Cautiously they re-entered the house, the policeman with his truncheon drawn, and ascended the stairs to the drawing-room. No person, dead or alive, was found.

“It’s downstairs,” said the violinist.

They crept downstairs in a body, keeping close together. There, an awful sight met[66] their eyes. On the floor of the kitchen lay the body of the stranger who, on the 1st of July, had engaged a room on the first floor, and had paid a month’s rent in advance. He had been foully murdered. The servant girl was sound asleep in her bed. It is strange, when she returned home from the Alhambra, and crept through the passage and the kitchen to bed, that she did not herself make the discovery, for the soles of her boots were stained with the evidences of the crime, and she must have passed within a foot or two of the lifeless body; but satisfactory explanations have since been given, with which and with the details of the murder, as far as they are known, the public have already been made fully acquainted through our columns.

[66]

Our business now is with Antony Cowlrick.

So profound was the impression produced by the murder that, from the day it was discovered, no person could be induced to lodge or sleep in the house in which it was committed. The tenants all left without giving notice, and the landlady, prostrated by the[67] blow, has not dared, since that awful night, to venture inside the door. The house is avoided, shunned, and dreaded by all. Any human being bold enough to take it could have it for a term of years on a very moderate rental—for the first year, probably, for a peppercorn; but practical people as we are, with our eyes on the main chance, we are imbued with sentiments which can never be eradicated. The poorest family in London could not, at the present time, be induced to occupy the house. The stain of blood is on those floors and stairs, and it can never be washed out! The Spirit of Murder lurks within the fatal building, and when night falls, the phantom holds terrible and undisputed sway over mind and heart. A shapeless shadow glides from room to room—no features are visible but eyes which never close, and which shine only in the dark. And in the daylight, which in this house is robbed of its lustre, its presence is manifest in the echo of every step that falls upon the boards. Appalling spectre! whose twin[68] brother walks ever by the side of the undiscovered murderer! Never, till justice is satisfied, shall it leave him. As he stole from the spot in which he took the life of a fellow-creature, it 

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