"'Judging from what you have told me,' I went on presently, 'I suppose I may take it for a fact that there was no hint whatever in the MS. about suspicion fixing itself on "Mr. Day," the head clerk, nor anything about his arrest and subsequent trial and conviction? Neither, I presume, was there any mention made of the writer's intention to commit suicide?' "'All those portions of the narrative were of my own invention. The thing needed an ending of some kind in order to render it acceptable to a magazine editor, and, to tell you the truth, I rather prided myself on the way in which I got over the difficulty.' "Evidently there was nothing more to be got out of Mr. Timmins. The truthfulness of what he had told me I did not for a moment doubt. He made no difficulty, before I left him, about pledging me his word not to speak of our interview to anyone. "The first thing I did next day was to hunt through a file of old newspapers for the particulars of the Eastwich railway accident. What I there read confirmed Timmins's statement in every respect. One of the four victims of the accident was buried without having been identified. Still, it was just possible that someone might have since come forward and, by means of his clothes and the minute personal description of him which would doubtless be taken prior to his interment, have been able to claim him as the missing relative, or friend, of whom they were in search, in which case his name and address when living, with, possibly, other particulars concerning him, would doubtless be now in the possession of the railway authorities. "But my hope that such might prove to be the case was doomed to disappointment. The next post took a note from me to the railway company, to which they promptly replied. No one, they informed me, had ever come forward to claim, or identify, the unknown victim of the Eastwich accident. My next step was to write to Mr. Robert Melray and ask him to inform me when and where I could have half an hour's talk with him. His reply was to the effect that he should be in town a couple of days later and would call upon me. "My justification for so doing lay in the fact that in the MS.--supposing that any value was to be attached to its statements--there were certain allegations so seriously affecting the reputation of the widow of the murdered man that it seemed to me absolutely essential that the present head of the family should be made acquainted with them. It would then rest with him to decide whether any further action, and if so, of what kind, should be taken in the affair, or whether it should be allowed to rest where it does and remain an unsolved mystery till the end of time.