He was very weary, and as he sought disconsolately through all his pockets for the wherewithal to pay his fly, while the spring rain pattered on his wide-awake, he produced an impression as of some delicate, draggled thing, which would certainly have gone to the heart of his adoring wife could she have beheld it.  The Dean’s ways were not sybaritic.  He pecked at food and drink like a bird; his clothes never caused him a moment’s thought; and it seemed to him a waste of the night to use it for sleeping.  But none the less did he go through life finely looked after.  Mrs. Winston dressed him, took his tickets and paid his cabs, and without her it was an arduous matter for the Dean to arrive at any destination whatever.  As it was, in the journey from Paris he had lost one of the two bags which Mrs. Winston had packed for him, and he looked remorsefully at the survivor as it was deposited on the steps beside him.

It did not, however, remain on the steps.  For when Lady Alice’s maid-housekeeper appeared, she informed the Dean, with a certain flurry of manner, that the ladies were not at home.  They had gone off that morning—­suddenly—­to Venice, leaving a letter for him, should he arrive.

“Fermate!” cried the Dean, turning towards the cab, which was trailing away, and the man, who had been scandalously overpaid, came back with alacrity, while the Dean stepped in to read the letter.

When he came out again he was very pale and in a great haste.  He bade the man replace the bag and drive him at once to the railway-station.

On the way thither he murmured to himself, “Horrible!—­horrible!”—­and both the letter and a newspaper which had been enclosed in it shook in his hands.

He had half an hour to wait before the advent of the evening train for Venice, and he spent it in a quiet corner poring over the newspaper.  And not that newspaper only, for he presently became aware that all the small, ill-printed sheets offered him by an old newsvender in the station were full of the same news, and some with later detail—­nay, that the people walking up and down in the station were eagerly talking of it.

An Englishman had been assassinated in Venice.  It seemed that a body had been discovered early on the preceding morning floating in one of the small canals connecting the Fondamente Nuove with the Grand Canal.  It had been stabbed in three places; two of the wounds must have been fatal.  The papers in the pocket identified the murdered man as the famous English traveller, poet, and journalist, Mr. Geoffrey Cliffe.  Mr. Cliffe had just returned from an arduous winter in the Balkans, where he had rendered superb service to the cause of the Bosnian insurgents.  He was well known in Venice, and the terrible event had caused a profound sensation there.  No clew to the outrage had yet been obtained.  But Mr. Cliffe’s purse and watch had not been removed.