have landed in New York, and I could reach him
there at the hotel he had mentioned as his favourite; or in Denver,
Colorado, if he had chosen to pursue his homeward journey without a
night's delay.

I counted the hours which must pass before I could attempt any such
communication, and they seemed to rise like a high wall between me and
my hopes and my suspicions.

As I walked homeward, involuntarily hastening my footsteps, I heard the
newsboys crying out some item of intelligence for the evening papers.
"Extry Speshul! Extry Speshul!" "Mysterious Discovery in the Thames!"

So preoccupied was I that the words passed into my ears without making
any definite impression on my mind; or, if they did, it was the mere
rhythm of the different shouting voices that impressed itself upon me.

So often were they repeated from all sides as I walked on that at length
the short sentences began to form a species of intoned accompaniment to
my thoughts, without assuming a separate importance in my consciousness.

Suddenly, however, a grimy infant of tender years and appalling
precocity flourished a pink sheet, smelling of the printer's ink,
directly under my eyes.

"Buy a paper, guv-nor!" he cajoled me. "Hall abeout the 'orrid murder
and the 'eadless man."

I seldom read evening papers, and to-night, of all nights, I had little
inclination for such irrelevant mental diet. But I flung the child a
copper, and found the halfpenny journal thrust into my hand.

I would have tossed it from me carelessly, but the headlines relating to
the latest sensation caught my eye.

Then, forgetful of the crowds who stared at me in my agitation, I strode
nearer to the white ball of electric light which had shone down upon the
page.

CHAPTER XV

A Mystery of the Thames

It was the name, Purley Lock, which had fastened my attention. "Horrible
Discovery near Purley Lock!" the headline announced. I read on, rapidly,
but thoughtfully. Two boys from Great Marlow had, it seemed, been
wandering beside the river bank, between that village and Purley Lock.
Straying along a small backwater, leading out from a larger one, they
had noticed a peculiar object caught among a number of reeds. One of the
boys had curiously poked at it with his stick, bringing it nearer to the
shore, when it appeared to be a heavy, almost formless, mass sewn up in
a rough sack. The boys, being frightened, had run home with their story,
and a member of the local police