We had followed our guide into a side street, halfway down which we could see a knot of people clustered round a doorway.  They watched us as we approached, and drew aside to let us enter.  The woman whom we were following rushed into the passage with the same headlong haste with which she had traversed the streets, and so up the stairs.  But as she neared the top of the flight she slowed down suddenly, and began to creep up on tiptoe with noiseless and hesitating steps.  On the landing she turned to face us, and pointing a shaking forefinger at the door of the back room, whispered almost inaudibly, “She’s in there,” and then sank half-fainting on the bottom stair of the next flight.

I laid my hand on the knob of the door, and looked back at Thorndyke.  He was coming slowly up the stairs, closely scrutinizing floor, walls, and handrail as he came.  When he reached the landing, I turned the handle, and we entered the room together, closing the door after us.  The blind was still down, and in the dim, uncertain light nothing out of the common was, at first, to be seen.  The shabby little room looked trim and orderly enough, save for a heap of cast-off feminine clothing piled upon a chair.  The bed appeared undisturbed except by the half-seen shape of its occupant, and the quiet face, dimly visible in its shadowy corner, might have been that of a sleeper but for its utter stillness and for a dark stain on the pillow by its side.

Dr. Hart stole on tiptoe to the bedside, while Thorndyke drew up the blind; and as the garish daylight poured into the room, the young surgeon fell back with a gasp of horror.

“Good God!” he exclaimed; “poor creature!  But this is a frightful thing, sir!”

The light streamed down upon the white face of a handsome girl of twenty-five, a face peaceful, placid, and beautiful with the austere and almost unearthly beauty of the youthful dead.  The lips were slightly parted, the eyes half closed and drowsy, shaded with sweeping lashes; and a wealth of dark hair in massive plaits served as a foil to the translucent skin.

Our friend had drawn back the bedclothes a few inches, and now there was revealed, beneath the comely face, so serene and inscrutable, and yet so dreadful in its fixity and waxen pallor, a horrible, yawning wound that almost divided the shapely neck.

Thorndyke looked down with stern pity at the plump white face.

“It was savagely done,” said he, “and yet mercifully, by reason of its very savagery.  She must have died without waking.”

“The brute!” exclaimed Hart, clenching his fists and turning crimson with wrath.  “The infernal cowardly beast!  He shall hang!  By God, he shall hang!” In his fury the young fellow shook his fists in the air, even as the moisture welled up into his eyes.

Thorndyke touched him on the shoulder.  “That is what we are here for, Hart,” said he.  “Get out your notebook;” and with this he bent down over the dead girl.