“It was black enough before against this young man, but our inquiries make it blacker,” he remarked as the cab lumbered off. “His coming marriage gives a motive for the crime. He naturally wanted money. The idea was in his head, since he spoke about it. He nearly made the girl an accomplice in the treason by telling her his plans. It is all very bad.”

“But surely, Holmes, character goes for something? Then, again, why should he leave the girl in the street and dart away to commit a felony?”

“Exactly! There are certainly objections. But it is a formidable case which they have to meet.”

Mr. Sidney Johnson, the senior clerk, met us at the office and received us with that respect which my companion’s card always commanded. He was a thin, gruff, bespectacled man of middle age, his cheeks haggard, and his hands twitching from the nervous strain to which he had been subjected.