The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

e looking-glass, "I've been finding out things these la

th absolute security to himself. Did not the barber of Midas when he found out what was under the royal crown of his master, fret and chafe over his secret, until one morning he stole to the reeds by the river, and whispered, "Midas, has ass's ears?" In the like manner Mr. Gorby felt a longing at times to give speech to his innermost secrets; and having no fancy for chattering to the air, he made his mirror his confidant. So f

zor, "a thing with an end must have a start, and

his face, and started shaving in a somewhat mechanical fashion,

he walks away in a temper, changes his mind, comes back and gets into the cab, after telling the cabby to drive down to St. Kilda. Then he polishes the drunk one off with chloroform, gets out of the cab, jumps into another, and after getting out

t that - men in love don't go to such lengths in real life - they do in novels and plays, but I've never seen it occurring in my experience. Robbery? No, there was plenty of money in his pocket. Revenge? Now, really it might be that - it's a kind of thing that carries most people further than they want to go. There was

, where he asked for the clothes of the deceased to be shown to him. When he recei

a grunt of dissatisfaction Mr. Gorby threw it aside, and picked up the waistcoat. Here he found somethin

en when he wore evening clothes. Ah! here's a tear on the side nearest the outside of the waistcoat; something has been pulled out roughly. I begin to see now. The dead man possessed something which the other man wanted, and which he knew the dead one carried about with him. He sees him drunk, gets into the cab with him, and tries to get what he wants. The dead man resists, upon which the other kills him by means of the chloroform which he had with him, and being afraid that the cab wi

here's one thing certain, he must have had a landlady or landlord, unless he slept in the open air. He can't have lived in an hotel, as the landlord of any hotel in Melbourne would have recognised him from the description, especially when the whole place is ringing with the murder. Private lodgings more like, and a landlady who doesn't read the papers and doesn't gossip, or she'd have known all about it by this time. Now, if he did live, as I th

lly through those columns in which missing friends and people who w

till Monday without exciting any suspicion. On Monday, however, the landlady would begin to feel uneasy, and on Tuesd

sday's, but in Friday's issue, exactly one week after the murd

a, Grey Street, St. Kilda, before the end of the we

re 'O.W.' So his name is Oliver Whyte, is it? Now, I wonder if Rubina Hableton knows anything about this matter. At any rate," said Mr. Gorb