d out the contents
of the area to the maid, who screamed loudly enough to wake up the
street, but she knew nothing of the man; had never seen him at the
house, and so forth. Meanwhile, the original discoverer had come back
with a medical man, and the next thing was to get into the area. The
gate was open, so the whole quartet stumped down the steps. The doctor
hardly needed a moment's examination; he said the poor fellow had been
dead for several hours, and it was then the case began to get
interesting. The dead man had not been robbed, and in one of his
pockets were papers identifying him as--well, as a man of good family
and means, a favourite in society, and nobody's enemy, as far as could
be known. I don't give his name, Villiers, because it has nothing to
do with the story, and because it's no good raking up these affairs
about the dead when there are no relations living. The next curious
point was that the medical men couldn't agree as to how he met his
death. There were some slight bruises on his shoulders, but they were
so slight that it looked as if he had been pushed roughly out of the
kitchen door, and not thrown over the railings from the street or even
dragged down the steps. But there were positively no other marks of
violence about him, certainly none that would account for his death;
and when they came to the autopsy there wasn't a trace of poison of any
kind. Of course the police wanted to know all about the people at
Number 20, and here again, so I have heard from private sources, one or
two other very curious points came out. It appears that the occupants
of the house were a Mr. and Mrs. Charles Herbert; he was said to be a
landed proprietor, though it struck most people that Paul Street was
not exactly the place to look for country gentry. As for Mrs. Herbert,
nobody seemed to know who or what she was, and, between ourselves, I
fancy the divers after her history found themselves in rather strange
waters. Of course they both denied knowing anything about the
deceased, and in default of any evidence against them they were
discharged. But some very odd things came out about them. Though it
was between five and six in the morning when the dead man was removed,
a large crowd had collected, and several of the neighbours ran to see
what was going on. They were pretty free with their comments, by all
accounts, and from these it appeared that Number 20 was in very bad
odour in Paul Street. The det