"Well," said Torry, smoothing his bald head in a puzzled manner, "you have me there, for I don't exactly know how I can explain my idea. It was a flash of genius, I suppose. I thought it peculiar that a man should have been murdered by a woman, and then, on the same night, that a woman should have been killed also. The man was stabbed to the heart; the woman was stabbed to the heart. The first was killed in Mortality-lane; the second on the Embankment, no very great distance away. All these facts made me fancy that the one crime might be the outcome of the other." "I don't wonder at your fancy," said Darrel; "with coincidences the same thought would have occurred to me. So you went to look at the woman's body?" "Yes; and I found lace on her mantle similar to that; also half a yard torn off the front. There is about half a yard there," said Torry, pointing to the lace on the table; "in fact, I have no doubt but that the woman murdered the man." "It seems like it," assented Darrel; "but who murdered the woman?" "Ah! that is the problem we have to solve, Mr. Darrel. There is no mark on the woman's linen, no letter in her pocket, no name on her handkerchief. She seems to have been a well-to-do woman, in easy circumstances, as her clothes are of good material and well made. How to establish her identity I really do not know; there there is absolutely no point whence one can start." "Why not start from the red-headed man?" suggested Frank. "Why," said Torry, pinching his chin between thumb and forefinger, "I might do that if he had not been disguised." "Disguised?" "Yes; the red hair is a wig, the red beard is false. The deceased is a gentleman of some age nearer sixty than fifty. He has a plump face and a bald head with a fringe of white hair--something like me," said Mr. Torry in parenthesis, "only my hair is brown. The man is clean-shaven and has several teeth stopped with gold." "You think he is--or rather was--a gentleman?" "I'm sure of it. His hands and feet are carefully attended to, and his linen is beyond reproach." "Ha! His linen. Is there no mark on it?" "There is. He changed his outward garments, but not his linen or socks--which shows that he was an amateur in disguising himself. A man who was in the habit of masquerading for evil purposes would have changed from top to toe. But this poor creature, not expecting to be murdered, never thought it was necessary to change anything but his outward aspect." "Is there a name on his shirt, then?" "No; there are initials. On his shirt, his undershirt, his pants, and on his socks are two letters, 'J.G.'" "The initials of his name." "I should think so," replied Torry. "All his underclothes are in good taste and of an expensive quality. I judge him to be a rich man." "You speak of him in the present instead of the past," said Darrel grimly. "He is not a man now, but a thing. Well, Mr. Torry, can't you trace his identity by those initials?"