of the police."

"Poor fellow?" he repeated. "Better say 'Poor Miss Challoner!'
They tell me she was one of those perfect women who reconcile even
the pessimist to humanity and the age we live in. Why any one
should want to kill her is a mystery; but why this man should
--There! no one professes to explain it. They simply go by the
facts. To-morrow surely must bring strange revelations."

And with this sentence ringing in my mind, I lay down and endeavoured
to sleep. But it was not till very late that rest came. The noise
of passing feet, though muffled beyond their wont, roused me in spite
of myself. These footsteps might be those of some late arrival, or
they might be those of some wary detective intent on business far
removed from the usual routine of life in this great hotel.

I recalled the glimpse I had had of the writing-room in the early
evening, and imagined it as it was with Miss Challoner's body
removed and the incongruous flitting of strange and busy figures
across its fatal floors, measuring distances and peering into
corners, while hundreds slept above and about them in undisturbed
repose.

Then I thought of him, the suspected and possibly guilty one. In
visions over which I had little if any control, I saw him in all
the restlessness of a slowly dying down excitement--the
surroundings strange and unknown to me, the figure not--seeking
for quiet; facing the past; facing the future; knowing, perhaps,
for the first time in his life what it was for crime and remorse to
murder sleep. I could not think of him as lying still--slumbering