"Murder!" repeated the constable, looking up and down the street. "Murder!" shrieked the voice again; and then there came the sound of running feet, cries for help, and the quick panting of an exhausted creature. Before the policeman could decide in which direction to move, a dishevelled woman, screaming and gesticulating, came at full speed round the corner, and almost fell into his arms. Her face was pearly white in the moonlight, her eyes were filled with terror, and an almost continuous cry issued from her open mouth without any motion of the lips. "'Ere! 'ere, wot's this?" said the policeman, seizing the flying creature by the arm. "Wot d'ye mean, screeching out murder like a loonatic? Come now!" Trembling violently, the woman grappled with the policeman, shrieking the while, and evidently beside herself with terror. Not being gifted with brains, the officer of the law shook her vigorously to brighten her intellect; and she wavered limply in his grasp like a dummy figure. "Murder!" she whimpered, clawing and clutching at the man. "Lord! it's awful! Ugh! Ugh! I've seen her dead!" "Seen 'oo dead?" demanded the policeman, stolidly. "My lodger! Dead! Strangled! Ugh! Ugh!" cried the woman, breathlessly, raising her voice higher at each word. "A corpse in the Yellow Room! Paradise Row! Come and see--come and---- Oh, poor soul!" and she fell to wringing her hands again, quivering and panting. "Wait a bit!" said the jack-in-office, bound by red-tapeism, "the police station is just roun' th' corner. Kim up an' see th' Inspector!" "I--I--I am innocent!" gasped the woman, hanging back. "Neither 'Tilda nor I laid a finger on her." "'Oo said y' did?" retorted the man, suspiciously; and, for his own protection he recited an official formula, "Wot y' say now 'ull be used in hevidence agin y'. Kim up, I tell y'." And, grasping her arm, he hurried her fighting and crying round the near corner, and into a red-brick building, over the door of which was a lamp inscribed "Police Station."