should have thought a page of small type, but I was cut short by
a beggar who had come behind me, and was making the usual
appeals. Of course I looked round, and this beggar turned out
to be what was left of an old friend of mine, a man named
Herbert. I asked him how he had come to such a wretched pass,
and he told me. We walked up and down one of those long and
dark Soho streets, and there I listened to his story. He said
he had married a beautiful girl, some years younger than
himself, and, as he put it, she had corrupted him body and
soul. He wouldn't go into details; he said he dare not, that
what he had seen and heard haunted him by night and day, and
when I looked in his face I knew he was speaking the truth.
There was something about the man that made me shiver. I don't
know why, but it was there. I gave him a little money and sent
him away, and I assure you that when he was gone I gasped for
breath. His presence seemed to chill one's blood."

"Isn't this all just a little fanciful, Villiers? I
suppose the poor fellow had made an imprudent marriage, and, in
plain English, gone to the bad."

"Well, listen to this." Villiers told Clarke the story
he had heard from Austin.

"You see," he concluded, "there can be but little doubt
that this Mr. Blank, whoever he was, died of sheer terror; he
saw something so awful, so terrible, that it cut short his life.
And what he saw, he most certainly saw in that house, which,
somehow or other, had got a bad name in the neighbourhood. I
had the curiosity to go and look at the place for myself. It's