"And those who were in the know whispered to those who were less favoured that young Henry had at one time been engaged to Louisa Smithson, before she met her Russian Prince, and that when she threw him over he was in such dire despair that his friends thought he would commit suicide. "A moment or two later Mrs. Smithson was seen hurriedly coming out of church, her face pale and drawn, and her beautiful hat all awry. She made straight for the bride's car, stepped into it, and the car immediately drove off, whilst the wedding guests trooped out of the church, and the terrible news spread like wildfire through the crowd, and was presently all over the town. "It seems that when the midday train, London to Folkestone, stopped at Swanley Junction, two passengers who were about to enter a first-class compartment in one of the corridor carriages were horrified to find it in a terrible state of disorder. They hastily called the guard, and on examination the carriage looked indeed as if it had been the scene of a violent struggle: the door on the off side was unlatched, two of the window straps were wrenched off, the anti-macassars were torn off the cushions, one of the luggage racks was broken, and the net hung down in strips, and over some of the cushions were marks unmistakably made by a blood-stained hand. "The guard immediately locked the compartment and sent for the local police. No one was allowed in or out of the station until every passenger on the train had satisfied the police as to his or her identity. Thus the train was held up for over two hours whilst preliminary investigations were going on. "There appeared no doubt that a terrible murder had been committed, and telephonic communication all along the line presently established the fact that it must have been done somewhere in the neighbourhood of Sydenham Hill, because a group of men who were at work on the 'up' side of the line at Penge, when the down train came out of the tunnel noticed that the door of one of the first-class carriages was open. It swung to again just before the train steamed through the station. "A preliminary search was at once made in and about the tunnel; it revealed on the platform of Sydenham Hill station a first-class single ticket of that day's issue, London to Folkestone, crushed and stained with blood, and on the permanent way, close to the entrance of the tunnel on the Penge side, a soft black hat, and a broken pair of pince-nez. But as to the identity of the victim there was for the moment no clue.