A Story of a Voice

Chapter I

Mr. Oldham was in his room at the “Angel,” washing his hands before dinner, when the singular and terrible accident happened to him which involved him in so much trouble. He and his party had arrived late the night before, and as it was close upon Commemoration, almost every room was occupied. They had managed to get a sitting-room, it is true, though with great trouble—a sitting-room labelled in gilt letters with the interesting information that her Highness the Duchess of Hesse-Marabout had once held it in Serene occupation—but for bedchambers, the different members of the party had to shift as they best could, some in the attics, some in the wings, wherever a bed was to be had. Mr. Oldham, though rather beyond middle age, and stout enough to count double, was unmarried, and the best thing that could be done for him was a little room at the end of a long passage projecting in a quaint way over the yard of the inn, just by the side of the archway. The “Angel” is an old house, as everybody knows, and full of expedients to make room; this little place was partly built of wood, and looked as if it had been stuck into that corner just for an emergency; it was indeed so entirely an accidental structure that it was propped up underneath by a heavy wooden pillar. If the weather had not been lovely it would have been cold quarters; as it was, being a very forward summer, the extreme ventilation of the room was rather agreeable than otherwise. Oldham was light-afoot though so stout a man, very goodnatured at bottom, but rather impetuous, and prone to momentary ebullitions of temper. He was washing his hands for dinner, somewhat impatient for that meal, which after a long day's course through Blenheim, and all the lions thereabout, was an event which he naturally looked forward to with some eagerness. All sorts of sounds were going on in the yard beneath—arrivals—departures—the heavy omnibus rolling out to meet the train; and all the figures below indistinct in the summer twilight. “By Jove! if it keeps up like this there will be little sleep for me to-night,” said Mr. Oldham, drawing near the window with the towel still in his hand; and it was just at this careless moment that it occurred.

Two people were talking immediately under the window. How it was that their conversation detached itself from the general din, he never could tell, unless it might happen to be the very peculiar tone of one of the voices, or the amount of passion and eagerness in their conversation; they were quarrelling, that is to say, one was addressing a string of hurried reproaches to the other, who made little reply, but who, when he did speak, answered in a strange spasmodic kind of voice—a voice which seemed to catch upon special words, and clench the teeth on them. This was all Mr. Oldham heard, least all he could swear to afterwards.

“You’ve betrayed every one as ever had to do with you,” said the first speaker, “man or woman. But for you I might have had a house o’ my own over my head ’stead o’ being a helper here—and I never was wise and would learn, but trusted you over and over like a fool, because of the drop of blood that’s atween us. Yes: you may sneer—its base i’me, as folks say—but it’s the same blood, though I’m a helper about the ‘Angel’ stables, and you’re—”

“It matters nothing what I am”—said the other—“I’ve always warned you, Jasper, to stick to your own business,” and here the betraying voice gave a sudden clench and grind on the words; “and restrain your temper. Give me the address—I’ll have you apprehended for kidnapping,” and the teeth struck together again harshly, “if you don’t deliver up that child to me. I have no time to trifle, you can reck-k-kon up your accounts another time. Where have you put him? Give me the address.”

“Not if you was to kill me said the man. “I’ve got the child safe, poor* innocent, and you sha’n’t lay hands on it, no, not if you offered my weight in gold. I’ve got the upper hand o’ you, and I’ll keep it No, it shall stay with me.”

“Mind what you’re saying,” said the other: “I’m not sc-c-crupulous. Give it up, or—”

“You can do your worst; there’s folks about, I ain’t afeared of you,” said the helper; and then Mr. Oldham was about to put down his towel—but at that moment a low stifled cry, a heavy dull fall, caught his ear; he threw up the window, and having nothing better at hand, threw down the towel upon the head of a man whom he saw darting out of the archway. “That’s him!” shouted the excited listener. He made an attempt to get out of the window, but remembering in time that he was seventeen stone, rushed forth by the legitimate means of exit, only to lose himself in the long dark passage. When he got fairly in the way at last, he stumbled against one of his own party. “Aren’t you coming to dinner, Oldham!” cried this astonished individual. “Dinner! it’s murder,” exclaimed the spectator of the tragedy. By the time he got outside, the bystanders were gathered in a wondering group round the fallen man, asking—what was it?—who did it? as bystanders will. Nobody knew anything about the matter. Mr. Oldham dashed into the midst of them, charging and dispersing the crowd by sheer native force and impetus—“Is he killed? poor fellow! poor fellow!” cried the incautious man.“And where’s that confounded scoundrel with the click in his voice? It’s him that’s done it—him I threw the towel on—Good Heavens! did you let him go?”—He had forced his way into the very centre of the ring beside the body. “What did he do it with—a knife?” cried Mr. Oldham, “and, God preserve me! there’s my towel all dabbled in the poor wretch's blood! Is he dead? haven’t you sent for a doctor?—and, Good Heavens! why did you let the fellow go?”

