ave had any possible
reason or opportunity to murder him was extremely small. The prisoner
had both reason and opportunity. By what logicians called the method of
exclusion, suspicion would attach to him on even slight evidence. The
actual evidence was strong and plausible, and now that Mr. Wimp's
ingenious theory had enabled them to understand how the door could have
been apparently locked and bolted from within, the last difficulty and
the last argument for suicide had been removed. The prisoner's guilt was
as clear as circumstantial evidence could make it. If they let him go
free, the Bow Mystery might henceforward be placed among the archives of
unavenged assassinations. Having thus well-nigh hung the prisoner, the
judge wound up by insisting on the high probability of the story for the
defense, though that, too, was dependent in important details upon the
prisoner's mere private statements to his counsel. The jury, being by
this time sufficiently muddled by his impartiality, were dismissed, with
the exhortation to allow due weight to every fact and probability in
determining their righteous verdict.

The minutes ran into hours, but the jury did not return. The shadows of
night fell across the reeking, fevered court before they announced their
verdict--

"Guilty."

The judge put on his black cap.

The great reception arranged outside was a fiasco; the evening banquet
was indefinitely postponed. Wimp had won; Grodman felt like a whipped
cur.

CHAPTER XI.

"So you were right," Denzil could not help saying as he greeted Grodman
a week afterward. "I shall not live to tell the story of how you
discovered the Bow murderer."

"Sit down," growled Grodman; "perhaps you will after all." There was a
dangerous gleam in his eyes. Denzil was sorry he had spoken.

"I sent for you," Grodman said, "to tell you that on the night Wimp
arrested Mortlake I had made preparations for your arrest."

Denzil gasped, "What for?"

"My dear Denzil, there is a little law in this country invented for the
confusion of the poetic. The greatest exponent of the Beautiful is only
allowed the same number of wives as the greengrocer. I do not blame you
for not being satisfied with Jane--she is a good servant but a bad
mistress--but it was cruel to Kitty not to inform her that Jane had a
prior right in you, and unjust to Jane not to let her know of the
contract with Kitty."

"They both know it now well enough, curse 'em," said the