in them, the schoolboy had steeled himself to look upon
another murdered man. He was in no hurry to look; apart from a natural
dread of death, which he had seen for the first time, and then
unwittingly, only the other morning, it was the murderer and not his
victim of whom the boy was thinking as he arrived last upon the scene. It
was Dr. Baumgartner whom he half expected to see swimming the river or
hiding among the bushes in the enclosed garden; for he was not one of the
group on the Embankment; and how else could he have made his escape? The
point was being discussed as Pocket came into earshot; all he could see of
the fallen man was the soles of his boots upright among living legs.

"Is he dead?" he asked of one of the chimneysweeps, who was detaching
himself from the group with the air of a man who had seen the best of the
fun.

"Dead as an 'erring," replied the sweep cheerfully. "Sooicide in the
usual stite o' mind."

"Rats!" said the other sweep over a sooty shoulder; "unless 'e shot
'isself first an' swallered the shooter afterwards! Some'un's done 'im
in."

Pocket set his teeth, and shouldered his way into the group. His father
was already in the thick of it, talking to the stout man in spectacles,
who had risen miraculously from the ground and was busy brushing his
trouser-knees. Pocket forced himself on with much the same nutter he had
taken into the Chamber of Horrors, but with an equal determination to look
just once upon Dr. Baumgartner's latest victim. A loud cry escaped him
when he did look; for the murdered man, and not the murderer, was Dr.
Baumgartner himself.

WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP

Phillida was prepared for anything when she beheld a motor-car at the
gate, and the escaped schoolboy getting out with a grown man of shaggy and
embarrassed aspect; but she was not prepared for the news they brought
her. She was intensely shocked and shaken by it. Her grief and horror
were not the less overwhelming for the shame and fear which they replaced
in her mind. Yet she remained instinctively on her guard, and a
passionate curiosity was the only emotion she permitted herself to express
in words.

"But have they no idea who did it? Are they quite sure he didn't do it
himself?"

Mr. Upton broke through his heavy embarrassment with no little relief, to
dispose of the question of suicide once and for all.

"It's the one thing they are sure about," said he. "In the first place no
we