Mr. Villiers was ignorant of the “Memoirs to prove the Existence of the Devil.”

“Well, Villiers, I shall be happy to give you my advice, to the best of my ability.  What is the nature of the case?”

“It’s an extraordinary thing altogether.  You know my ways; I always keep my eyes open in the streets, and in my time I have chanced upon some queer customers, and queer cases too, but this, I think, beats all.  I was coming out of a restaurant one nasty winter night about three months ago; I had had a capital dinner and a good bottle of Chianti, and I stood for a moment on the pavement, thinking what a mystery there is about London streets and the companies that pass along them.  A bottle of red wine encourages these fancies, Clarke, and I dare say I should have thought a page of small type, but I was cut short by a beggar who had come behind me, and was making the usual appeals.  Of course I looked round, and this beggar turned out to be what was left of an old friend of mine, a man named Herbert.  I asked him how he had come to such a wretched pass, and he told me.  We walked up and down one of those long and dark Soho streets, and there I listened to his story.  He said he had married a beautiful girl, some years younger than himself, and, as he put it, she had corrupted him body and soul.  He wouldn’t go into details; he said he dare not, that what he had seen and heard haunted him by night and day, and when I looked in his face I knew he was speaking the truth.  There was something about the man that made me shiver.  I don’t know why, but it was there.  I gave him a little money and sent him away, and I assure you that when he was gone I gasped for breath.  His presence seemed to chill one’s blood.”

“Isn’t this all just a little fanciful, Villiers?  I suppose the poor fellow had made an imprudent marriage, and, in plain English, gone to the bad.”

“Well, listen to this.”  Villiers told Clarke the story he had heard from Austin.

“You see,” he concluded, “there can be but little doubt that this Mr. Blank, whoever he was, died of sheer terror; he saw something so awful, so terrible, that it cut short his life.  And what he saw, he most certainly saw in that house, which, somehow or other, had got a bad name in the neighbourhood.  I had the curiosity to go and look at the place for myself.  It’s a saddening kind of street; the houses are old enough to be mean and dreary, but not old enough to be quaint.  As far as I could see most of them are let in lodgings, furnished and unfurnished, and almost every door has three bells to it.  Here and there the ground floors have been made into shops of the commonest kind; it’s a dismal street in every way.  I found Number 20 was to let, and I went to the agent’s and got the key.  Of course I should have heard nothing of the Herberts in that quarter, but I asked the man, fair and square, how long they had left the house and whether there had been other tenants in the meanwhile.  He looked at me queerly for a minute, and told me the Herberts had left immediately after the unpleasantness, as he called it, and since then the house had been empty.”