Such was the babble of horror and excitement which this imprudent man poured forth. He was taken up immediately by a dozen eager voices anxious to hear what he knew; and went through his story with many a wondering interjection, five or six times over, while the people about ran wildly to and fro, and doctors and police were sent for, and crazy persons went off through the streets in quest of a man whom nobody had seen. Mr. Oldham himself dashed out into the road, and gazed all round him, first on one hand and then on the other, as if he could, by the strain of his eyes, identify a person whose voice alone he had the least knowledge of. When the doctor came, the poor man was discovered to be breathing his last, killed, not by a knife, as Mr. Oldham supposed, but by a blow on the head, the sudden and extraordinary effect of which, the wondering surgeon could not account for. Mr. Oldham, though he could not help feeling now and then in vacant moments a pang of hunger, thought no more of his dinner. He told what he had heard over again to everybody who asked him; he was in a state of prodigious excitement, indignation, arid horror. “A gentleman, sir—I feel sure a gentleman, by his voice, in spite of that click. I’d know that click again anywhere!” said the roused and emphatic Briton; and all the wondering groups in the “Angel” who were disturbed in their peaceful occupations or enjoyments by the frightful intelligence of a murder, were comforted at the same time by the information that “there was a gentleman as was a looking out of his window and see him”—“a gentleman as could identify the murderer”—“ay, and won’t spare no pains either,” others added. The household of the “Angel” as proud of a witness so willing and ready. Even the horror of the occurrence was all but outbalanced by the presence of a spectator who had been almost on the spot, and had heard the awful words preliminary to such an event. By the time Mr. Oldham could get back to his party, he found them making a disconsolate attempt to eat the cold dinner which had been so tragically interrupted. He had the glory, but they only the disadvantages. Most of them were sulky, none sympathetic. Instead of the eager welcome he had met with out of doors, his friends, who already knew the story, received him with great indifference: and did their best, as friends should, to pour cold water on his excitement and lessen his self-importance. “Had I been you, Oldham, I’d have kept very quiet about it,” said one: “it’s unpleasant to have anything to do with a murder: ten to one but the popular voice a dozen years after this, when the story is told, makes you out as the culprit” “And not to speak of that,” said another, “think of all the confounded bore! You’ll be detained, for the inquest, you’ll be subpœnaed, you’ll be cross-examined by some brute of a counsel till at last you really come to believe you aid it yourself: not to speak of the loss of time.” “And, my dear sir, you’ve lost flesh already!” said the senior of the party solemnly: they all gathered round him, looking with compassion upon this public-spirited Englishman. “Poor dear Mr. Oldham, I declare he is thinner,” cried one little female spectator, with something between a giggle and a groan. The poor man fell suddenly from his excitement into a state of doleful anticipation: not that it was lamentable to “lose flesh,” for perhaps he had a trifle too much of that commodity; but the other penalties thus held up over him, struck his soul into the depths. The lines of his jolly face grew limp and haggard. “Perhaps it would be best to steal away quietly to-morrow, and say nothing more about it,” he faltered. “I am such an impulsive fool.” “Not unless you wish to be set down as the murderer,” said one of his friends, with amiable promptitude. “In that case it would be better not to communicate your intention to any of us, in case we should be called upon to state what we know,” said another gravely. “Good Heavens! you don’t mean to say you any of you think I did it?” said poor Oldham, driven half distracted—and the laughter that followed this question was not much comfort to him. He retired to rest after a while, in that horrid little room, with an awful sense that something had befallen him, something which he might perhaps never get clear of, and the issues of which were entirely beyond ordinary foresight. He slept a little, but dreamed more; and groaned in his disturbed rest, perhaps more painfully haunted by the dead man’s looks than the murderer was. The result to the criminal, in this world at least, could only be hanging at the worst: but who could tell what unknown tortures it might involve to the innocent witness, who after all had so very little to testify?

