It is scarcely necessary to say that Max did not tell anyone about the adventures he had met with. He knew that he should have to go through the ordeal of an interview with his sister, Doreen, who would want to know a great deal more than he was willing to tell her; but he was tired, and he made up his mind that he would not be interrogated that evening. So he gave her no opportunity for the confidential talk she was dying to have with him, but spent the remainder of the evening in dutiful attendance upon his mother.
The following day was Christmas Eve. Max came down late to breakfast, and he had scarcely entered the morning-room when his father handed him the Standard, pointing to a certain paragraph without any comment but a glance at the girls, as a hint to his son not to make any remark which would recall Dudley and his affairs to their minds.
The paragraph was as follows:
SHOCKING DISCOVERY!
The body of a man was found floating in the river close to Limehouse Pier late yesterday evening. Medical evidence points to death by violence, and the police are making inquiries. It is thought that the description of the body, which is that of a man of a Jewish type of countenance, rather under than over the middle height, aged between fifty and fifty-five, gray hair and short, gray beard, tallies with that given a few days ago by a woman who applied at the —— Street Police Court, alleging that her husband had disappeared in the above neighborhood. The police are extremely reticent, but at the present they have no clue to the authors of the outrage. The body awaits identification at the mortuary, and an inquest will be held to-day.
"I wonder whether Dudley will see that?" said Mr. Wedmore, in a low voice, as soon as his daughters were engaged in talk together. "It looks like the sequel to the other paragraph which upset him so the other evening, doesn't it? I shall watch the papers for the result of the inquest. It seems to me pretty certain that it was Edward Jacobs. Curious affair, isn't it, that he should be murdered in a slum, after making a fortune at other people's expense? Retribution—just retribution! Curious, isn't it!"
To Max it was so much more than merely "curious," knowing what he did, that he felt sick with horror. Surely this body, found floating near Limehouse Pier, was the one he had touched in the dark!