ppose you remember the very similar occurrence in Holland Walk?"

"Oh yes, sir, but it was a case of suicide."

"I don't agree."

"But surely, sir, the jury brought it in suicide?"

"The coroner's jury did--in spite of the coroner--but it may come before
another jury yet, Mullins! I remember the case perfectly; the medical
evidence was that the shot had been fired at arm's length. That isn't the
range at which we usually bring ourselves down! Then there was nothing to
show that the man ever possessed a pistol, or even the price of one; he
was so stony it would have gone up the spout long before. The very same
point crops up in the case of this poor boy. Who says he ever had a
revolver in his life? His father tells me explicitly that he never had; I
happened to ask the question," added Thrush, without explaining in what
connection.

"Well, sir," said Mullins, with respect enough in his tone, "you talk
about jumping to conclusions, but it strikes me the gentlemen who write
for the papers could give me some yards and a licking, sir!"

This was a sprightly speech for Mullins; but it was delivered with the
very faintest of deferential smiles, and Mr. Thrush shook his spectacles
without one at all.

"The gentlemen on this paper have a knack of lighting on the truth,
however," he remarked; "it may be by fair means, or it may be by foul, but
they have a way of getting there before the others start."

Mullins remarked with quiet confidence that they were not going to do it
this time. His position was, briefly, that he could not bring himself to
believe in two separate mysteries, at one and the same time and place,
with no sort of connection between them.

"That would be too much of a coincidence," said Mullins, sententiously.

Thrush looked at him for a moment.

"But life's one long collection of coincidences! That's what I'm always
telling you; the mistake is to look on them as anything else. Don't you
call it a bit of a coincidence that both these men should meet their death
at the very hour of the morning when you're on your way over here from
Netting Hill, and in much the same degree of latitude, which you've got to
cross somewhere or other on your way? Yet who has the nerve to say you
must have gone through Holland Walk that other morning, and been mixed up
in that affair because you are in this?"

"I don't admit I'm mixed up in anything," replied Mullins, with some
warmth.

"I mean as a witness of