It was soon after three when Max arrived at Dudley Horne’s chambers in Lincoln’s Inn.  Of course, Dudley was out; so Max scribbled a note for his friend and left it on the table while he went to the Law Courts to look for him.  Not finding him anywhere about, Max filled up the day in his own fashion, and returned to Dudley’s room at about seven o’clock, when he supposed that his friend would either return to dinner or look in on his way to dine elsewhere.

He waited an hour, then went away and filled up his time at a music-hall, and returned once more at a quarter to eleven.  Dudley, so he was told by the old woman who gave him the information, had not, as far as she knew, been in his rooms since the morning.

Max, who was a great friend of Dudley’s, and could take any liberty he pleased in his precincts, lit the gas and the sitting-room fire, and installed himself in an arm-chair with a book.  He could not read, however, for he was oppressed by some of Doreen’s own fears.  He was well acquainted with all his friend’s ways, and he knew that for him to be away both from his chambers and from the neighborhood of the Courts for a whole day was most unusual with that particularly steady, plodding young man.  He began to worry himself with the remembrance that Dudley had not been himself of late, that he had been moody, restless and unsettled without apparent cause.

Finally, Max worked himself into such a state of anxiety about his friend that when he at last heard the key turned in the lock of the outer door, he jumped up excitedly and made a rush for the door.

Before he reached it, however, he heard footsteps in the adjoining bedroom, the heavy tread of a man stumbling about in the dark, the overthrowing of some of the furniture.

Surely that could not be Dudley!

Max stood still at the door, listening.  He thought it might be a thief who had got hold of the key of the chambers.

As he stood still, close by the wall, the door which led from the one room to the other was thrown open from the bedroom, almost touching him as it fell back; and there staggered into the sitting-room, into the light thrown by the gas and the fire, a figure which Max could scarcely recognize as Dudley Horne.  His face was the grayish white of the dead; his eyes were glassy; his lips were parted; while the grime of a London fog had left its black marks round his mouth and eyes, giving him an appearance altogether diabolical.  He was shaking like a leaf as he stumbled against a chair and suddenly wheeled round to the light.

Then, unbuttoning his overcoat quickly, he looked down at his clothes underneath.  He passed his hand over them and held it in the light, with a shudder.

Max uttered a sharp cry.

The stain on Dudley’s hand, the wet patches which glistened on his dark clothes, were stains of blood.

CHAPTER III.