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 had left it when she ran to the red lamp round the corner. And as she approached it now, she shrank back.

"You go in—first," she whispered to her companions. "I—I'm still frightened about it. Such a shock"

The police-sergeant pushed open the door and strode in, followed closely by the doctor. They crossed a neat, orderly little hall, and entered a parlour in which the electric light was turned on at the full. In its white glare they saw the dead man—that he was dead the doctor realized as soon as he set eyes on him. He lay crumpled up across the hearthrug—a white skin rug on which there was already a rapidly spreading patch of darkening red—and near him was a light chair, on which he had evidently been sitting when assailed, and now lay overturned between a centre table and the fender.

The dead man's face was full in the light, and the two men took a careful look at him. An elderly man, this—probably sixty, at least. A good-looking man, somewhat worn, and grey-haired, with a well-shaped head and broad, high forehead; a man, decided the doctor, of considerable intellectual capacities. His attire was neat and quiet; his shoes good; his general appearance that of a man in comfortable circumstances. Out of the pockets of his light