"What's the use of talking about what followed? I hadn't the ghost of a show from the start. Do you think you know anything about London? Believe me, you don't until you have been cast adrift in it with empty pockets. It's a city of vampires and stony hearts, a seething inhuman hell where you can wander till you drop and die without anyone giving a pitying glance--much less a helping hand. Even a man's guardian angel deserts him. It doesn't take a man very long to get to the gutter, to fall lower and lower until there's nothing but the Thames Embankment or the mortuary in front of him. I've had my eyes opened--I've talked to some of these poor devils in this Christian city. But what's the good of telling you this? I've been down to the gutter myself the last few days, falling each day to lower depths, tramping hungry and footsore in the midst of herds of respectable human brutes, slinking away from the eye of every policeman, pawning clothes for the price of a verminous bed, to lie awake all night knowing that I would be murdered by the vulture-faced degenerates sleeping in the same hovel, if they had caught a glimpse of the necklace. "How many wild schemes have I planned in the night for raising money on the necklace in the morning! Once I went into a pawnshop, but the pawnbroker's eyes glittered when I spoke of pearls, and I got away as quickly as I could. I suppose there was a reward, and he was on the look out for me. One way and another I have been through hell. I feel like a man in a fever. I was drenched through yesterday, and I've had no food for twenty-four hours." He ceased, and sat staring into vacancy as though he were again passing through the horror of his wanderings. Then another fit of coughing seized him, prolonged and violent. When it had subsided he looked at Colwyn with bloodshot eyes. "I feel pretty bad," he said weakly. That fact had been apparent to the detective for some time past. Nepcote's frequent fits of coughing and a peculiar nasal intensity of utterance suggested symptoms of pneumonia. As Colwyn lifted the telephone receiver to summon a doctor, the thought occurred to him that, if the immediate problem of the disposal of Nepcote had been settled by his illness, his inability to answer questions necessitated his own return to the moat-house without delay. In any case, that course was inevitable after what he had just heard. It was only at the place where the murder had been committed that he could hope to judge between the probabilities of Nepcote's strange story and Hazel Rath's confession. It was there, unless he was very much mistaken, that the final solution of the Heredith mystery must be sought. CHAPTER XXVI