silk necktie. He looked, as he stood
there, more like a dandified city clerk than the desperate criminal
suggested by Hill's confession.

"Come on, what's the charge?" he demanded insolently, with a slight
glance at his manacled hands.

"Is your name Frederick Birchill?" asked Inspector Chippenfield.

The young man nodded.

"Then, Frederick Birchill, you're charged with burglariously entering
the house of Sir Horace Fewbanks, at Hampstead, on the night of the 18th
of August."

"Burglary?" said Birchill "Anything else?"

"That will do for the present," replied the inspector. "We may find it
necessary to charge you with a more serious crime later."

"Well, all I can say is that you've got the wrong man. But that is
nothing new for you chaps," he added with a sneer.

"Surely you are not going to charge him with the murder?" said the girl
imploringly.

The inspector's reply was merely to warn the prisoner that anything he
said might be used in evidence against him at his trial.

"He had nothing whatever to do with it--he knows nothing about it,"
protested the girl. "If you let him go I'll tell you who murdered
Sir Horace."

"Who murdered him?" asked the inspector.

"Hill," was the reply.

CHAPTER XIII

Doris Fanning got off a Holborn tram at King's Cross, and with a hasty
glance round her as if to make sure she was not followed, walked at a
rapid pace across the street in the direction of Caledonian Road. She
walked up that busy thoroughfare at the same quick gait for some minutes,
then turned into a narrow street and, with another suspicious look around
her, stopped at the doorway of a small shop a short distance down.

The shop sold those nondescript goods which seem to afford a living to a
not inconsiderable class of London's small shopkeepers. The windows and
the shelves were full of dusty old books and magazines, trumpery curios
and cheap china, second-hand furniture and a collection of miscellaneous
odds and ends. A thick dust lay over the whole collection, and the shop
and its contents presented a deserted and dirty appearance. Moreover, the
door was closed as tho