The Old Man in the Corner

The man in the corner had finished his glass of milk. His watery blue eyes looked across atMiss Polly Burton's eager little face, from which all traces of severity had now been chased awayby an obvious and intense excitement."It was only on the 31st," he resumed after a while, "that a body, decomposed past allrecognition, was found by two lightermen in the bottom of a disused barge. She had been mooredat one time at the foot of one of those dark flights of steps which lead down between tallwarehouses to the river in the East End of London. I have a photograph of the place here," headded, selecting one out of his pocket, and placing it before Polly."The actual barge, you see, had already been removed when I took this snapshot, but you willrealize what a perfect place this alley is for the purpose of one man cutting another's throat incomfort, and without fear of detection. The body, as I said, was decomposed beyond allrecognition; it had probably been there eleven days, but sundry articles, such as a silver ring anda tie pin, were recognizable, and were identified by Mrs. Kershaw as belonging to her husband."She, of course, was loud in denouncing Smethurst, and the police had no doubt a very strongcase against him, for two days after the discovery of the body in the barge, the Siberianmillionaire, as he was already popularly called by enterprising interviewers, was arrested in hisluxurious suite of rooms at the Hotel Cecil."To confess the truth, at this point I was not a little puzzled. Mrs. Kershaw's story andSmethurst's letters had both found their way into the papers, and following my usual method-mind you, I am only an amateur, I try to reason out a case for the love of the thing-I soughtabout for a motive for the crime, which the police declared Smethurst had committed. Toeffectually get rid of a dangerous blackmailer was the generally accepted theory. Well! did itever strike you how paltry that motive really was?"