No; then you
have not heard of the Paul Street case? It caused a good deal of
sensation at the time.”

“What was the case?”

“Well, a gentleman, a man of very good position, was found dead, stark
dead, in the area of a certain house in Paul Street, off Tottenham
Court Road. Of course the police did not make the discovery; if you
happen to be sitting up all night and have a light in your window, the
constable will ring the bell, but if you happen to be lying dead in
somebody’s area, you will be left alone. In this instance, as in many
others, the alarm was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don’t mean a
common tramp, or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business
or pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at
five o’clock in the morning. This individual was, as he said, ‘going
home,’ it did not appear whence or whither, and had occasion to pass
through Paul Street between four and five a.m. Something or other
caught his eye at Number 20; he said, absurdly enough, that the house
had the most unpleasant physiognomy he had ever observed, but, at any
rate, he glanced down the area and was a good deal astonished to see a
man lying on the stones, his limbs all huddled together, and his face
turned up. Our gentleman thought his face looked peculiarly ghastly,
and so set off at a run in search of the nearest policeman. The
constable was at first inclined to treat the matter lightly, suspecting
common drunkenness; however, he came, and after looking at the man’s
face, changed his tone, quickly enough. The early bird, who had picked
up this fine worm, was sent off for a doctor, and the policeman rang
and knocked at the door till a slatternly servant girl came down
looking more than half asleep. The constable pointed out the contents
of the area to the maid, who screamed loudly enough to wake up the
street, but she knew nothing of the man; had never seen him at the
house, and so forth. Meanwhile, the original discoverer had come back
with a medical man, and the next thing was to get into the area. The
gate was open, so the whole quartet stumped down the steps. The doctor
hardly needed a moment’s examination; he said the poor fellow had been
dead for several hours, and it was then the case began to get
interesting. The dead man had not been robbed, and in one of his
pockets were papers identifying him as—well, as a man of good family
and means, a favourite in society, and nobody’s enemy, as far as could
be known. I don’t give his name, Villiers, because it has nothing to do
with the story, and because it’s no good raking up these affairs about
the dead when there are no relations living. The next curious point was
that the medical men couldn’t agree as to how he met his death. There
were some slight bruises on his shoulders, but they were so slight that
it looked as if he had been pushed roughly out of the kitchen door, and
not thrown over the railings from the street or even dragged down the
steps. But there were positively no other marks of violence about him,
certainly none that would account for his death; and when they came to
the autopsy there wasn’t a trace of poison of any kind. Of course the
police wanted to know all about the people at Number 20, and here
again, so I have heard from private sources, one or two other very
curious points came out. It appears that the occupants of the house
were a Mr. and Mrs. Charles Herbert; he was said to be a landed
proprietor, though it struck most people that Paul Street was not
exactly the place to look for country gentry. As for Mrs. Herbert,
nobody seemed to know who or what she was, and, between ourselves, I
fancy the divers after her history found themselves in rather strange
waters. Of course they both denied knowing anything about the deceased,
and in default of any evidence against them they were discharged. But
some very odd things came out about them. Though it was between five
and six in the morning when the dead man was removed, a large crowd had
collected, and several of the neighbours ran to see what was going on. They were pretty free with their comments, by all accounts, and from
these it appeared that Number 20 was in very bad odour in Paul Street. The detectives tried to trace down these rumours to some solid
foundation of fact, but could not get hold of anything. People shook
their heads and raised their eyebrows and thought the Herberts rather
‘queer,’ ‘would rather not be seen going into their house,’ and so on,
but there was nothing tangible. The authorities were morally certain
the man met his death in some way or another in the house and was
thrown out by the kitchen door, but they couldn’t prove it, and the
absence of any indications of violence or poisoning left them helpless. An odd case, wasn’t it? But curiously enough, there’s something more
that I haven’t told you. I happened to know one of the doctors who was
consulted as to the cause of death, and some time after the inquest I
met him, and asked him about it. ‘Do you really mean to tell me,’ I
said, ‘that you were baffled by the case, that you actually don’t know
what the man died of?’ ‘Pardon me,’ he replied, ‘I know perfectly well
what caused death. Blank died of fright, of sheer, awful terror; I
never saw features so hideously contorted in the entire course of my
practice, and I have seen the faces of a whole host of dead.’ The
doctor was usually a cool customer enough, and a certain vehemence in
his manner struck me, but I couldn’t get anything more out of him. I
suppose the Treasury didn’t see their way to prosecuting the Herberts
for frightening a man to death; at any rate, nothing was done, and the
case dropped out of men’s minds. Do you happen to know anything of
Herbert?”

“Well,” replied Villiers, “he was an old college friend of mine.”

“You don’t say so? Have you ever seen his wife?”

“No, I haven’t. I have lost sight of Herbert for many years.”

“It’s queer, isn’t it, parting with a man at the college gate or at
Paddington, seeing nothing of him for years, and then finding him pop
up his head in such an odd place. But I should like to have seen Mrs.
Herbert; people said extraordinary things about her.”

“What sort of things?”

“Well, I hardly know how to tell you. Everyone who saw her at the
police court said she was at once the most beautiful woman and the most
repulsive they had ever set eyes on. I have spoken to a man who saw
her, and I assure you he positively shuddered as he tried to describe
the woman, but he couldn’t tell why. She seems to have been a sort of
enigma; and I expect if that one dead man could have told tales, he
would have told some uncommonly queer ones. And there you are again in
another puzzle; what could a respectable country gentleman like Mr.
Blank (we’ll call him that if you don’t mind) want in such a very queer
house as Number 20? It’s altogether a very odd case, isn’t it?”

“It is indeed, Austin; an extraordinary case.