I felt another pull at my coat-tails.  Gooseberry had not done with me yet.

“Robbery!” whispered the boy, pointing, in high delight, to the empty box.

“You were told to wait down-stairs,” I said.  “Go away!”

“And Murder!” added Gooseberry, pointing, with a keener relish still, to the man on the bed.

There was something so hideous in the boy’s enjoyment of the horror of the scene, that I took him by the two shoulders and put him out of the room.

At the moment when I crossed the threshold of the door, I heard Sergeant Cuff’s voice, asking where I was.  He met me, as I returned into the room, and forced me to go back with him to the bedside.

“Mr. Blake!” he said.  “Look at the man’s face.  It is a face disguised—­and here’s a proof of it!”

He traced with his finger a thin line of livid white, running backward from the dead man’s forehead, between the swarthy complexion, and the slightly-disturbed black hair.  “Let’s see what is under this,” said the Sergeant, suddenly seizing the black hair, with a firm grip of his hand.

My nerves were not strong enough to bear it.  I turned away again from the bed.

The first sight that met my eyes, at the other end of the room, was the irrepressible Gooseberry, perched on a chair, and looking with breathless interest, over the heads of his elders, at the Sergeant’s proceedings.

“He’s pulling off his wig!” whispered Gooseberry, compassionating my position, as the only person in the room who could see nothing.

There was a pause—­and then a cry of astonishment among the people round the bed.

“He’s pulled off his beard!” cried Gooseberry.

There was another pause—­Sergeant Cuff asked for something.  The landlord went to the wash-hand-stand, and returned to the bed with a basin of water and a towel.

Gooseberry danced with excitement on the chair.  “Come up here, along with me, sir!  He’s washing off his complexion now!”

The Sergeant suddenly burst his way through the people about him, and came, with horror in his face, straight to the place where I was standing.

“Come back to the bed, sir!” he began.  He looked at me closer, and checked himself “No!” he resumed.  “Open the sealed letter first—­the letter I gave you this morning.”

I opened the letter.

“Read the name, Mr. Blake, that I have written inside.”

I read the name that he had written.  It was Godfrey Ablewhite.

“Now,” said the Sergeant, “come with me, and look at the man on the bed.”

I went with him, and looked at the man on the bed.

Godfrey Ablewhite!

SIXTH NARRATIVE

Contributed by sergeant Cuff

I

Dorking, Surrey, July 30th, 1849.  To Franklin Blake, Esq.  Sir,—­I beg to apologise for the delay that has occurred in the production of the Report, with which I engaged to furnish you.  I have waited to make it a complete Report; and I have been met, here and there, by obstacles which it was only possible to remove by some little expenditure of patience and time.