Chapter II

Mr. Oldham, however, got off better than he hoped next day; very little except the fact of which there was another witness, whose solemn evidence nobody could dispute, could be made out by the awed and open-mouthed jurors at the inquest. The man was killed, that was indisputable. The testimony of the surgeon was to the effect that the blow, though murderous, could only have killed a man whose health was already weak and precarious; and Oldham bore his little bit of testimony with less excitement than on the previous night Nothing further could be discovered about the unknown manslayer. The fact that he had a singular peculiarity in his voice, was the only one that gave the slightest clue by which he might be discovered. And the ingenuity of the public was completely at fault. Jasper Tyrrel, the murdered man, was a stranger known to nobody; he had been at the “Angel” as helper in the stables, only for a few months. Another hanger-on about the hotel recollected vaguely that a gentleman had inquired after him some time before; somebody in whose service he had formerly been, the man thought; but that vague information was all that could be procured. The only other witness was an elderly hard-featured woman, who had already claimed his clothes and trifling belongings as his sister and only relation. This woman attracted the attention of Mr. Oldham, who had gradually grown to forget the possible penalties of his witness-ship, and had returned to his first eager interest in the matter. She was a woman of forty, very meagre, faded, and sombre in her aspect, but with a remarkable pair of stealthy black eyes, which looked as if they knew a great deal more about most things than her prim and demure speech acknowledged. The account she gave of her brother was a very reasonable and sober one. She knew of no mystery about him, or reason why he should be murdered by anybody. He had never been much good poor fellow. He had the passion for betting which possesses, like a shadow of the vice of their betters, so many of his class. He had been in service, he had even “set up for himself” once, a long time ago—and had gradually sunk to be helper at the “Angel.” She knew no gentleman with a defect in his voice that had a spite against him. “Nobody, I make bold to say, had any spite against him; he was a harmless creature,” the woman said, not without a secret touch of contempt in her even voice. “And as for the talk about a child, she couldn’t but think as the gentleman must ha’ been dreaming.” This insinuation, Mr. Oldham, whose temper was none of the mildest, had to bear as he might. He avenged himself by jumping at the conclusion that this yellow meagre creature, with her dangerous eyes, knew more about the business than she dared tell. But that was all that could be made out at the inquest Mr. Oldham, who had lost his day’s pleasuring, subsided into the sitting-room which had been occupied by the Serene Duchess of Hesse-Marabout, and pondered the matter in the glowing afternoon; not without a regretful note in his own mind as to whereabouts his companions might be “as now.” Fanny Maidstone (who had observed, last night that poor dear Mr. Oldham was getting thinner,) was an interesting little figure, even to a man of seventeen stone. He thought, with an indignant puff of angry breath, that the young fellows would have it all their own way to-day, though Fanny was a girl of sense, and knew that the mere arbitrary advantage of youth did not count for much, at least was far from being everything. Mr. Oldham felt better after he had quaffed a golden draught of beer, which refreshed his soul—and then his thoughts returned to the public duty he had been performing. That woman—He resolved to go and ask after her, by way of consuming the time till his friends should return.

It was a fortunate idea. In answer to his question, he was shown into the housekeeper’s room, where he found the sister of the murdered man. She was eagerly inspecting a quantity of trifling matters which had been taken from the poor fellow’s pockets, examining particularly every scrap of paper, with intense stealthy curiosity. Mr. Oldham thought he saw a gleam of disappointment in her face. “You don’t find what you’re looking for?” he said.

The woman looked up and made him a defiant curtsey. “I’d have been disappointed if I’d looked for anything particular,” she said; “but I knew Jasper, poor soul! too well for that. Nothing as would bring a shilling; he never knew how to buy a sensible article in his life. Look you here even, you as is curious;” and opening a poor little greasy purse lying among the other pitiful pathetic rubbish which yesterday had been the poor man’s personal property, she shook it scornfully open to show its emptiness. As she did so a little bit of paper, the merest scrap, fluttered to the ground. She made a wild snatch at it, but too late, for Oldham who was very light in his movements, notwithstanding his size, had caught it before her. “Give it up to me this moment, sir. What was his is mine; it’s my property. If you don’t give it up this minute I’ll call in the police,” cried the woman; “it’s a memorandum o’ property, that’s what it is; it’s robbing me o’ my just rights. Give me back the paper, or I’ll take the law o’ you,” she cried, seizing his arm.

“I give you my word,” said Oldham, holding the prize tight, “it is no memorandum about property; it is a simple address.”

