The room was chaotic enough to drive a woman to distraction, but comfortable and home-like for all that. The journalist returned in a well-worn smoking suit, and proceeded to light his pipe. Fuller brewed him a glass of grog, and handed it across as he sat down in the saddleback chair on the verge of the hearthrug. The two men were fine specimens of humanity in their different ways. Latimer was large and fair and heavily built, with big limbs, and a suggestion of great strength. He had untidy yellow hair and a yellow mustache which he tugged at hard when perplexed. His blue eyes were keen, but on the whole he did not reveal much brain power in his face, which undoubtedly told the truth, since he was more of an athlete than a scholar. Fuller, on the contrary, was brilliantly clever, and as a solicitor was doing very well for himself in a dingy Chancery Lane office. He was tall and slim, with a wiry frame, and a lean, clean-shaven face, clearly cut and bronzed. Indeed with his steady dark eyes and closely clipped black hair, and remarkably upright figure, he suggested the soldier. This was probably due to heredity, since he came of a fighting line for generations, although his father was a country vicar. Also, in spite of his sedentary occupation, the young man lived as much as possible in the open, and when not running down to his native village for weekends, haunted the parks on every possible occasion, or walked four miles on Hampstead Heath and into the country beyond. It was no wonder that he looked tanned, alert, bright-eyed, and active, more like a squire of the Midlands than a votary of Themis. Since Fuller senior was poor, the boy had to earn his bread and butter somehow, and after he left Cambridge had elected to become a lawyer. Shortly after he blossomed out into a full-blown solicitor, he chanced upon his old school friend, Dick Latimer, who had taken to journalism, and the two had set up house together in the ancient Inn. On the whole they were fairly comfortable, if not blessed with an excess of the world’s goods. Finally, being young, both were healthy and happy and hopeful and extremely enterprising. “Well now, Dicky, what have you been doing?” asked Alan, when his friend, clothed and in his right mind, sipped his grog and puffed smoke-clouds. “Attending an inquest at Rotherhithe.” “Oh, that murder case!” Latimer nodded and stared into the fire. “It’s a queer affair.” “So far as I have read the newspaper reports, it seems to be a very commonplace one.” “I told you that Romance was often disguised as the Commonplace, Alan.” “As how, in this instance?” His friend did not reply directly. “What do you know of the matter?” he asked so abruptly that Fuller looked up in surprise. “Why, what can I know save what I have read in the papers?” “Nothing, of course. I never suggested that you do know anything. But it’s no use my going over old ground, so I wish to hear what you have learned from the reports.”