2. Left hotel shortly after arrival towards midnight, believed to have returned between two and three, and would thus have been absent at very time at which crime was committed according to medical evidence adduced at trial. But exact duration of absence from hotel can be proved. 3. Knew M. in Australia, but was in England unknown to M. till two mornings before murder, when M. wrote letter on receipt of which ---- ---- ---- came up to town (arriving near scene of murder as above stated, about time of commission). All this morally certain and probably capable of legal proof. 4. "So then I asked why a man he hadn't seen for so long should pay his debts; but M. only laughed and swore, and said he'd make him." C. could be subpoenaed to confirm if not to amplify this statement to me, with others to effect that it was for money M. admitted having written to "a millionaire." 5. Attended Mrs. M.'s trial throughout, thereafter making her acquaintance and offering marriage without any previous private knowledge whatsoever of her character or antecedents. POSSIBLE MOTIVES ---- ---- ---- is a human mystery, his past life a greater one. He elaborately pretends that no part of that past was spent in Australia. M. said he knew him there; also that "he'd make him"--pay up! Blackmail not inconsistent with M.'s character. Men have died as they deserved before to-day for threatening blackmail. _Possible Motive for Marriage_ Atonement of the Guilty to the Innocent. As Langholm read and re-read these precise pronouncements, with something of the detachment and the mild surprise with which he occasionally dipped into his own earlier volumes, he congratulated himself upon the evidently lucid interval which had produced so much order from the chaos that had been his mind. Chaotic as its condition still was, that orderly array of impression, discovery, and surmise, bore the test of conscientious reconsideration. And there was nothing that Langholm felt moved to strike out in the train; but, on the other hand, he saw the weakness of his case as it stood at present, and was helped to see it by the detective officer's remark to him at Scotland Yard: "You find one [old Australian] who carries a revolver like this, and prove that he was in Chelsea on the night of the murder, with a motive for committing it, and we shall be glad of his name and address." Langholm had found the old Australian who could be proved to have been in Chelsea, or thereabouts, on the night in question; but the pistol he could not hope to find, and the motive was mere surmise.