For a moment or two he sat still, looking into the fire. Then he picked up a pile of depositions and drew a pencil-case from his pocket. For a while the occasional flick of a page argued his awful attention to the recital of crime: then the keen grey eyes slid back to the glowing coals, and the longhand went by the board. It was evident that there was some extraneous matter soliciting his lordship's regard, and in some sort gaining the same because of its importunity. Mr. Justice Molehill was all alone. He had sent his marshal to the cinema, "lest the boy should grow dull," and, except for the servants, somewhere below stairs, the great gaunt mansion used as the Judge's Lodging, lodged for the nonce no other inmate. The room in which the Judge sat was enormous. Indeed, the shaded lamp, set upon a table close to his shoulder, did little more than insist upon the depths of the chamber, which to illumine effectively you would have needed a score of lamps slung from the ceiling. For all its size, however, the room was sparsely furnished. At the far end a huge carved writing-table loomed out of the shadows; six high-backed chairs reared themselves here and there against the walls; between prodigious windows a gigantic press lifted its massive head. Reckoning the little table bearing the lamp, and a pair of easy-chairs, that is a ready inventory. A heavy carpet and curtains of the same dull red certainly excluded the draughts. For all that, it was not a chamber in which to sit apart from the fire. The marshal hated the place openly, and, on being rallied by the Judge, had confessed that it "got on his nerves." He had even suggested that it was haunted. Mr. Justice Molehill had laughed him to scorn. His lordship, then, was gazing upon the fire. After, perhaps, about two minutes of time, he crossed his knees suddenly and flung up his hand in a little gesture of impatience. "Anthony Lyveden," he muttered. "Where on earth have I heard that name?" The expression upon his face was that of a man absorbed in searching his memory. He was, indeed, so much engrossed in this occupation that the keen grey eyes went straying whither they listed. Let us follow those eyes. From the light of the fire in its cage to the toe of his lordship's pump, up to the chiselled mantel and the cigarette-box--the marshal's--perched on the narrow ledge, down to the heavy bell-pull by the side of the hearth, on to a high-backed chair against the wall, down again to the floor--all black here, for the light is too distant to show the carpet's hue--on into the shadows, where something--the table, of course--shows like a grim bas-relief hewn out of the darkness, on to its ponderous top, where the candles... It was upon the top of the table that the keen grey eyes came to rest--idly. The next moment his lordship's frame stiffened with a shock.