but after Hastings lost his temper and exclaimed that "if he didn't want me to help him it would leave me more time to myself", Avory laughed and changed his mind. His own chambers In 1910, Horace Avory became a judge. Hastings first found out when he read the report in the morning newspapers, and was dismayed that he would again have to search for a tenancy at another chambers. He instead had the idea that he could take over Avory's chambers himself, allowing him to avoid the trouble of finding a new tenancy. Maintaining a set of chambers was very expensive, however; as well as paying the rent, the head of chambers would be expected to pay the clerks. Hastings suggested to Avory that Avory could pay the rent, and Hastings would then pay him back when he had the money. Despite Avory's reputation as "cold and hard" he agreed to this idea, and even let Hastings keep the furniture, including Avory's valuable chair which had once belonged to Harry Poland. Although this was a good start, Hastings was not a particularly well-known barrister, and cases were few and far between. To get around the lack of funds Hastings accepted a pupil, and for the next year Hastings lived almost exclusively off the fees that the pupil paid him. To maintain the appearance of an active and busy chamber Hastings had his clerk borrow papers from other barristers and give them to the pupil to work on, claiming that they were cases of Hastings. The Case of the Hooded Man His first major case was "The Case of the Hooded Man". On 9 October 1912, the driver of a horse-drawn carriage noticed a crouching man near the front door of the house of Countess Flora Sztaray in Eastbourne. Sztaray was known to possess large amounts of valuable jewellery and to be married to a rich Hungarian nobleman, and assuming that the crouching man was a burglar the driver immediately called the police. Inspector Arthur Walls was sent to investigate, and ordered the man to come down. The man fired two shots, the first of which struck and killed Walls. A few days after the murder, a former medical student named Edgar Power contacted the police, showing them a letter that he claimed had been written by the murderer. It read "If you would save my life come here at