“Just so,” his employer assented.  “By the bye, is it my fancy, or weren’t you reading the newspaper when I came in?  No time for newspapers, you know, after nine o’clock.”

Arnold rose to his feet.  This was more than he could bear!

“I am sorry if I seemed inattentive, sir,” he said.  “Under the circumstances, I could not help dwelling a little over this paragraph.  Perhaps you will look at it yourself, sir?”

He brought it over to the desk.  Mr. Weatherley put on his spectacles with great care and drew the paper towards him.

“Hm!” he ejaculated.  “My eyesight isn’t so good as it was, Chetwode, and your beastly ha’penny papers have such small print.  Read it out to me—­read it out to me while I smoke.”

He leaned back in his padded chair, his hands folded in front of him, his cigar in the corner of his mouth.  Arnold smoothed the paper out and read: 

                TERRIBLE DEATH OF AN UNKNOWN MAN. 
                    FOUND DEAD IN A TAXICAB.

Early this morning, a taxicab driver entered the police station at Finchley Road North, and alleged that a passenger whom he had picked up some short time before, was dead.  Inspector Challis, who was on duty at the time, hastened out to the vehicle and found that the driver’s statement was apparently true.  The deceased was carried into the police station and a doctor was sent for.  The chauffeur’s statement was that about midnight he was hailed in the Grove End Road, Hampstead, by four men, one of whom, evidently the deceased, he imagined to be the worse for drink.  Two of them entered the taxicab, and one of the others directed him to drive to Finchley.  After some distance, however, the driver happened to glance inside, and saw that only one of his passengers was there.  He at once stopped the vehicle, looked in at the window, and, finding that the man was unconscious, drove on to the police station.

Later information seems to point to foul play, and there is no doubt whatever that an outrage has been committed.  There was a wound upon the deceased’s forehead, which the doctor pronounces as the cause of death, and which had evidently been dealt within the last hour or so with some blunt instrument.  The taxicab driver has been detained, and a full description of the murdered man’s companions has been issued to the police.  It is understood that nothing was found upon the deceased likely to help towards his identification.

Arnold looked up as he finished.  Mr. Weatherley was still smoking.  He seemed, indeed, very little disturbed.

“A sensational story, that, Chetwode,” he remarked.  “You’re not supposing, are you, that it was the same man who broke into my house last night?”

“I know that it was, sir,” Arnold replied.

“You know that it was,” Mr. Weatherley repeated, slowly.  “Come, what do you mean by that?”

“I mean that after I left your house last night, sir,” Arnold explained, “I realized the impossibility of that man having been carried down your drive and out into the road, with a policeman on duty directly opposite, and a cabstand within a few yards.  I happened to remember that there was an empty house next door, and it struck me that it might be worth while examining the premises.”