They told him that he would be able to leave the hospital in a few days. A few days would be quite time enough to tell her all the bad news. Indeed, the longer she was kept in ignorance of it the better. To the inquiries of those around him, he had refused to give any reply beyond the facts that St. Prisca's Tower was his property; that he and the dead man, Lionel Crawford, had for some time back lived in the tower; and that, for reasons which he declined to state, they had both been engaged in excavating. John Cassidy usually left his office at about four o'clock in the evening. As he was walking in the direction of his home on the afternoon Lavirotte was rescued from the tower, his eye was arrested by a line in the bills of _The Evening Record_--"Mysterious affair in Porter Street." As a rule, John Cassidy did not buy newspapers. They did not interest him. His theory was that one could learn enough of public affairs from the conversation of others. But a mysterious affair always did interest him, and in this case he bought _The Evening Record_, and read in it a brief paragraph of what occurred in the tower, giving the names of the two men concerned. Mystery on mystery! Here was this man Lavirotte mixed up in two inexplicable affairs in a space of a few months. On the previous occasion Lavirotte had been found insensible, near a wounded man. Now he was found insensible, near a dead man. In the paragraph there was no suggestion that any suspected foul play; and yet to him, Cassidy, it seemed impossible that Lavirotte was not in some way accountable for the death of the man found with him that day. Cassidy was burning with anxiety to tell someone of Lavirotte's former predicament. It would give him such an air of importance if he could add material facts to those already known in connection with this matter. There was no use in his going back to the office, for all his fellow-clerks had left. It was impossible for him to go home to his room burdened with this news. He therefore resolved to turn into the Cleopatra Restaurant in the Strand, in the hope he might there find someone to whom he might communicate the startling addition to the news in the evening paper. It so fell out that he succeeded beyond his wishes. He found a group of men standing at the bar, and among these one named Grafton, an artist whom he had known for some time, and through whom he hoped to find himself on the track of the Lavirotte mystery, as he knew Grafton was acquainted with Lavirotte. "I say, Grafton," said he, "that's a deuce of a mysterious thing that happened to-day in Porter Street. You know, of course, this is the Lavirotte you told me you knew. He's back in London again, after being mixed up in a most extraordinary affair in my part of the world." Then he related, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the group of men standing round, all he knew concerning the affair at Glengowra.