“And now for such news as I have. Perhaps I ought to have mentioned sooner that your mother and sisters are quite well. Also that I am in like case both mentally and bodily, now that I know you to be rid of your enemies. It would have been an awful Damoclean sword hanging over us if that inquisitive Wear had not been providentially removed from our path. Then there was my poor old friend Mr. Edward Lyon. Did you see in the papers anything about his sudden death while away on his business mission to America? I had nothing but esteem for him. But I must say that I felt immensely relieved when the news of his death reached us. He had turned unpleasantly suspicious just before he sailed, and would most assuredly have begun to make undesirable inquiries on his return. But heaven has seen fit to remove him to a better world. That it has at the same time removed one who might have been the means of proving Riddell not guilty of the crime for which he suffers is only another proof to me that he is, as I said before, being made to expiate some former sin. “Nor is this by any means all the proof of my theory. You know Clement Corney? And perhaps you feel uneasy at the mention of his name. If so, you may set your fears at rest, for he also is numbered among those who might have been a witness against you, but is not. A week ago he came to me with a long tale about what he knew and about what he suspected. You seem to have been imprudently confidential with him, and to have allowed him to pry into your affairs far too much. From what he told me I judged him to be a very formidable witness against you and deemed it advisable to accede to his demands for money, but looked with anything but equanimity upon the prospect of having to continue supplying him with money as long as he chose to blackmail me. I should have been left no choice in the matter, as exposure, after having gone so far, would mean ruin. But here Providence once more interposed most strangely. Last night, on opening my evening paper, I came upon the account of the inquest on Clement Corney’s body. He had been jerked from the top step of a ’bus and had broken his neck.