for the sensational fiction and of her evidently sincere conviction that
there were much stranger things in real life than could be found between
the covers of any novel.

"Those were certainly two very odd instances which she gave me," he
mused, "those of the prosperous banker and the pretty bride. In the
first, how on earth did the man contrive to get away unobserved from a
town in which, presumably, every soul knew him? Why did he go? Did he go?
Is his body lying at the bottom of some hole by some roadside? Was he
murdered in broad daylight on a public road? Did he lose his reason or
his memory, and wander away and away? I think, as my aunt sagely
remarked, that nobody is ever going to find anything about that affair!
Then my Lady Marshflower--there's a fine mystery! Who was the man? What
did she know about him? Where had they met? Had they ever met? Why did he
shoot her? How on earth did he contrive to disappear without leaving some
trace? How--"

At this point Viner's musings and questionings were suddenly and rudely
interrupted. Unconsciously he had walked back close to his own Square,
but on the opposite side to that by which he had left it, approaching it
by one of the numerous long terraces which run out of the main road in
the Westbourne Grove district--when his musings were rudely interrupted.
Between this terrace and Markendale Square was a narrow passage, little
frequented save by residents, or by such folk familiar enough with the
neighbourhood to know that it afforded a shortcut. Viner was about to
turn into this passage, a dark affair set between high walls, when a
young man darted hurriedly out of it, half collided with him, uttered a
hasty word of apology, ran across the road and disappeared round the
nearest corner. But just there stood a street-lamp, and in its glare
Viner caught sight of the hurrying young man's face. And when the