Just now he was smiling down into the face of a young lady.  “Monsieur Barberoux is quite right,” he was saying in a loud, cheerful voice, “our English law is too kind to the criminal, especially to the murderer.  If we conducted our trials in the French fashion, the place we have just left would be very much fuller than it is to-day.  A man of whose guilt we are absolutely assured is oftener than not acquitted, and then the public taunt us with ‘another undiscovered crime!’”

“D’you mean, Sir John, that murderers sometimes escape scot-free?  Take the man who has been committing all these awful murders this last month?  I suppose there’s no doubt he’ll be hanged—­if he’s ever caught, that is!”

Her girlish voice rang out, and Mrs. Bunting could hear every word that was said.

The whole party gathered round, listening eagerly.  “Well, no.”  He spoke very deliberately.  “I doubt if that particular murderer ever will be hanged.”

“You mean that you’ll never catch him?” the girl spoke with a touch of airy impertinence in her clear voice.

“I think we shall end by catching him—­because”—­he waited a moment, then added in a lower voice—­“now don’t give me away to a newspaper fellow, Miss Rose—­because now I think we do know who the murderer in question is—­”

Several of those standing near by uttered expressions of surprise and incredulity.

“Then why don’t you catch him?” cried the girl indignantly.

“I didn’t say we knew where he was; I only said we knew who he was, or, rather, perhaps I ought to say that I personally have a very strong suspicion of his identity.”

Sir John’s French colleague looked up quickly.  “De Leipsic and Liverpool man?” he said interrogatively.

The other nodded.  “Yes, I suppose you’ve had the case turned up?”

Then, speaking very quickly, as if he wished to dismiss the subject from his own mind, and from that of his auditors, he went on: 

“Four murders of the kind were committed eight years ago—­two in Leipsic, the others, just afterwards, in Liverpool,—­and there were certain peculiarities connected with the crimes which made it clear they were committed by the same hand.  The perpetrator was caught, fortunately for us, red-handed, just as he was leaving the house of his last victim, for in Liverpool the murder was committed in a house.  I myself saw the unhappy man—­I say unhappy, for there is no doubt at all that he was mad”—­he hesitated, and added in a lower tone—­“suffering from an acute form of religious mania.  I myself saw him, as I say, at some length.  But now comes the really interesting point.  I have just been informed that a month ago this criminal lunatic, as we must of course regard him, made his escape from the asylum where he was confined.  He arranged the whole thing with extraordinary cunning and intelligence, and we should probably have caught him long ago, were it not that he managed, when on his way out of the place, to annex a considerable sum of money in gold, with which the wages of the asylum staff were about to be paid.  It is owing to that fact that his escape was, very wrongly, concealed—­”