"The magistrate dismissed the case against Henry Buckley. There was not sufficient evidence to commit him for trial. What told most in his favour in the end was the question of time. He was able to prove that he was at his club in Hanover Square at half-past midnight on the fateful night. Now, according to James Rose's testimony, it was after midnight when he, Buckley, called at Mexfield House. Even supposing that Shillington had arrived in the taxi five minutes later, it was inconceivable that a man could entice another to an out-of-the-way part of London, murder him--even if he left others to dispose of the body--and walk back unconcernedly to Hanover Square, all in less than half an hour. Nor were the pearls or any large sum of money ever traced to Henry Buckley. He was just as deeply in debt after the disappearance of Captain Shillington as he had been before. Now he has gone on another tour round the world, and the Shillingtons--mother and daughter--have given up all hopes of ever seeing the gallant Captain, who was such a model son, again. A little while ago the illustrated papers published photos of the two ladies on board a P. and O. steamer bound for Australia, but the public had forgotten all about Lady Angela's pearls and the mysterious white carnation. No one was interested in the old lady with the white hair and stooping figure, who was carried on board in a chair, and who obstinately refused to be interviewed by newspaper men eager for copy. The case is relegated, as far as the public is concerned, to the category of undiscovered crimes." "But," I argued, as the Old Man in the Corner became silent, absorbed in the untying of an intricate knot which he had made a little while ago, "surely the police have found out who the man was who accosted Captain Shillington in Somerset Street that night, the man with the light-coloured scarf, which was subsequently found in the river by the side of the missing man's hat, the man who called the Captain 'Denver,' and whom the latter called 'Henry,' and was so surprised to see. If it was not Henry Buckley, who was it?" "Ah!" the exasperating creature retorted with a fatuous smile, "who was it? That's just the point--a point just as dark as that a man like Captain Shillington could be enticed at that hour of the night to an out-of-the-way part of London, and at a moment when he had his fiancée's jewellery worth twenty-five thousand pounds in his pocket. Don't you think that _that_ point is absolutely inconceivable?" "Well," I said, "it does seem----"