On the 12th of last December a woman, poorly dressed, but with an unmistakable air of having seen better days, gave information at Scotland Yard of the disappearance of her husband, William Kershaw, of no occupation, and apparently of no fixed abode.

She was accompanied by a friend--a fat, oily-looking German--and between them they told a tale which set the police immediately on the move.
"It appears that on the 10th of December, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, Karl Mueller, the German, called on his friend, William Kershaw, for the purpose of collecting a small debt--some ten pounds or so--which the latter owed him.

On arriving at the squalid lodging in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, he found William Kershaw in a wild state of excitement, and his wife in tears.

Mueller attempted to state the object of his visit, but Kershaw, with wild gestures, waved him aside, and--in his own words--flabbergasted him by asking him point-blank for another loan of two pounds, which sum, he declared, would be the means of a speedy fortune for himself and the friend who would help him in his need.
"After a quarter of an hour spent in obscure hints, Kershaw, finding the cautious German obdurate, decided to let him into the secret plan, which, he averred, would place thousands into their hands." Instinctively Polly had put down her paper; the mild stranger, with his nervous air and timid, watery eyes, had a peculiar way of telling his tale, which somehow fascinated her.
"I don't know," he resumed, "if you remember the story which the German told to the police, and which was corroborated in every detail by the wife or widow.

Briefly it was this: Some thirty years previously, Kershaw, then twenty years of age, and a medical student at one of the London hospitals, had a chum named Barker, with whom he roomed, together with another.
"The latter, so it appears, brought home one evening a very considerable sum of money, which he had won on the turf, and the following morning he was found murdered in his bed.