“And I tell you it’s worth gold to me,” cried poor Jasper's heir; then she corrected herself, casting murderous looks at the intruder from those dangerous stealthy eyes. “I mean it’s the only guide he’s left me to get my rights,” said the woman, in the tone of one who felt she had made a false move. “It’s none of your business, prying into a poor man’s bits o’ things—especially,” she added, with a pretence at feeling which was wonderfully contradicted by the tearless gleam of her eyes, “of a poor murdered man, as you had something to do with his end.”

“I something to do with his end?” cried Oldham; “but never mind, I see you mean to exasperate me. You sha’n’t have this address. I’ll give it over to the police. I tell you I suspect you already; you could tell more it you would; it’s Providential!” said the impulsive man, wiping the moisture of exhaustion from his brow. “I call you to witness,” he went on, turning to the landlord who had come in, all curious of new particulars, “that I won’t give her this, and that I’m keeping it for the ends of justice. It’s not a bit of use saying any more. Oh, Coleman, you’ve come back. I didn’t see you were there.”

“I wish I had come back a little sooner,” said Coleman, as his stout friend burst forth from the room, leaving the disappointed woman in a fury, making vain appeals to the landlord “The ends of justice! What on earth do you mean! Are you going to make yourself judge and jury, or at least, public prosecutor? You seem to me to be taking the whole case on your shoulders. What is the matter now?”

“Well, you see, I suspect that woman,” said Mr. Oldham, in a little confusion, once more wiping his troubled brow.

“Suspect the woman! Well, I daresay. She is downlooked and not satisfactory. I couldn’t myself put her into a witness-box with any peace of mind,” said his adviser, who was a lawyer: “but, Good Heavens, what have you to do with it? It’s not so pleasant to help to hang a man, I can tell you, whatever you may think of the ‘ends of justice.’ What is this new aggravation you have got into now? Something you’ve found in the poor fellow’s pockets? But what in the name of common-sense had you to do with that!”

Once more the lines of Mr. Oldham’s face grew limp and haggard. He unfolded and spread out in his hand the villanous scrap of paper, on which was written in pencil in the scrawling handwriting of an uneducated person, the name of Miss Mead, Blossoms, Beddington. “Miss Mead, Blossoms, Beddington,” he read out, having now reached the door of the Serene sitting-room, where all the party were waiting, impatient for the latest intelligence. “Now I ask anybody here,” cried the excited witness, addressing the company, “whether it’s in the nature of things to suppose that Miss Mead, Blossoms, Beddington, knows anything about this terrible murder, or whether she’s a person to be handed over to the villanies of that woman downstairs! This is the address which that poor soul would not give up, and got his death for. There’s something about an innocent child that has to be kept out of wicked hands, and you ask me what business it is of mine. What business is it of any man’s to stop wickedness? Here’s a virtuous woman and an innocent child—”

“The man’s mad,” cried his friend. “You know no more about the business than little Jack Horner. What is Miss Mead, Blossoms, to you? Give it up to the police, and come to dinner. If you go on like this you’ll carve out business for yourself for all the rest of your life.”

“Upon my word, I think you’re very rash, Oldham,” said another. “What’s all this talk about a woman and a child? Depend upon it, you’ll have bother enough with your own evidence, without taking anything else in hand. People will think you know more of it than you say, if you don’t mind.”

“And these agitations, my dear fellow, are very bad for your health,” said a third. " A man of your size requires to be cautious. You have got a very queer colour already, I can tell you. You’ll have to take care of yourself in this hot weather—and don’t, for Heaven’s sake, drink, when you’re in that heated condition, such great draughts of beer.”

“Poor dear Mr. Oldham is so public-spirited: it’s such a pity he’s so delicate,” said Fanny, with a sunny glance of intelligence to one of those light young fellows who had made the best of his opportunity, and thrown poor Oldham into the shade. The poor man’s countenance sank as he listened—he felt himself arrested as an accessary before the fact—he felt himself stricken down with sudden apoplexy as his friends delivered their opinions—he gave up the paper mutely to be taken to the police. Miss Mead, Blossoms, Beddington—he took a quiet opportunity when he went into that intolerable little room to prepare for dinner, to write it down in his own pocket-book. That, at least, could do nobody any harm.

