another of the perfectly
random series which had already thrilled the town, but on which no light
was likely to be shed by the antecedents of the murdered men. A third
official came to announce that the inquest was to be opened without delay,
at two o'clock that afternoon, and to request Phillida to accompany him to
the mortuary for the formal identification of the deceased.

That was a dread ordeal, and yet she expected a worse. She had steeled
herself to look upon a debased image of the familiar face, and she found
it startlingly ennobled and refined. Death had taken away nothing here,
save the furrows of age and the fires of madness, and it had given back
the look of fine courage and of sane integrity which the girl was just old
enough to associate with the dead man's prime. She was thankful to have
seen him like this for the last time. She wished that all the world could
see him as he was, so noble and so calm, for then nobody would ever
suspect that which she herself would find it easier to disbelieve from
this hour.

"You do identify him, I suppose, miss?" the officer whispered, impressed
by her strange stare.

"Oh, yes!" said Phillida. "But he looks as I have not seen him look for
years. There are worse things than death!"

She said the same thing to Mr. Upton at luncheon in his private
sitting-room at the hotel, whereupon he again assured her that he had no
desire to know a dead man's secrets. He had found his boy; that was quite
enough for him, and he was able to deliver himself the more freely on the
subject since Pocket was not at table, but in bed making up for lost
sleep. Not only had he succeeded in finding his son, but he had found him
without the aid of police or press, and so not more than a dozen people in
the world knew that he had ever disappeared. Mr. Upton explained why he
had deemed it essential to keep the matter from his wife's ears, and added
almost equally good reasons for continuing to hush it up on the boy's
account if only it were possible to do so; but would it be possible to
Phillida to exclude from her evidence at the inquest all mention of so
recent a visitor at her uncle's house? Phillida promised to do her best,
and it proved not only possible but easy. She was questioned as to the
habits of the deceased so far as they explained his presence on the
Embankment at such a very early hour, but that was all. Asked if she knew
of a single person who could conceivably have bor