of the body in the barge, the Siberian millionaire, as he was already
popularly called by enterprising interviewers, was arrested in his
luxurious suite of rooms at the Hotel Cecil.

"To confess the truth, at this point I was not a little puzzled. Mrs.
Kershaw's story and Smethurst's letters had both found their way into
the papers, and following my usual method--mind you, I am only an
amateur, I try to reason out a case for the love of the thing--I sought
about for a motive for the crime, which the police declared Smethurst
had committed. To effectually get rid of a dangerous blackmailer was the
generally accepted theory. Well! did it ever strike you how paltry that
motive really was?"

Miss Polly had to confess, however, that it had never struck her in that
light.

"Surely a man who had succeeded in building up an immense fortune by his
own individual efforts, was not the sort of fool to believe that he had
anything to fear from a man like Kershaw. He must have _known_ that
Kershaw held no damning proofs against him--not enough to hang him,
anyway. Have you ever seen Smethurst?" he added, as he once more fumbled
in his pocket-book.

Polly replied that she had seen Smethurst's picture in the illustrated
papers at the time. Then he added, placing a small photograph before
her:

"What strikes you most about the face?"

"Well, I think its strange, astonished expression, due to the total