he tried to rouse him, but could not. A doctor
who was called pronounced that he was suffering from
some sort of poisoning. He was taken to St. George’s
Hospital in an ambulance, but he never recovered.
The post-mortem investigation showed a small scratch
on the palm of the hand. That scratch had been
produced by a pin or a needle which had been infected
by one of the newly discovered poisons which, administered
secretly, give a post-mortem appearance of death from
heart disease.”
“Then your father was murdered—eh?”
exclaimed the elder man.
“Most certainly he was. And that woman
is aware of the whole circumstances and of the identity
of the assassin.”
“How do you know that?”
“By a letter I afterwards opened—one
that had been addressed to him at Woodthorpe in his
absence. It was anonymous, written in bad English,
in an illiterate hand, warning him to ’beware
of that woman you know—Mademoiselle of
Monte Carlo.’ It bore the French stamp and
the postmark of Tours.”
“I never knew all this,” Brock said.
“You are quite right, Hugh! The whole affair
is a tangled mystery. But the first point we must
establish before we commence to investigate is—who
is Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo?”
CONCERNS A GUILTY SECRET
Just after seven o’clock that same evening young
Henfrey and his friend Brock met in the small lounge
of the Hotel des Palmiers, a rather obscure little
establishment in the Avenue de la Costa, behind the
Gardens, much frequented by the habitues of the Rooms
who know Monte Carlo and prefer the little place to
life at the Paris, the Hermitage, and the Riviera
Palace, or the Gallia, up at Beausoleil.
The Palmiers was a place where one met a merry cosmopolitan
crowd, but where the cocotte in her bright plumage
was absent—an advantage which only the
male habitue of Monte Carlo can fully realize.
The eternal feminine is always so very much in evidence
around the Casino, and the most smartly dressed woman
whom one might easily take for the wife of an eminent
politician or financier will deplore her bad luck and
beg for “a little loan.”
“Well,” said Hugh as his friend came down
from his room to the lounge, “I suppose we ought
to be going—eh? Dorise said half-past
seven, and we’ll just get across to the Metropole
in time. Lady Ranscomb is always awfully punctual
at home, and I expect she carries out her time-table
here.”
The two men put on light overcoats over their dinner-jackets
and strolled in the warm dusk across the Gardens and
up the Galerie, with its expensive little shops, past
the original Ciro’s to the Metropole.
