Joseph Smith Fletcher

“ Lord Ellingham glanced at a pile of newspapers which lay on a side-table.
"Yes," he answered, "I have. I've been much interested in it—as a murder. A curious and mysterious case, don't you think?"
"We," replied Mr. Pawle, waving a hand toward Viner, "know it to be a much more mysterious case than anybody could gather from the newspaper accounts, for they know little who have written them, and we, who are behind the scenes, know a great deal. Now, your lordship will have seen that a young man, an actor named Langton Hyde, has been arrested and charged, and is on remand. ”

“ Pawle. "But now I should like to ask a question which arises out of this visit. As we approached your lordship's door, just now, we saw, leaving it, two men. One of them, my friend Mr. Viner immediately recognized. He does not know who the man is—"
"Which of the two men do you mean!" interrupted Lord Ellingham. "I may as well say that they had just left me."
"The clean-shaven man," answered Viner.
"Whom Mr. Viner knows for a fact," continued Mr. Pawle, "to have been in Ashton's company only an hour or so before Ashton's murder!"
Lord Ellingham looked at Viner in obvious surprise. ”

“ Lord Ellingham responded politely to Viner's bow and drew two chairs forward.
"Sit down, Mr. Pawle; sit down, Mr. Viner," he said. He dropped into a chair near a desk which stood in the centre of the room and looked interrogatively at his elder visitor. "Have you some business to discuss, Mr. Pawle?" he asked.
"Some business, my lord, which, I confess at once, is of extraordinary nature," answered the old lawyer. "I will go straight to it. Your lordship has doubtless read in the newspapers of the murder of a man named Ashton in Lonsdale Passage, in the Bayswater district?" ”