“Yes,” said the girl behind the bar, “Jim Bronson. I saw him brought by, covered with a sheet. Hacked about horrid they said he was.” She looked up like an ogre, and then relapsed into _Tracked by a Stain_ just at the part where the parson in the dogcart is approaching the murderer, who is hidden behind the hedge. “It’s not often you have those sort of occurrences here?” said Freyberger. “No,” replied the girl, with her eyes glued to the book. “Very quiet neighbourhood, as a rule, I should think.” “Yes.” “Artists and people come here, I suppose, a good deal.” “A good deal.” Just at this moment a shadow darkened the doorway. An old gentleman had entered the hall of “The White Hart.” He walked, leaning on a stick. He was dressed in well-worn grey tweed, and wore a felt hat, fawn-coloured and rather broad of brim. He came to the bar and called for an absinthe, and his voice caused Freyberger to examine him more attentively. There were many things about this voice, and they all conspired to mark it out as a distinctive voice. A voice in a million. It was the voice of an educated man, and it would be very hard to say what there was in it repellent and chilling, but repellent and chilling it was. But it was the face of the newcomer that fascinated Freyberger. “Where have I seen that face before?” he thought. And then all at once came the reply born of the question. “It is the face of Klein grown old.” For a moment Freyberger was seized by a feeling of physical sickness. The horrors and perplexities of the Gyde case had culminated in this last horror and perplexity. This could not be the man who, eight years ago, had sat for his portrait to the photographer in Paris; this could not be the man whom Hellier had followed on account of the likeness to that photograph. This was an old, old man. Had he aged then in the course of a few weeks? Had premature decay fallen upon him, turning him almost at a stroke from a man of forty or so to a man of seventy and more? Was he himself mistaken? No. This was indeed the face of the photograph, the face that had left its imprint on the retina of Leloir, the same face seen through the veil of age. Yet if that were so, one would have to believe that this old man, who seemed scarcely strong enough to harm a child, had a few hours ago killed, with brutal ferocity, a fellow being. As Freyberger sat examining the newcomer, he became aware that the newcomer was examining him. The young lady behind the bar had relapsed into _Tracked by a Stain_, the shopboy with the butterfly net, the old gentleman sipping his absinthe were of no interest to her. Freyberger yawned. He felt that he was being observed, and he fancied that he was being observed with approbation—the approbation with which a butcher observes a fat sheep. If this were so, the situation was not without its humour. The humour of it did not, however, strike him. He was deficient in that sense.