An hour later Billy Merton walked slowly along the deserted streets towards his rooms. The police had come and gone; everything in the room where the tragedy had taken place had duly passed before the searching eye of officialdom. Everything, that is, save one exhibit, and that reposed in Billy’s pocket. And when a man has signed a cheque for four thousand pounds on a total bank balance of as many pence, his pocket is the best place for it. _*X — A Payment on Account*_ *I* "Excuse me, but could you give me some idea as to where I am? I have a shrewd notion that it’s Devonshire, but——" The speaker, holding a dilapidated cap in his hand, broke off as the girl sat up and looked at him. He was a dishevelled-looking object, covered with dust, and—romance may be great, but truth is greater—it was only too obvious to the girl that he was very hot. Perspiration ran in trickles down his face, ploughing dark furrows through the thick stratum of road dust which otherwise obscured his features. His collar was open, his sleeves rolled back from his wrists, and on his back was strapped a small knapsack. An unlit pipe, which he had removed from his mouth on speaking to her, in one hand, and a long walking-stick in the other, completed the picture. "You don’t look as if you’d been flying," she remarked, dispassionately. "It’s Devonshire all right." "That’s a relief." She had a fleeting glimpse of a flash of white teeth as he smiled. "I had an idea it might be Kent. Or even farther. Have you ever been on a walking tour?" "That’s what you’re doing, is it?" "You know," remarked the man, "I think even Watson would regard you with scorn. And our one and only Sherlock would burst into tears." He leaned over the railings and commenced to fill his pipe. The little garden in which the girl was sitting seemed delightfully cool and shady; the girl herself, in her muslin frock, looking at him with an amused twinkle in her eyes seemed almost too good to be true. After that interminable road, with the sun beating down from a cloudless sky. With a sigh of relief he passed the back of his hand across his forehead, and the girl laughed. "I wouldn’t do it by bits if I were you. It makes you look rather like a zebra." "Don’t mock at me," he implored, "or I shall burst into tears. It’s the very first time I’ve ever done anything of this sort, I promise you. I will go farther. It’s the very last as well." "But if you don’t like walking—why walk?" "How like a woman!" He fumbled in his pocket for a box of matches and lit his pipe. "How exactly like! Have you never felt an irresistible temptation to do something wild and desperate? Something which is painted in glowing colours by some scoundrel, who revenges himself on humanity by foully inducing innocent people to follow his advice?" "I once tried keeping bees," she murmured, thoughtfully.