stay away for an indefinite time or return after a few days. At all
events it was worth while going down to St. Kilda in the evening on the
chance that Moreland might have returned to town, and world call to see
his friend. So, after his tea, Mr. Gorby put on his hat, and went down
to Possum Villa, on what he could not help acknowledging to himself was
a very slender possibility.

Mrs. Hableton opened the door for him, and in silence led the way, not
into her own sitting-room, but into a much more luxuriously furnished
apartment, which Gorby guessed at once was that of Whyte's. He looked
keenly round the room, and his estimate of the dead man's character was
formed at once.

"Fast," he said to himself, "and a spendthrift. A man who would have
his friends, and possibly his enemies, among a very shady lot of
people."

What led Mr. Gorby to this belief was the evidence which surrounded him
of Whyte's mode of life. The room was well furnished, the furniture
being covered with dark-red velvet, while the curtains on the windows
and the carpet were all of the same somewhat sombre hue.

"I did the thing properly," observed Mrs. Hableton, with a
satisfactory smile on her hard face. "When you wants young men to stop
with you, the rooms must be well furnished, an' Mr. Whyte paid well,
tho' 'e was rather pertickler about 'is food, which I'm only a plain
cook, an' can't make them French things which spile the stomach."

The globes of the gas lamps were of a pale pink colour, and Mrs.
Hableton having lit the gas in expectation of Mr. Gorby's arrival,