It was on a Monday evening that Ricardo saw Harry Wethermill and the girl Celia together.  On the Tuesday he saw Wethermill in the rooms alone and had some talk with him.

Wethermill was not playing that night, and about ten o’clock the two men left the Villa des Fleurs together.

“Which way do you go?” asked Wethermill.

“Up the hill to the Hotel Majestic,” said Ricardo.

“We go together, then.  I, too, am staying there,” said the young man, and they climbed the steep streets together.  Ricardo was dying to put some questions about Wethermill’s young friend of the night before, but discretion kept him reluctantly silent.  They chatted for a few moments in the hall upon indifferent topics and so separated for the night.  Mr. Ricardo, however, was to learn something more of Celia the next morning; for while he was fixing his tie before the mirror Wethermill burst into his dressing-room.  Mr. Ricardo forgot his curiosity in the surge of his indignation.  Such an invasion was an unprecedented outrage upon the gentle tenor of his life.  The business of the morning toilette was sacred.  To interrupt it carried a subtle suggestion of anarchy.  Where was his valet?  Where was Charles, who should have guarded the door like the custodian of a chapel?

“I cannot speak to you for at least another half-hour,” said Mr. Ricardo, sternly.

But Harry Wethermill was out of breath and shaking with agitation.

“I can’t wait,” he cried, with a passionate appeal.  “I have got to see you.  You must help me, Mr. Ricardo—­you must, indeed!”

Ricardo spun round upon his heel.  At first he had thought that the help wanted was the help usually wanted at Aix-les-Bains.  A glance at Wethermills face, however, and the ringing note of anguish in his voice, told him that the thought was wrong.  Mr. Ricardo slipped out of his affectations as out of a loose coat.  “What has happened?” he asked quietly.

“Something terrible.”  With shaking fingers Wethermill held out a newspaper.  “Read it,” he said.

It was a special edition of a local newspaper, Le Journal de Savoie, and it bore the date of that morning.

“They are crying it in the streets,” said Wethermill.  “Read!”

A short paragraph was printed in large black letters on the first page, and leaped to the eyes.

“Late last night,” it ran, “an appalling murder was committed at the Villa Rose, on the road to Lac Bourget.  Mme. Camille Dauvray, an elderly, rich woman who was well known at Aix, and had occupied the villa every summer for the last few years, was discovered on the floor of her salon, fully dressed and brutally strangled, while upstairs, her maid, Helene Vauquier, was found in bed, chloroformed, with her hands tied securely behind her back.  At the time of going to press she had not recovered consciousness, but the doctor, Emile Peytin, is in attendance upon her, and it is hoped that she will be able shortly to throw some light on this dastardly affair.  The police are properly reticent as to the details of the crime, but the following statement may be accepted without hesitation: