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The porter of Montmorency House, awaking next morning, discovered that even in the well of his flats, where the air is ever the most stagnant in London, the snow was melting fast. After breakfast he saw some clothes emerging from the slush. This annoyed him, for he cherished that little court. The tenants, he remarked to his wife, were always doing something messy, but dropping their trousers down the well was the limit. He splashed out into the slush and found a corpse.

After lunch Reggie Fortune, drowsing over the last published play of Herr Wedekind, was roused by the telephone, which, speaking with the voice of Superintendent Bell, urged him to come at once to the mortuary.

"Who's dead?" he asked. "Sandford hanged himself in red tape? Kimball had a stroke?"

"It's what you might call anonymous," said the voice of the Superintendent. "Just the sort of case you like."

"I never like a case," said Reggie, with indignation, and rang off.

At the door of the mortuary Superintendent Bell appeared as his car stopped.

"You're damned mysterious," Reggie complained.

"Not me, sir. If you can tell me who the fellow is, I'll be obliged. But what I want to know first