I bought a portmanteau, together with the necessary clothes with which to fill it, crossed town in a cab, and, as Mr. Leonard, took rooms in a highly respectable house in Clifford Street, Dalston. There, while maturing my plan of campaign, I watched the issue of events. I wasn't going to die and be buried for a mere monkey, as, in course of time, Mr. Smith would learn. In trying murder he'd given the game away, and not only so, had destroyed, for ever, his own peace of mind. I knew the kind of man he was. There are plenty like him. You probably see one when you look in the glass. To cut some one's throat is the shortest way out of heaps of holes into which one gets. It is only what some call conscience, and others blue funk, which stays one's hand. It wasn't the cutting of the throat which he objected to, but what came after. He'd be glad enough to have me boarded up, and out of the way, for ever and a day. But I'd lay odds that there'd come times when he'd hear me talking to him out of that box; and at those times he'd not be happy. It's a nasty moment when the man you dropped comes out of the hole into which you shovelled him to whisper in your ear. He'd worry a good deal about the man he'd buried alive, being, unless I erred, of a worrying nature; and then, when he'd had about enough of worrying, the live man would come unburied; and that, so far as he was concerned, would be a finisher. The remainder of the proceedings wouldn't be of much interest to him. During the next few days I saw in some of the papers that the Marquis of Twickenham had died. They didn't all of them come out with the news together. It appeared that there had been something of a private character about that deathbed. It seemed to me that the family wanted to hush the matter up. But nowadays when the British Press has got to make a living out of anything or everything, hushing-up's not easy. The funeral was quite private. The interment took place in the family vault at Cressland in the presence of only a few members of the family. I wondered if Mr. Smith was one of them. After the funeral was over I bet his thoughts wandered Cressland way oftener than he quite liked. Then there was more about it in the society papers. I fancy the late Marquis wasn't altogether a credit to his family. There were some funny stories and hints galore. This was a pity--because it would have been my desire to have figured as a man of unblemished character. I always have had aspirations towards the stainless life. Odd how difficult it is to attain to one's ideal. Every time I've been some one else he's been a scamp. And it really did look as if this British nobleman was going to turn out to be the worst egg in the basket.