"Why, what's up?" he inquired, gazing blankly from one to the other of the ominous pair.
"Haven't you seen the evening papers, Mr. Theydon?" said Winter, the giant of the two.
"No, I've been at Brooklands since two o'clock. But what is it?"
"You don't know, then, that a murder was committed in the Innesmore Mansions last night or early this morning?"
"Good Lord, no! Who was killed?"
"A Mrs. Lester, the lady—"
"Mrs. Lester, who lives in No. 17?"
"Yes."
"What a horrible thing! Why, only the day before yesterday I met her on the stairs."
It was a banal statement, and Theydon knew it, but he blurted out the first crazy words that would serve to cloak the monstrous thought which leaped into his brain. And a picture danced before his mind's eye, a picture, not of the fair and gracious woman who had been done to death, but of a sweet-voiced girl in a white satin dress who was saying to a fine-looking man standing by her side: "Dad, aren't you coming home with me?"