and mute in her agony.  On the floor lay the pistol that had fired the fatal shot.  And just as the servants entered, for one second of time, the murderer who was otherwise wholly unknown, was seen to leap from the window into the shrubbery below.  The gardener rushed after him, and jumped down at the same spot.  But the murderer had disappeared as if by magic.  It was conjectured he must have darted down the road at full speed, vaulted the gate, which was usually locked, and made off at a rapid run for the open country.  Up to date of going to press, the Telegraph said, he was still at large and had not been apprehended.

That was the earliest account—­bald, simple, unvarnished.  Then came mysterious messages from the Central Press about the absence of any clue to identify the stranger.  He hadn’t entered the house by any regular way, it seemed; unless, indeed, Mr. Callingham had brought him home himself and let him in with the latchkey.  None of the servants had opened the door that evening to any suspicious character; not a soul had they seen, nor did any of them know a man was with their master in the library.  They heard voices, to be sure—­voices, loud at times and angry,—­but they supposed it was Mr. Callingham talking with his daughter.  Till roused by the fatal pistol-shot, the gardener said, they had no cause for alarm.  Even the footmarks the stranger might have left as he leaped from the window were obliterated by the prints of the gardener’s boots as he jumped hastily after him.  The only person who could cast any light upon the mystery at all was clearly Miss Callingham, who was in the room at the moment.  But Miss Callingham’s mind was completely unhinged for the present by the nervous shock she had received as her father fell dead before her.  They must wait a few days till she recovered consciousness, and then they might confidently hope that the murderer would be identified, or at least so described that the police could track him.

After that, I read the report of the coroner’s inquest.  The facts there elicited added nothing very new to the general view of the case.  Only, the servants remarked on examination, there was a strange smell of chemicals in the room when they entered; and the doctors seemed to suggest that the smell might be that of chloroform, mixed with another very powerful drug known to affect the memory.  Miss Callingham’s present state, they thought, might thus perhaps in part be accounted for.

You can’t imagine how curious it was for me to see myself thus impersonally discussed at such a distance of time, or to learn so long after that for ten days or more I had been the central object of interest to all reading England.  My name was bandied about without the slightest reserve.  I trembled to see how cavalierly the press had treated me.