"You may imagine what a stir and excitement this story--which pretty soon leaked out in all its details--caused amongst the public. It seems that although neither the taxi-driver nor the man Rugger had seen the face of the man who had stepped out from under a neighbouring doorway and accosted Captain Shillington, they were both of them quite positive that he was in evening dress, and that he wore a silk hat, a light overcoat, and had a pale grey or white scarf wound round his neck. And besides that, there was the white carnation. But, of course, the crux of the whole evidence was Rugger's assertion that he heard one gentleman--the one who got out of the cab--say to the other in tones of great surprise, 'Good Lord, Henry, what are you doing here?' Questioned again and again he never wavered in this statement. He heard the name Henry quite distinctly and it stuck in his mind because his eldest boy was Henry. He was also asked whether the gentleman, who had stepped out of the taxi--obviously Captain Shillington, since the other had called to him, 'Hullo, Denver'--walked away reluctantly or willingly when he was thus summarily taken hold of by the arm. Rugger was under the impression that he walked away reluctantly; he freed his arm once, but the other got hold of him again, and, though Rugger did not catch the actual words, he certainly thought that the two gentlemen were quarrelling. "And thus public opinion, which at first had been dead against the Australian Captain, now went equally dead against Henry Buckley. Ugly stories were current of his extravagance, his gambling debts, his addiction to drink. People who knew him remembered one or two ugly pages in his life's history: altercations with the police, raids on gambling clubs of which he was a prominent member; there was even a fraudulent bankruptcy which had been the original cause of his being sent out to Australia by his harassed parents until the worst of the clouds had rolled by. "The only thing that told in his favour, as far as the public was concerned, was the bitter vindictiveness displayed against him by Miss Shillington. That the girl had cause for bitterness was not to be denied. For a time, at any rate, public opinion had branded her brother as a common trickster and a thief, and she and her mother had no doubt suffered terribly under the stigma; in consequence of this, Mrs. Shillington's health, always in a precarious state, had completely broken down and the old lady had taken to her bed, not suffering from any particular disease, but just from debility of mind and body, obstinately refusing to see a doctor, declaring that nothing would cure her except the return of her son.