Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/52

44 been pretty nearly beaten. He had shown the photographs of the dead face to two of the cleverest detectives in London—had set one to work in the east and the other in the west, promising a liberal reward for any valuable information; and nothing had come of their labours. One had tried every lodging-house within a certain radius of Paddington. The other had explored the neighbourhood of London Bridge Station, and failing there, had come as far west as Charing Cross. The ground had been thoroughly beaten, and no likely place had been forgotten in which a stranger of this girl's class could find shelter.

"She might have gone to the house of friends," suggested Wyllard.

"If she had friends in London—were they ever such slight acquaintances even—they would have been heard of before now," argued Distin. "I take it that she was unknown to a mortal on this side of the Channel, except the man who murdered her, and who had no doubt some very powerful motive for wanting to get rid of her."

"What do you suppose that motive to have been?"

"My dear Wyllard, what a question for a clever man to ask!" exclaimed the lawyer, with a shade of contempt. "To speculate upon the motive I must have some knowledge of the man, and of this girl's murderer I know nothing. If I could once find the man, I should soon find the motive. Such a murder as this generally means the breaking of some legal tie that has become onerous—some bond which death alone can loosen."

room at the Vital Spark was filled to overflowing on the occasion of the adjourned inquiry. At the previous examination only the inhabitants of Bodmin and its immediate neighbourhood had been present; but on this second afternoon people had come from long distances, and there was not standing room for the audience, which filled the passage, and waited with strained ears to catch a stray word now and then through the open door.

The idea of a profound mystery—of a dastardly crime—had been fostered in the local mind by the newspapers, which had harped upon the ghastly theme, and gloated over the particulars of the nameless girl's fate in paragraphs and leaderettes ad nauseam. Articles headed "More details concerning the Bodmin Mystery," "Further particulars about the strange death on the railway," had served as the salt to give savour to cut and dried