The man with extravagant care searched his pockets.
"I have inadvertently left my card-case with my coiner's outfit," he said gravely, "but a wire addressed to the Doss House, Mine Street, Paddington, will find me—but I don't think I should try. At this moment I enjoy the protection of the law. In four days' time I shall be on the ocean—why, Mr. Beale?"
Mr. Beale smiled.
"Hullo, Parson—I thought you had sailed to-day."
"The first-class berths are all taken and I will not travel to Australia with the common herd."
He turned to the astonished sergeant.
"Can I go—Mr. Beale will vouch for me?"
As he left the charge-room he beckoned the detective, and when they were together in the street Beale found that all the Parson's flippancy had departed.
"I'm sorry I got you into that scrape," he said seriously. "I ought to have been unfrocked, but I was sentenced for my first crime under an assumed name. I was not attached to any church at the time and my identity has never been discovered. Mr. Beale," he went on with a quizzical smile, "I have yet to commit my ideal crime—the murder of a bishop who allows a curate to marry a wife on sixty pounds a year." His face darkened, and Beale found himself wondering at the contents of the tragic years behind the man. Where was the wife...?