And then he suddenly paused, pulling himself up with a strange
consciousness that at last he was to meet something. Beneath the feeble
light of the one lamp Viner saw a man. Not a man walking, or standing
still, or leaning against the wall, but lying full length across the
flagged pavement, motionless--so motionless that at the end of the first
moment of surprise, Viner felt sure that he was in the presence of death.
And then he stole nearer, listening, and looked down, and drawing his
match-box from his pocket added the flash of a match to the poor rays
from above. Then he saw white linen, and a bloodstain slowly spreading
over its glossy surface.




CHAPTER II

NUMBER SEVEN IN THE SQUARE


Before the sputter of the match had died out, Viner had recognized the
man who lay dead at his feet. He was a man about whom he had recently
felt some curiosity, a man who, a few weeks before, had come to live in a
house close to his own, in company with an elderly lady and a pretty
girl; Viner and Miss Penkridge had often seen all three in and about
Markendale Square, and had wondered who they were. The man looked as if
he had seen things in life--a big, burly, bearded man of apparently sixty
years of age, hard, bronzed; something about him suggested sun and wind
as they are met with in the far-off places. Usually he was seen in loose,
comfortable, semi-nautical suits of blue serge; there was a roll in his
walk that suggested the sea. But here, as he lay before Viner, he was in