“Now, the reason we think that the dead woman knew of the existence of these papers is simply this.  It appears that she came out from England with Whyte as his mistress, and after staying some time in Sydney came on to Melbourne.  How she came into such a foul and squalid den as that she died in, we are unable to say, unless, seeing that she was given to drink, she was picked up drunk by some Samaritan of the slums, and carried to Mrs. Rawlins’ humble abode.  Whyte visited her there frequently, but appears to have made no attempt to remove her to a better place, alleging as his reason that the doctor said she would die if taken into the air.  Our reporter learned from one of the detectives that the dead woman was in the habit of talking to Whyte about certain papers, and on one occasion was overheard to say to him, ’They’ll make your fortune if you play your cards well.’  This was told to the detective by the woman Rawlins, to whose providential appearance Mr. Fitzgerald owes his escape.  From this it can be gathered that the papers—­whatever they might be—­were of value, and sufficient to tempt another to commit a murder in order to obtain them.  Whyte, therefore, being dead, and his murderer having escaped, the only way of discovering the secret which lies at the root of this tree of crime, is to find out the history of the woman who died in the slum.  Traced back for some years, circumstances may be discovered which will reveal what these papers contained, and once that is found, we can confidently say that the murderer will soon be discovered.  This is the only chance of finding out the cause, and the author of this mysterious murder; and if it fails, we fear the hansom cab tragedy will have to be relegated to the list of undiscovered crimes, and the assassin of Whyte will have no other punishment than that of the remorse of his own conscience.”

CHAPTER XXI.

THREE MONTHS AFTERWARDS.

A hot December day, with a cloudless blue sky, and a sun blazing down on the earth, clothed in all the beauty of summer garments.  Such a description of snowy December sounds perchance a trifle strange to English ears.  It may strike them as being somewhat fantastic, as was the play in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” to Demetrius when he remarked, “This is hot ice and wondrous cold fire.”

But here in Australia we are in the realm of contrariety, and many things other than dreams go by contrary.  Here black swans are an established fact, and the proverb concerning them, made when they were considered as mythical a bird as the Phoenix, has been rendered null and void by the discoveries of Captain Cook.  Here ironwood sinks and pumice stone floats, which must strike the curious spectator as a queer freak on the part of Dame Nature.  At home the Edinburgh mail bears the hardy traveller to a cold climate, with snowy mountains and wintry blasts; but here the further north one goes the hotter it gets, till one arrives in Queensland, where the heat is so great that a profane traveller of an epigrammatic turn of mind once fittingly called it, “An amateur hell.”