But the address never got into the hands of the police. That particular one of the young fellows to whom the precious document had been committed, went out with his head full of Fanny Maidstone, and lighting his cigar as he went, in total defiance of all cautions about appetite and the near approach of dinner, inadvertently used for that purpose the scrap of paper which had caused so much commotion: and instead of sensibly turning back and saying nothing about it, trudged on all the same philosophically to the police-office, and told what had happened. The inspector who had charge of the case came down to the “Angel” the same evening to inquire into it. Then it was strange to find how entirely everybody had forgotten the address. No two of the party agreed upon the name, and not one had any clear conception of the place. The only person who had any real knowledge was silent as death, and kept his hand fast upon his breast-pocket, in which he kept the pocket-book where the name of Miss Mead, Blossoms, Beddington, was treasured up for future use. He was badgered with all sorts of questions, and the truth, a dozen times at least, was on the eve of bursting from his troubled lips. But by a supernatural effort of self-control he restrained himself. If Mr. Oldham had a weakness it was for the feebler and fairer half of humanity. Though he had come to be nearly fifty without marrying, it was not from any want of susceptibility: and here was an inducement sufficient, if any human inducement could be sufficient, to make the goodnatured man hold his tongue, and almost to conquer his propensity for revealing everything he knew. He dodged and evaded the questions addressed to him with a skill which awoke his friend Coleman’s admiration and professional approval. “By Jove, Oldham, you are a fellow one might put in a witness-box without the usual certainty of living to be ashamed of you!” Coleman said. “Of course you knew all the time; whereabouts is it this, old woman lives?”

“There is no evidence that she is an old woman,” said Mr. Oldham warmly; “I shouldn’t wonder if she turned out to be under five-and- twenty—which I think is the time of a woman’s loveliest bloom,” continued the artful man, casting a significant glance upon Fanny Maidstone, who was approaching that climax of female charms. But the young fellow who had burned the address was still making himself agreeable to Fanny. Mr. Oldham continued tartly, “You don’t think I want to deceive her Majesty’s officers of justice, I hope?”

“Oh no, no,” said Coleman, amid ironical plaudits; and Mr. Oldham rose very materially in the estimation of the general company, as a man who successfully manages to conceal what he is thinking or feeling generally does in English society. His friends paid him much additional deference that night, because they were all tolerably sure that he had the name of Miss Mead, Blossoms, Beddington, laid up safely somewhere, and did not mean to expose that unknown woman to the cross-examinations of law. Even Mr. Oldham’s old friends showed him more respect than usual on account of this gallant piece of reticence. But dreadful were the advices and prognostications showered on his devoted head. The party was to separate the next day, and every man had his advice to offer. One advised the public-spirited Briton to hurry off to France before he was subpœnaed, and escape the business altogether; another begged him to be careful that he was not seized upon by a detective and carried off against his will, in pursuit of the criminal whom he alone could identify. But Fanny Maidstone was the most cruel of all She said, “I hope the lady will turn out pretty, and under five-and-twenty, Mr. Oldham,” with a saucy little curtsey of dismissal; and turned from her elderly perturbed admirer to exchange a smile of intelligence with the young fellow who had made such good use of his time. Mr. Oldham retired to the odious little room which had brought him into all this trouble, heaving vast sighs of suffering and in a very sentimental mood. “’Twas ever thus from childhood’s hour,” sighed the stout man, like Dick Swiveller, as he got into bed—and lay there sleepless and feverish, pondering apoplexy and detectives for an hour at least—after which brief interval he remembered nothing more until he woke at half-past seven in the morning, under the provocation of an arrival in the yard, the coming in of the omnibus from the morning train—and saw with a mingled feeling of dissatisfaction and pleasure that his countenance had not paled, nor his comfortable bulk diminished. “I can’t look sentimental whatever I do,” sighed Fanny Maidstone’s victim, as he went through the usual processes of the toilette—but, after all, there was a certain satisfaction in finding that he was likely to be able to set all evil auguries about his health at defiance.

