'Francis Smethurst.'

"It was this last letter which had caused William Kershaw's excitement
and his wife's tears. In the German's own words, he was walking up and
down the room like a wild beast, gesticulating wildly, and muttering
sundry exclamations. Mrs. Kershaw, however, was full of apprehension.
She mistrusted the man from foreign parts--who, according to her
husband's story, had already one crime upon his conscience--who might,
she feared, risk another, in order to be rid of a dangerous enemy.
Woman-like, she thought the scheme a dishonourable one, for the law, she
knew, is severe on the blackmailer.

"The assignation might be a cunning trap, in any case it was a curious
one; why, she argued, did not Smethurst elect to see Kershaw at his
hotel the following day? A thousand whys and wherefores made her
anxious, but the fat German had been won over by Kershaw's visions of
untold gold, held tantalisingly before his eyes. He had lent the
necessary £2, with which his friend intended to tidy himself up a bit
before he went to meet his friend the millionaire. Half an hour
afterwards Kershaw had left his lodgings, and that was the last the
unfortunate woman saw of her husband, or Müller, the German, of his
friend.

"Anxiously his wife waited that night, but he did not return; the next
day she seems to have spent in making purposeless and futile inquiries
about the neighbourhood of Fenchurch Street; and on the 12th she went to
Scotland Yard, gave what particulars she knew, and placed in the hands
of the police the two letters written by Smethurst."