“This case,” said the _Petit Journal_, “recalls that of the old man, Mesnier, recorded by us some days since, in each the victim was strangled, evidently by the grip of a powerful hand; in each there was no motive for the crime, for it will be remembered that Mesnier had received his quarterly annuity and the money, a fairly large sum, was lying intact upon the table.” Hellier, just by chance before dropping the file of the paper, turned a page, and came upon the detail of another crime. A child had been strangled on the high road leading to Villeneuve St George’s, in the broad light of day. A labourer had seen the occurrence from a distance. He saw the figure of a man, he saw the child. He thought the man was playing with the child. Then he saw the child lying on the high road and the man running away across a field. He could give no definite description of the man. He was about the middle height and dressed in dark clothes. The case recalled the Sabatier case and the case of Mesnier. Hellier searched on through the files of the paper. There was nothing more. The assassin had vanished and was never captured, no similar crimes were recorded. All these crimes had most probably been committed by the same man. They ceased suddenly and were not repeated, they had been committed for no apparent reason, most probably by some lunatic, whose mania was destruction. What had become of the lunatic, why had this sudden mania seized him? why had it suddenly ceased? These questions were never answered. The thing was one of those unsolved mysteries, with which the pigeon-holes of the prefecture are stocked. Hellier searched no more. The fact that Karr, the ex-café waiter, had fancied a resemblance between the supposed assassin and Müller, the fact of the similarity between the three crimes lay in his memory but they did not stir his imagination. Even love could not hide from him the fact that Lefarge was guilty and Müller dead, and Cécile Lefarge the daughter of an assassin. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXIII ON the day after that upon which Freyberger had telephoned to the Paris police requesting a personal interview with Mademoiselle Lefarge, London awoke to find itself effaced by fog. Mrs Hussey, the old woman who stole Hellier’s tea and whisky and coal, made his bed, lit his fire, and attended generally to his wants and discomforts, had set the breakfast things out for him, placed his eggs and bacon in the fender to keep warm, and his letters by his plate. Having attended to these duties she had departed, swallowed up in the fog. There were three letters on the table. Two small bills and an invitation to a dance in Bayswater. A more depressing post could not have been invented for him.