On the third of October four years ago, as most of our readers will
remember, a gentleman named Mr. Seton Marks was found brutally
murdered in his luxurious flat on the Chelsea Embankment. It was
thought at first that the crime was the work of burglars, for Mr.
Marks's rooms contained many art treasures of considerable value. A
further examination, however, revealed the fact that nothing had been
tampered with, and the next day the whole country was startled and
amazed to learn that Neil Lyndon had been arrested on suspicion.

At the trial it was proved beyond question that the accused was the
last person in the company of the murdered man. He had gone round to
Mr. Marks's flat at four o'clock in the afternoon, and had apparently
been admitted by the owner. Two hours later Mr. Marks's servant
returning to the flat was horrified to find his master's dead body
lying in the sitting-room. Death had been inflicted by means of a
heavy blow on the back of the head, but the state of the dead man's
face showed that he had been brutally mishandled before being killed.

The accused, while maintaining his innocence of the murder, did not
deny either his visit to the flat, or the fact that he had inflicted
the other injuries on the deceased. He declined to state the cause of
their quarrel, but the defending counsel produced a witness in the
person of Miss Joyce Aylmer, a young girl of sixteen, who was able to
throw some light on the matter.

Miss Aylmer, a young lady of considerable beauty, stated that for
about a year she had been working as an art student in Chelsea, and
used occasionally to sit to artists for the head. On the afternoon
before the murder she had had a professional engagement of this kind