"I thought it was you, sir," said the constable. "Have you been looking at the house?" "Yes," replies Dick, pulling himself together, "from the outside." "Of course from the outside, sir," says Constable Applebee. "I should like to have a look at it from the inside. People are beginning to talk about it. It's seven days now since anybody's set eyes on Mr. Boyd, and seven days since Mr. Abel Death disappeared. That's what I call a coincidence. I hope it's nothing more than that. Hope you're comfortable in your new lodgings, sir." "Quite comfortable, thank you. I must be off to them now. Good night." "Good night, sir." Dick is by this time thoroughly tired out, and when he reaches his room is glad to tumble into bed. CHAPTER XXVI. "THE LITTLE BUSY BEE" GETS AHEAD OF ITS RIVALS. Two days afterwards, that is, on the 9th of March, some hours after the morning papers were in circulation, all London was ringing with the news of the mysterious murder in Catchpole Square. The name of Samuel Boyd was on every tongue; the newsboys shouted it out raucously and jubilantly, with the full force of their lungs, and the wind carried it into all the highways and byeways of the vast metropolis; it was printed on the variously coloured waybills of the newspapers in scarlet letters, green letters, yellow letters, as large as the width of the sheets permitted; it was read aloud and discussed in omnibuses, in public-house bars, in the workshops and places of business; it was bandied about, tossed in the air, caught up and passed on, embellished, illustrated and exaggerated, and rolled over the tongue as the most tempting of tempting morsels. Editorial offices were alive with it, their swing doors had not a moment's rest, the whole of the staff were on the _qui vive_, reporters hurried this way and that in their hunt for facts, fanciful or otherwise, that had the remotest connection, or no connection at all, with the name of the murdered man and the circumstances of the murder, as far as they were known. Now was the chance for the descriptive writer, for the youthful aspirants for journalistic fame, for the enterprising interviewer. Things had been rather dull lately. There had been no stirring crime, no bloodthirsty deed, no sensational trial, no tremendous conflagration, no awful shipwreck, no colliery explosion, no terrible railway collision, for quite a week, and circulation was languishing. But here at last was a dish of hot spice to stir the blood, to set tongues wagging, to fire the imagination, to make the pulses glow. A murder! And such a murder! Dark, thrilling, impenetrable, inscrutable, enveloped in delicious mystery. What is one man's meat is another man's poison, and Samuel Boyd, who had never in life given a beggar a penny or the price of a meal to a starving man, was the means, in death, of filling many a platter and frothing up many a pewter pot. Trade revived.