“How should I know?” said the woman, who was evidently not on good terms with her lodger.

“He had his breakfast as usual?”

“His breakfast!” she said scornfully.  “No, he hadn’t.  He may pick up his breakfast about the streets, like a cat; but he don’t have any ’ere.  And a cat he is, sneaking up and down the stairs:  how do I know whether he is in the house or whether he ain’t?”

At this Edwards turned pale again with a sudden fear.  Brand interposed.

“You don’t know?  Then show us his room; we will see for ourselves.”

He passed the woman, leaving her to shut the door, and went into the small dark passage, waiting for her at the foot of the stairs.  Grumbling to herself, she came along to show them the way.  It did not pay her to waste her time like this, she said, for a lodger who took no food in the house, and spent his earnings in the gin-shop.  She should not be surprised if they were to find him asleep at that time of the day.  He had ways like a cat.

The landing they reached was as dark as the staircase; so that when she turned a handle and flung a door open there was a sudden glare of light.  At the same moment she uttered a shrill scream, and retreated backward.  She had caught a glimpse of some horrible thing—­she hardly knew what.  It was the body of the man Kirski lying prone upon the uncarpeted floor, his hands clinched.  There was a dark pool of blood beside him.

Edwards sunk shuddering into a chair, sick and faint.  He could neither move nor speak; he dared hardly look at the object lying there in the wan light.  But Brand went quickly forward, and took hold of one of these clinched hands.  It was quite cold.  He tried to turn over the body, but relinquished that effort.  The cause of death was obvious enough.  Kirski had stabbed himself with one of the tools used in his trade; either he had deliberately lain down on the floor to make sure of driving the weapon home, or he had accidentally fallen so after dealing himself the fatal blow.  Apparently he had been dead for some hours.

Brand rose.  The landlady at the door was alternately screaming and sobbing; declaring that she was ruined; that not another lodger would come to her house.

“Be quiet, woman, and send to the police-station at once,” Brand said.  “Wait a moment:  when did you last see this man?”

“This morning, sir—­early this morning, sir,” said she, in a profusion of tears over her prospective loss.  “He came down-stairs with a letter in his hand, and there was twopence for my little boy to take it when he came home from school.  How should I know he had gone back, sir, to make away with himself like that, and ruin a poor widow woman, sir?”

“Have you a servant in the house?”

“No sir; no one but myself—­and me dependent—­”

“Then go at once to the police-station, and tell the inspector on duty what has happened.  You can do that, can’t you?  You will do no good by standing crying there, or getting the neighbors in.  I will stop here till you come back.”