s Highness was alone in a box. I had instructions
to call with the car at eleven o'clock."

"Well?"

"The theatre management telephoned at a quarter past ten to say that
His Highness had been taken ill and that a physician had been sent for.
I went in the car at once and found him lying in one of the
dressing-rooms to which he had been carried. A medical man was in
attendance. The Grand Duke was unconscious. We moved him to the car----"

"_We?_"

"The doctor, the theatre manager, and myself. The Grand Duke was then
alive, the physician declared, although he seemed to me to be already
dead. But just before we reached the hotel, the physician, who was
watching His Highness anxiously, cried, 'Ah,_mon Dieu!_ It is finished.
What a catastrophe!'"

"He was dead?"

"He was dead, monsieur."

"Who has seen him?"

"They have telephoned for half the doctors in Paris, monsieur, but it
is too late."

He was affected, the good Casimir. Tears welled up in his eyes. I
mounted in the lift to the apartment in which the Grand Duke lay.
Three doctors were there, one of them being he of whom Casimir had
spoken. Consternation was written on every face.

"It was his heart," I was assured by the doctor who had been summoned
to the theatre. "We shall find that he suffered from heart trouble."

They were all agreed upon the point.

"He must have sustained a great emotional shock," said another.

"You are convinced that there was no foul play, gentlemen?" I asked.

They were quite unanimous on the point.

"Did the Grand Duke make any statement at the time of the seizure
which would confirm the theory of a heart attack?"

No. He had fallen down unconscious outside the door of his box, and
from this unconsciousness he had never recovered. (Depositions of
witnesses, medical evidence and other documents are available for
the guidance of whoever may care to see them, but, as is well known,
the death of the Grand Duke was ascribed to natural causes and it
seemed as though my trouble would after all prove to be in vain.)
Let us see what happened.

Leaving the hotel, on the night of the Grand Duke's death, I joined
the man who was watching the cafe telephone.

There had been a message during the course of the evening, but it had
been for a Greek cigarette-maker and it referred to the theft of
several bales of Turkish tobacco--useful information, of minor kind,
but of little interest to me. I knew that it would be useless to
quest