The Mystery of M. Felix

REPANCIES IN THE STATEMENTS OF

fall more heavily than during the day. In some places there was a drift almost, if not quite, man high, and our columns on the morning of the 17th recorded the discovery of three lifeless persons, one man and two women, who had been frozen to death during the night. With these unfortunates we have nothing to do; what concerns us and our story is that on the night of the 16th, Mrs. Middlemore, a housekeeper in one of the old houses in Gerard Street, Soho, very imprudently went out just before midnight to fetch her supper-beer. Even the raging storm did not prevent her from indulging in her usual habit, the temptation of beer being too strong for her, and the prospect of going to bed without it being too appalling to risk. She saw that the street door was secure when she left the house, and was surprised, upon her return, to find it open. These, and many other particulars which will be duly recorded, are statements which have already appeared in public print,

leasure, and of a generous disposition to those who served him well. Mrs. Middlemore speaks in the highest terms of him, but she judges only from one point of view, that of a landlady who has a liberal lodger. Otherwise, she has no knowledge of him, and cannot say where he came from, whether he was married o

ey him in the slightest particular. He had taken the greatest pains to impress upon her that she was never, under any circumstances whatever, to come to his rooms unless she was summoned, and from what we have gathered of his character, M. Felix was a gentleman who could be stern as well as pleasant, and was not a person who would allow his orders to be disobeyed without making the delinquent suffer for it. These imperative instructions rendered Constable Wigg's course difficult. Mrs. Middlemore had left M. Felix in the house when she went to fetch her supper-beer, and it was in the highest degree improbable that he should have quitted it during her absence. He was not a young m

and it transpires, from a statement volunteered by Constable Wigg, that the great bell was proclaiming the hour of midnight when, tramping half-frozen on his beat, he heard a cry for help. Three times was this cry sent forth into the night, and, faithful guardian as he was, according to his own averment, he endeavored to ascertain the direction from which the appeal proceeded. It may well be believed that, with the wind blowing seemingly from all points of the compass at once, he failed to make the necessary discovery; but it strikes us as singular that when he was talking matters over with Mrs. Middlemore it did not occur to him that the cry for help may have proceeded from the very house in which he was standing. We make no comment upon this singular lapse of memory. It strikes us also as by no means unimportant that in the statements of Mrs. Middlemore and the two constables there is something very l

his sudden rush from the premises. Truly he must have had the greatest difficulty in making his way through the streets. In explanation of our remark that in the statements of Mrs. Middlemore

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that each witness was examined without the others being present. Is it quite unreasonable to infer that, had they been

st have made a mistake in supposing that he received from Constable Wigg the information of the route

on his, he declares, at the time he heard Constable Wigg's whistle. Constable Wigg was on his beat, according to his own declaration, when he blew it. Were they the only two constables in a thronged locality who were faithfully performing their duty? Doubtless the other constables on duty would indignantly repudiate the allegation, but Constable Nightingale distinctly implies as much. We

e was in the habit of boasting that it never stopped, and never lost or gained a minute. It is singular, therefore, that on this eventful night it should have stopped for the first time, and at

watchmaker to examine Constable Nightingale's watch and Mrs. Middlemore's clock; but this watchmaker reports that t

mportance of so-called trifles cannot be over-estimated. The world's greatest poet has said, '