GHASTLY DISCOVERY IN A DERBYSHIRE CANAL

Yesterday the police recovered the body of a man who had apparently been dead for some weeks, from a canal close to Detton Magna.  The body was unrecognisable but it is believed that the remains are those of Mr. Philip Romilly, the missing art teacher from London, who is alleged to have committed suicide in January last.

The thought of that gruesome find scarcely blanched his cheeks.  His nerves now were stronger and tenser things.  He crushed back those memories with all the strength of his will.  Whatever might lie behind, he had struck for the future which he meant to live and enjoy.  They were only weaklings who brooded over an unalterable past.  It was for the present and the near future that he lived, and both, in that moment, were more alluring than ever before.  Even his intellectual powers seemed to have developed in his new-found happiness.  The play which he had written, every line of which appeared to gain in vital and literary force towards its conclusion, was only the first of his children.  Already other images and ideas were flowing into his brain.  The power of creation was triumphantly throwing out its tendrils.  He was filled with an amazing and almost inspired confidence.  He was ready to start upon fresh work that hour, to-morrow, or when he chose.  And before him now was the prospect of stimulating companionship.  Elizabeth and he had decided that the time had come for him to take his fate into his hands.  He was to be introduced to the magnates of the dramatic profession, to become a clubman in the world’s most hospitable city, to mix freely in the circles where he would find himself in constant association with the keenest brains and most brilliant men of letters in the world.  He was safe.  They had both decided it.

He walked to the mirror and looked at himself.  The nervous, highly-strung, half-starved, neurotic stripling had become the perfectly assured, well-mannered, and well-dressed man of the world.  He had studied various details with a peculiar care, suffered a barber to take summary measures with his overlong black hair, had accustomed himself to the use of an eyeglass, which hung around his neck by a thin, black ribbon.  Men might talk of likenesses, men who were close students of their fellows, yet there was no living person who could point to him and say—­“You are, beyond a shadow of doubt, a man with whom I travelled on the Elletania.”  The thing was impossible.

Louis once more made a noiseless appearance.  There was the slightest of frowns upon his face.

“A gentleman wishes a word with you before the arrival of your guests, Mr. Ware,” he announced.

“A journalist?” Philip enquired carelessly.

“I do not think so, sir.”

Even as he spoke the door was opened and closed again.  The man who had entered bowed slightly to Philip.  He was tall and clean-shaven, self-assured, and with manner almost significantly reserved.  He held a bowler hat in his hand and glanced towards Louis.  He had the air of being somewhat out of place in so fashionable a rendezvous.