Chapter III

When the party separated, Mr. Oldham went home; it had been rather an eventful journey to him. He went back to his snug little bachelor’s residence at Fulham, with a feeling of annoyance yet importance, and a consciousness that justice and the world in general could Ho longer go on without him. He felt reluctant to go far from home for the first week or two, and left word particularly with his housekeeper where he meant to go to when he drove into town, in case he should be wanted. And it was rather surprising, almost in fact disappointing, to the excellent man to find that he was not wanted, and that having once heard his story fully, justice did not at present insist upon having anything more to do with him; the chance scraps of comment in the papers, and intimations that no clue had as yet been found to the criminal, gradually let down the momentary excitement of the public, and though time had the same effect upon the witness of the tragedy, it was with something like disappointment that he found week after week pass by without anything happening which had the least connexion with the matter. After all the evil auguries of his friends, and the importance with which these prognostications had invested him, to find nothing at all come of it was a little humbling to Mr. Oldham. Nothing at all, unless perhaps it might be one thing, which also was disappointing and annoying in its way. The young fellow who had it all his own way that day of the inquest, never lost the ground he had gained, and in less than three months Mr. Oldham was invited to Fanny Maidstone’s marriage. He bore it very well on the whole, for hearts are seldom broken when they are contained within a body which weighs seventeen stone, but still he felt it; indirectly it proceeded from the frightful event which had interrupted his calm. But for the opportunities afforded by that day at Iffley when the elderly wooer was out of the way, who could say that a totally different conclusion might not have come to the little romance? As it was, nothing could be done but to “grin and bear it,” which characteristic piece of English philosophy Mr. Oldham accordingly adopted. The marriage took place at Richmond, where the Maidstones lived. It was a lovely September evening, when all being over, he unpinned the favour from his coat, and with a light step but a heavy heart, heaving some huge sighs into the pleasant twilight, went to the railway station to return to town. He had driven from Fulham in the morning, but had an engagement, as it happened, with some of the few lonely individuals then remaining in London, for that evening, and had resolved to go up by railway. Sauntering languidly among the crowd on the platform, Mr. Oldham awaited the train which was just then expected. He was thinking, if anybody had asked him the question, about nothing in particular; perhaps musing over the perversity of things in general, and of young women and Fanny Maidstone in particular. Her name now was Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Algernon Smith it is true, but still Mrs. Smith lost in an undistinguishable crowd of Mrs. Smiths out of which there never would be any possibility of identifying her. Well! it was a kind of vague consolation to feel that in that respect at least she might have done better. Mr. Oldham heaved a great sigh as he put his foot on the step of the carriage to enter: just at that moment a sudden gust of talking came to his ear from the next compartment, where some sporting men coming up from Epsom were putting all railway laws at utter defiance and smoking openly. What the others said, Mr. Oldham neither heard nor cared; but through the hum of different tongues, he heard the clash and grind of the teeth, the strange jar of the voice which he had heard but once before in his life. “I don’t reck-k-ollect anything about it,” it said Mr. Oldham woke up out of his musing with a sudden start. He fell back from the carriage he had half entered as if he had been shot, and rushed to the door of the next division. “No room here,” “quite full here,” said one after another of the occupants, with that instinctive jealousy of a new travelling companion which is common to the English traveller. Mr. Oldham appealed to the guard, and insisted upon getting in. “I want to smoke my cigar,” said the unfortunate man, who never could smoke a cigar in his life. “Don’t allow smoking in the carriages,” said that functionary, “plenty of room, sir, in the next compartment” The precious moments ran on, while Mr. Oldham in his bridal costume stood at the door of the carriage which all the occupants by a simultaneous impulse were defending. He grew excited about it, like a true Englishman. “There’s a vacant seat, and here’s my ticket, and I have a right to any seat in the train I choose,” he said, keeping an anxious ear upon his opponents inside. They seemed to be all talking at once, Mr. Oldham thought, but there was no second sound of the voice. Could it be in another carriage after all? He fell back for an instant to listen, and in that instant was hustled into the next compartment by a watchful porter. He went up to town with his head out of window all the way, not without serious damage to his eyes from dust and flying cinders. When they reached town he was the first to jump out, while the train was still in motion; he watched every man out of that next carriage, he followed their noisy progress to the cabs in which they drove away in pairs he could scarcely be deceived this time. He felt sure everyone of them had spoken, but the voice was certainly not among them; and so with a sense of having missed his chance, he was at length reluctantly compelled to get into the last lingering Hansom and leave the station. At his friend’s where he was going, he could talk of nothing else all the night What could it be—delusion? Or could the culprit have taken fright at his persistent attempt to enter, and disguised his voice, or kept silent? The lingering solitaries who abode like anchorites in the desert, in the London of September, thought poor Oldham a bore that night. “He does nothing but talk of that confounded murder of his—I suppose he must have done it himself,” said his fatigued host; and the other languid guests voted the stout man a nuisance. He drove home to Fulham with the voice ringing in his ears, never able to get rid bf it. It was the beginning of his troubles.