t, kindly manner.

"I feel much better," was my reply. "But yesterday my nurse revealed
to me some very extraordinary facts concerning myself."

"Yes. You have been seriously ill," he said. "But now you are better
these gentlemen wish to put a few questions to you."

"They are police officers, I presume."

The director nodded in the affirmative.

"We wish to ascertain exactly what happened to you, monsieur,"
exclaimed the elder of the pair.

"I really don't know," I replied. "I must have lost all consciousness
in London, and----"

"In London!" exclaimed Monsieur Leullier, the Prefect of Police, in
great surprise. "Then how came you here in St. Malo?"

"I have not the slightest idea," was my reply. "I only presume that I
was found here."

"You were. A fish-porter passing along the Quay St. Vincent at about
two o'clock in the morning found you seated on the ground with your
back to the wall, moaning as though in pain. He called the police and
you were removed on the ambulance to the hospital here. The doctors
found that you were in no pain, but that you could give no
intelligible account of yourself."

"What did I tell them?"

"Oh! a number of silly stories. At one moment you said you had come
from Italy. Then you said that you had hired a motor-car and the
driver had attacked you in the night. Afterwards you believed yourself
to be in some office, and talked about electrical engineering."

"That is my profession," I said. And I told them my name and my
address in London, facts which the police carefully set down.

"You told us that your name was Henry Aitken, and that you lived
mostly in Italy--at some place near Rome. We have made inquiries by
telegraph of a number of people whom you have mentioned, but all their
replies have been in the negative," said the police official.

"Well, I am now entirely in possession of my full senses," I declared.
"But how I got to France I have not the slightest knowledge. I lost
consciousness in a house in Stretton Street, in London. Since then I
have known nothing--until yesterday."

"In what circumstances did you lapse into unconsciousness?" asked the
doctor, looking intently at me through his glasses, for mine was no
doubt an extremely interesting case. "What do you remember? Did you
receive any sudden shock?"

I explained that being on a visit to a friend--as I designated Oswald
De Gex--his niece died very suddenly. And after that I became
unconscious.

The Pre