and a few minutes after, just as we was a-sitting down to our dinner, there was such a scream that I thought I should have gone right off. And then we heard a stamping, and down he came, raging and cursing most dreadful, swearing he had been robbed of something that was worth millions. And then he just dropped down in the passage, and we thought he was dead. We got him up to his room, and put him on his bed, and I just sat there and waited, while my âusband he went for the doctor. And there was the winder wide open, and a little tin box he had lying on the floor open and empty, but of course nobody could possible have got in at the winder, and as for him having anything that was worth anything, itâs nonsense, for he was often weeks and weeks behind with his rent, and my âusband he threatened often and often to turn him into the street, for, as he said, weâve got a living to myke like other peopleâand, of course, thatâs true; but, somehow, I didnât like to do it, though he was an odd kind of a man, and I fancy had been better off. And then the doctor came and looked at him, and said as he couldnât do nothing, and that night he died as I was a-sitting by his bed; and I can tell you that, with one thing and another, we lost money by him, for the few bits of clothes as he had were worth next to nothing when they came to be sold.â I gave the woman half a sovereign for her trouble, and went home thinking of Dr. Black and the epitaph she had made him, and wondering at his strange fancy that he had been robbed. I take it that he had very little to fear on that score, poor fellow; but I suppose that he was really mad, and died in a sudden access of his mania. His landlady said that once or twice when she had had occasion to go into his room (to dun the poor wretch for his rent, most likely), he would keep her at the door for about a minute, and that when she came in she would find him putting away his tin box in the corner by the window; I suppose he had become possessed with the idea of some great treasure, and fancied himself a wealthy man in the midst of all his misery. Explicit , my tale is ended, and you see that though I knew Black, I know nothing of his wife or of the history of her death.âThatâs the Harlesden case, Salisbury, and I think it interests me all the more deeply because there does not seem the shadow of a possibility that I or any one else will ever know more about it. What do you think of it?â
âWell, Dyson, I must say that I think you have contrived to surround the whole thing with a mystery of your own making. I go for the doctorâs solution: Black murdered his wife, being himself in all probability an undeveloped lunatic.â
âWhat? Do you believe, then, that this woman was something too awful, too terrible to be allowed to remain on the earth? You will remember that the doctor said it was the brain of a devil?â
âYes, yes, but he was speaking, of course, metaphorically. Itâs really quite a simple matter if you only look at it like that.â
âAh, well, you may be right; but yet I am sure you are not. Well, well, itâs no good discussing it any more. A little more Benedictine? Thatâs right; try some of this tobacco. Didnât you say that you had been bothered by somethingâsomething which happened that night we dined together?â
âYes, I have been worried, Dyson, worried a great deal. IâBut itâs such a trivial matterâindeed, such an absurdityâthat I feel ashamed to trouble you with it.â
âNever mind, letâs have it, absurd or not.â
With many hesitations, and with much inward resentment of the folly of the thing, Salisbury told his tale, and repeated reluctantly the absurd intelligence and the absurder doggerel of the scrap of paper, expecting to hear Dyson burst out into a roar of laughter.
âIsnât it too bad that I should let myself be