“Where has he been found?” Amelius asked, snatching up his hat.

“There’s no hurry, sir,” Morcross answered quietly. “When I had the honour of seeing you yesterday, you said you meant to make Jervy suffer for what he had done. Somebody else has saved you the trouble. He was found this evening in the river.”

“Drowned?”

“Stabbed in three places, sir; and put out of the way in the river — that’s the surgeon’s report. Robbed of everything he possessed — that’s the police report, after searching his pockets.”

Amelius was silent. It had not entered into his calculations that crime breeds crime, and that the criminal might escape him under that law. For the moment, he was conscious of a sense of disappointment, revealing plainly that the desire for vengeance had mingled with the higher motives which animated him. He felt uneasy and ashamed, and longed as usual to take refuge in action from his own unwelcome thoughts. “Are you sure it is the man?” he asked. “My description may have misled the police — I should like to see him myself.”

“Certainly, sir. While we are about it, if you feel any curiosity to trace Jervy’s ill-gotten money, there’s a chance (from what I have heard) of finding the man with the squint. The people at our place think it’s likely he may have been concerned in the robbery, if he hasn’t committed the murder.”

In an hour after, under the guidance of Morcross, Amelius passed through the dreary doors of a deadhouse, situated on the southern bank of the Thames, and saw the body of Jervy stretched out on a stone slab. The guardian who held the lantern, inured to such horrible sights, declared that the corpse could not have been in the water more than two days. To any one who had seen the murdered man, the face, undisfigured by injury of any kind, was perfectly recognizable. Amelius knew him again, dead, as certainly as he had known him again, living, when he was waiting for Phoebe in the street.

“If you’re satisfied, sir,” said Morcross, “the inspector at the police-station is sending a sergeant to look after ‘Wall–Eyes’— the name they give hereabouts to the man suspected of the robbery. We can take the sergeant with us in the cab, if you like.”

Still keeping on the southern bank of the river, they drove for a quarter of an hour in a westerly direction, and stopped at a public-house. The sergeant of police went in by himself to make the first inquiries.

“We are a day too late, sir,” he said to Amelius, on returning to the cab. “Wall–Eyes was here last night, and Mother Sowler with him, judging by the description. Both of them drunk — and the woman the worse of the two. The landlord knew nothing more about it; but there’s a man at the bar tells me he heard of them this morning (still drinking) at the Dairy.”

“The Dairy?” Amelius repeated.

Morcross interposed with the necessary explanation. “An old house, sir, which once stood by itself in the fields. It was a dairy a hundred years ago; and it has kept the name ever since, though it’s nothing but a low lodging house now.”

“One of the worst places on this side of the river,” the sergeant added, “The landlord’s a returned convict. Sly as he is we shall have him again yet, for receiving stolen goods. There’s every sort of thief among his lodgers, from a pickpocket to a housebreaker. It’s my duty to continue the inquiry, sir; but a gentleman like you will be better, I should say, out of such a place as that.”

Still disquieted by the sight that he had seen in the deadhouse, and by the associations which that sight had recalled, Amelius was ready for any adventure which might relieve his mind. Even the prospect of a visit to a thieves’ lodging house was more welcome to him than the prospect of going home alone. “If there’s no serious objection to it,” he said, “I own I should like to see the place.”

“You’ll be safe enough with us,” the sergeant replied. “If you don’t mind filthy people and bad language — all right, sir! Cabman, drive to the Dairy.”

Their direction was now towards the south, through a perfect labyrinth of mean and dirty streets. Twice the driver was obliged to ask his way. On the second occasion the sergeant, putting his head out of the window to stop the cab, cried, “Hullo! there’s something up.”

They got out in front of a long low rambling house, a complete contrast to the modern buildings about it. Late as the hour was, a mob had assembled in front of the door. The police were on the spot keeping the people in order.

Morcross and the sergeant pushed their way through the crowd, leading Amelius between them. “Something wrong, sir, in the back kitchen,” said one of the policemen answering the sergeant while he opened the street door. A few yards down the passage there was a second door, with a man on the watch by it. “There’s a nice to-do downstairs,” the man announced, recognizing the sergeant, and unlocking the door with a key which he took from his pocket. “The landlord at the Dairy knows his lodgers, sir,” Morcross whispered to Amelius; “the place is kept like a prison.” As they passed through the second door, a frantic voice startled them, shouting in fury from below. An old man came hobbling up the kitchen stairs, his eyes wild with fear, his long grey hair all tumbled over his face. “Oh, Lord, have you got the tools for breaking open the door?” he asked, wringing his dirty hands in an agony of supplication. “She’ll set the house on fire! she’ll kill my wife and daughter!” The sergeant pushed him contemptuously out of the way, and looked round for Amelius. “It’s only the landlord, sir; keep near Morcross, and follow me.”

They descended the kitchen stairs, the frantic cries below growing louder and louder at every step they took; and made their way through the thieves and vagabonds crowding together in the passage. Passing on their right hand a solid old oaken door fast closed, they reached an open wicket-gate of iron which led into a stone-paved yard. A heavily barred window was now visible in the back wall of the house, raised three or four feet from the pavement of the yard. The room within was illuminated by a blaze of gaslight. More policemen were here, keeping back more inquisitive lodgers. Among the spectators was a man with a hideous outward squint, holding by the window-bars in a state of drunken terror. The sergeant looked at him, and beckoned to one of the policemen. “Take him to the station; I sh............