Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/83

Rh the scene of the removal; I remembered that we had actually thrown down the stumps of our cheroots in the lane off Stoneleigh Street—and resolved as soon as I returned to burn the box which had held them. My eye caught the column which described the South London tragedy, and ran down it swiftly. When I finished it I stared blankly round the King's Bench Walk; it told how a Clapham bricklayer had slain his lodger with a coal-hammer.

I turned again to the paper and looked through it quickly, and then again slowly. There was not a word of the operation of the Company; Albert Amsted Pudleigh might still be strutting along Oxford Street for anything that the editor had learned to the contrary. I could not understand what had happened. Had his body been spirited away, or were the police biding their time and moving quietly before announcing their discovery of it? I looked through the other papers I had bought; the Clapham bricklayer held the place of honor in each; of Albert Amsted Pudleigh there was no word.

I climbed my stairs very slowly, pondering the matter, and exceedingly disquieted. Angel was buried in "Many Inventions," and set it down with a little sigh when I came in. I told her that I had sent for her trunks, and she told me of her Vauxhall landlady. One landlady led to another,