that I retained my composure. I knew that this strange and terrible event which I had been the one to discover was only another link in the chain of circumstances, which, so far as my knowledge went, began less than twenty-four hours ago; a chain that threatened to fetter me, or the girl I loved. For my own safety I cared nothing. My one thought was to protect Anne, who must be, either fortuitously, or of her own will, involved in this tangled web of intrigue. I should, of course, be subjected to cross-examination, and, on my way to Scotland Yard, I had decided just what I meant to reveal. I would have to relate how I encountered the old Russian, when he mistook my flat for Cassavetti’s; but of the portrait in his possession, of our subsequent interview, and of the incident of the river steps, I would say nothing. For the present I merely stated how Jenkins and I had discovered the fact that a murder had been committed. [Pg 50] [Pg 50] “I dined in company with Mr. Cassavetti last night,” I continued. “But before that—” I was going to mention the mysterious Russian; but my auditor checked me. “Half a minute, Mr. Wynn,” he said, as he filled in some words on a form, and handed it to a police officer waiting inside the door. The man took the paper, saluted, and went out. “I gather that you did not search the rooms? That when you found the man lying dead there, you simply came out and left everything as it was?” “Yes. I saw at once we could do nothing; the poor fellow was cold and rigid.” I felt that I spoke dully, mechanically; but the horror of the thing was so strongly upon me, that, if I had relaxed the self-restraint I was exerting, I think I should have collapsed altogether. This business-like little official, who had received the news that a murder had been committed as calmly as if I had merely told him some one had tried to pick my pocket, could not imagine and must not suspect the significance this ghastly discovery held for me, or the maddening conjectures that were flashing across my mind. “I wish every one would act as sensibly; it would save us a lot of trouble;” he remarked, closing his note-book, and stowing it, and his fountain pen, in his
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