face when it first appeared to the occupant was lit with a smile, suffused with a tender benevolence, a moment later it was stark and white, drawn with horror, a horror that chilled the blood, and gripped at the heart with a hand of iron.

What the Rev. Andrew Rowbottom saw was a tall, handsome, fashionably-dressed woman of about thirty-six resting with her back to an office table, the position was crouching, her fingers clung to the table's edge; her eyes, large, dark, and instinct with mortal terror, were fixed upon the stranger in the doorway. At her feet was the body of a man, a stout man of perhaps forty. The body lay on its right side, the face turned to the floor, and from somewhere in the breast flowed a red stream that massed in a dark, clammy pool upon the slate coloured linoleum.

Nickie saw a faint, flutter of movement in the limbs of the man on the floor, and his eyes rose to the face of the woman again. Her dry tongue passed over her parched lips, she seemed to be making an effort to speak. On the table near her right hand was a knife.

Nicholas Crips slipped into the room, the door closed softly behind him.
He had recognised the woman. She was his Mary Stuart of the Mask Ball.
The man on the floor he remembered in the guise of Henry VIII.

For a terrible half-minute the two stared at each other over the dead man.

"You killed him!" whispered Nickie.

The woman tried to moisten her lips again, made an effort to speak, and her voice broke in her throat. She nodded dumbly.

"My God!"

"You-you-what are you going to do?" whispered the woman. "Why don't you call out?" There was a wild hope in her dilated eyes. "You don't! You don't!"

Nickie shook his head. "I don't run for the police?" he said. "No, I am not on speaking terms with the police myself."

"You won't seize me, you won't betray me—you, a clergyman!"

"No." said Nicholas Crips.

The woman moved forward, she laid hands upon him, she looked into his face.

"He was a villain." she said. "He deserved it, but I am a murderess, and you won't—" Her hands gripped him, a new light shone in her eyes.

"Why were you creeping in here?" she said. "You are a thief, That's it—you are a thief. Well, listen, there are five thousand pounds' worth of diamonds in a little leather bag in his breast pocket!" She pointed down at the body. "Five thousand pounds' worth," she said.

"Five thousand!" he gasped. "Five thousand!"

The woman's hand was on the door knob. She opened the door and slipped out. The lock clicked as she closed the door behind her.