“Do you happen to know anything of a man named Herbert —­Charles Herbert?”

Austin turned round sharply and stared at Villiers with some astonishment.

“Charles Herbert?  Weren’t you in town three years ago?  No; then you have not heard of the Paul Street case?  It caused a good deal of sensation at the time.”

“What was the case?”

“Well, a gentleman, a man of very good position, was found dead, stark dead, in the area of a certain house in Paul Street, off Tottenham Court Road.  Of course the police did not make the discovery; if you happen to be sitting up all night and have a light in your window, the constable will ring the bell, but if you happen to be lying dead in somebody’s area, you will be left alone.  In this instance, as in many others, the alarm was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don’t mean a common tramp, or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business or pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at five o’clock in the morning.  This individual was, as he said, ‘going home,’ it did not appear whence or whither, and had occasion to pass through Paul Street between four and five a.m.  Something or other caught his eye at Number 20; he said, absurdly enough, that the house had the most unpleasant physiognomy he had ever observed, but, at any rate, he glanced down the area and was a good deal astonished to see a man lying on the stones, his limbs all huddled together, and his face turned up.  Our gentleman thought his face looked peculiarly ghastly, and so set off at a run in search of the nearest policeman.  The constable was at first inclined to treat the matter lightly, suspecting common drunkenness; however, he came, and after looking at the man’s face, changed his tone, quickly enough.  The early bird, who had picked up this fine worm, was sent off for a doctor, and the policeman rang and knocked at the door till a slatternly servant girl came down looking more than half asleep.  The constable pointed out the contents of the area to the maid, who screamed loudly enough to wake up the street, but she knew nothing of the man; had never seen him at the house, and so forth.  Meanwhile, the original discoverer had come back with a medical man, and the next thing was to get into the area.  The gate was open, so the whole quartet stumped down the steps.  The doctor hardly needed a moment’s examination; he said the poor fellow had been dead for several hours, and it was then the case began to get interesting.  The dead man had not been robbed, and in one of his pockets were papers identifying him as—­well, as a man of good family and means, a favourite in society, and nobody’s enemy, as far as could be known.  I don’t give his name, Villiers, because it has nothing to do with the story, and because it’s no good raking up these affairs about the dead when there are no relations living.  The next curious point was that the medical men couldn’t agree as to how he met his death.  There were