Hancock wore a drab prison suit, which was grotesquely ill-fitting. He was of medium height, and about twenty-five years of age. He was fat, with a broad-shouldered corpulence which would have been less noticeable in a man who was some inches taller. His face was ordinarily clean-shaven, but there was now a disfiguring stubble upon it, a three weeks' growth which even the scissors of the prison-barber had not been allowed to correct and which gave him a sordid and disgusting aspect. The face was fattish, but even the bristling hairs, which squirted out all over the lower part, could not quite disguise a curious suggestion of contour about it. It should have been a pure oval, one would have thought, and in the gas-light, as the head moved, it almost seemed to have that for fugitive instants. It was a contour veiled by a dreadful something that was, but ought not to have been there. The eyes were grey and had a certain capability of expression. It was now enigmatic and veiled. The mouth was by far the most real and significant feature of the face. In all faces, mouths generally are. The murderer's mouth was small. It was clearly and definitely cut, with an undefinable hint of breeding in it which nothing else about the man seemed to warrant. But despite the approach to beauty which, in another face, it might have had, slyness and egotism lurked in every curve. . . . "So that's how it first began, Doctor. First one with one, then one with another. You know!" The conversation was in full swing now. The doll had come to life--or it was not quite a doll yet and some of the life that was ebbing from it still remained. The voice was low, confidential, horribly "just between you and me." But it was a pleased voice also, full of an eager and voluble satisfaction,--the last chance of toxic insanity to explain itself! The lurid swan-song of a conceited and poisoned man. . . . "Business was going well. There seemed no prospect of a child just then, so Mary got in with Church work at St. Philip's. That brought a lot more customers to the shop too. Fancy soaps, scents and toilette articles and all that. Dr. Mitchell of Hackney, was a church-warden at St. Philip's and in time all his prescriptions came to me. No one had a better chance than I did. And Mary was that good to me." . . . Two facile, miserable tears rolled from the man's glazing eyes. He wiped them away with the back of his hand. "You can't think, sir, being a bachelor. Anything I'd a mind to fancy! Sweet-breads she could cook a treat, and Burgundy we used to 'ave--California wine, 'Big Bush' brand in flagons at two and eight. And never before half-past seven. Late dinner you might have called it, while my assistant was in the shop. And after that I'd play to her on the violin. Nothing common, good music--'Orer pro Nobis' and 'Rousoh's Dream.' You never heard me play did you? I was in the orchestra of the Hackney Choral Society. I remember one day . . ."