For a time I sat well back in the soft, well-upholstered cab and let my thoughts run riot on the extraordinary series of adventures that had befallen since I had made that fierce fight in the auction room. Have you ever noticed that there is something mysterious in the mere fact that one has purchased a copy of the last edition of a paper that makes one a prey to retrospect? Nine times out of the ten on which I purchase an evening journal I never glance at the columns. But once let me omit to provide myself with a damp, evilly-folded sheet, and I am wretched. All my nerves are on the alert. I can think of nothing to interest me. The shortest journey seems of intolerable length. I finish up fagged, irritable, and stupid. As a matter of fact, I am certain I should never have looked at that particular copy that particular night had not two leather-lunged paper "runners," who live on Metropolitan sensations, suddenly loomed up on either side of the cab as we rattled past the site of the old Millbank Prison and waved their papers in front of me. "Horrible tragedy in Whitehall Court!" they roared. The driver whipped up his horse, and the hansom shot past them into the gathering blackness, but the echo of their words rang through my brain. "Horrible tragedy in Whitehall Court." Why, I recollected suddenly that was where Doris lived! Could something--oh, no, it was ridiculous; this flight of Camille Velasquon had made me nervous. None the less, I made a frantic grab at my paper--it was a _Globe_, I remember--somehow one always notes such trifles in a supreme crisis--and with trembling fingers I turned to the fifth page, where, I knew from old experience, I should find the latest and most important intelligence given. Ah! I was not mistaken. Here it was: MURDER IN WHITEHALL COURT ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS CRIME But what was that? Familiar names? People, scenes, circumstances I recalled as though they were my own! With a great gasp I held the pink sheet close to the cab lamp, and as we were whirling madly along Parliament Street, close to the actual scene of the crime itself, I read this account of what had happened whilst I that morning had tried to snatch but a few hours of broken slumber.