Page:William Le Queux - The Temptress.djvu/28

Rh "They got out at Spring Gardens," interrupted the driver. "I stopped for them."

"Then he must have entered immediately afterwards," remarked the detective thoughtfully.

"Yes, that's the only way I can account for it."

"It is certainly an extraordinary case," the officer said, bending down and re-examining the dead man's wound. "From the time he got into the 'bus until you discovered him dead could not have been more than six or seven minutes?"

"Not so much," replied the driver. "I generally reckon it takes four minutes from Dent's to the corner here, including the stoppage in front of the lions."

"But you didn't pull up there to-night?"

"No, because I was not aware I had any fare inside."

"Ah!" exclaimed the detective confidently. "The murder was evidently cleverly planned, and the assassin has got away very neatly indeed."

"It couldn't be suicide, could it?" suggested one of the constables.

"Impossible, for the knife has disappeared. But here's the ambulance; we must remove the body and disperse the crowd."

At that moment a hansom, which had turned from the Strand towards Pall Mall, was compelled to pull up owing to the throng of eager onlookers which had now become so augmented as to reach across the road.

Pushing up the flap in the roof with his walking-stick, the fare, a well-dressed and rather handsome young man, whose face bore that frank, good-humored expression which always impresses favorably, asked—

"What's the fuss, cabby?"

"Can't exactly make out, sir," replied the man. "They say a murder's been committed."