WHEN Hellier opened his paper next morning, he read the following head-lines:
Terrible Murder in Kensington!
City man assassinated upon his own doorstep!
Clue to the murderer!

He read the report hurriedly through, then he read it slowly, dwelling on all the details.

After his prediction to Freyberger the night before, this thing came horribly pat; it had been happening, perhaps, just as he was talking to the detective.

He felt the triumph of the man who has prophesied and whose prophecy has come true.

The only thing that troubled him was the description of the murderer: “Tall man, with black beard.”

Klein was clean-shaven and of middle height; but the disguise of a beard was the commonest disguise of all; and as for the height, the assassin was seen in semi-darkness, which enlarges, and the observer was a frightened woman.

Hellier well knew the magnifying effect of terror.

Yes, without doubt, this was the expected crime. Just as an astronomer predicts the appearance of a comet, he had predicted the commission of this crime.

The fact of strangulation clinched the matter.

He breakfasted hurriedly, debating in his own mind as to what course he would pursue.

There is nothing which blinds the intellect more than a pre-conceived idea. Hellier’s opinion of the professional detective was as favourable as most people’s, but he held the idea, rightly or wrongly, that the professional detective was a person of machine-made methods. Freyberger was a professional detective.

Little knowing that Freyberger was at the moment hot on the trail of the murderer of Mr Goldberg, the idea came to him of calling at the Yard and attempt to interview Freyberger.

He dismissed the idea almost as soon as it was conceived, for, whatever he knew of detectives, he had sufficient knowledge of men to understand that the little German would brook no interference, and take advice more as a personal insult than as a compliment.

He determined to act on his own initiative, to find out what he could for himself; but first he had to call upon Mademoiselle Lefarge.

He arrived at the Langham about ten o’clock.

His interview with her did not last more than twenty minutes. He said nothing of the murder of Mr Goldberg; the thing was such a horrible basis to build hope upon that he shrank from mentioning it.

Besides, he had other things to talk of.

Cécile Lefarge, in Boulogne, even at their first meeting, had been attracted by Hellier. When he left Boulogne, she had told herself that she cared very much for him, telling herself at the same time that it was useless, that love for her was not. She told herself this with a certain philosophic calmness.

Meanwhile, her love for him was growing. The philosophic calmness vanished and gave place to pain, a dull, aching pain, almost physical.

A pain that only Hellier could relieve. He, in London, was suffering from an exactly similar pain, that only she could relieve, which condition, affecting two people at the same time, constitutes the disease—love.

He left the Langham about half-past ten, and, taking a cab, drove in the direction of Kensington.

He wished to see the place of the tragedy; he had no earthly idea of what he should do when he got there, he had only the fixed determination to do something. Often, when we have no idea of what we are going to do, a whole host of ideas on the subject in question are forming themselves in the sub-conscious part of our brains.

He dismissed the cab in the High Street and took his way on foot to St James’s Road.

A small crowd, constantly drifting away and as constantly renewed, stood before the house.

Hellier mixed with it and listened to its comments. Then, walking up St James’s Road, he examined the houses with a critical eye.

Klein was an artist. Great as his talents might be, he was unknown, a Bohemian; and these upper middle-class houses, these little gardens so carefully tended, the road itself and the atmosphere of the place were the very antithesis of everything Bohemian.

He turned from St James’s Road into Lorenzo Road, which, did places breed and multiply, might have been St James’s Road’s twin brother.

Pursuing Lorenzo Road, he arrived at St Ann’s Road.

St Ann’s Road has slightly gone to decay.

We find, sometimes, in the most prosperous districts, roads or streets that do not prosper; f............