ther. After formal salutations, Mr.
St. John Raven looked doubtfully adown the corridor.

'I think,' he suggested, 'we had better, Sir Rupert, request these
ladies to withdraw--unless, of course, either is in a position to
contribute by personal evidence to the elucidation of the case. Of
course, if either can, or both----'

'I can't tell anything,' Helena said; 'I heard a crash, and that was
all--I felt as if I were in an earthquake; I know nothing more about
it.'

'I hardly know even so much,' the Duchess said, 'for I had not wits
enough left in me even to think about the earthquake. Come, dear child,
let us go.'

She made a sweeping bow to all the company. The coroner afterwards
learned that she was a Duchess, and was glad to have caught her eyes.

'I have summoned a jury,' the coroner said blandly. Sir Rupert winced.
The idea of having a coroner's jury in his home seemed a sort of
degradation to him. But so, too, did the idea of a dynamite explosion.
Even his genuine grief for poor Soame Rivers left room enough in his
breast for a very considerable stowage of vexation that the whole
confounded thing should have happened in his house. Grief is seldom so
arbitrary as to exclude vexation. The giant comes attended by his dwarf.

'Well, we shall have a look at everything,' the coroner said cheerily.
'I suppose we need not think of the possibility of a mere accident?'

And now Ericson found himself involuntarily, and voluntarily too,
working out that marvellous, never-to-be-explained problem about the
revival of a vanished memory. It is like the effort to bring back to
life a three-parts drowned creature. Or it is like the effort to get
some servant far down beneath you who has gone to sleep to rouse up and
obey your call and attend to his duty. You ring and ring and no answer
comes, until at last, when you have all but given up hope, the summons
tells upon the sleeper's ear and he wakes up and gives you his answer.

So it was with Ericson. Just as he thought the quest was hopeless, just
as he thought the last opportunity was slipping by, his sluggish
servant, Memory, woke up with a start, and fulfilled its duty.

And Ericson quietly put himself forward and said:

'I beg your pardon, Sir Rupert and Mr. Coroner, but I have to say
something in this matter. I have to charge these two men, who say they
are American citizens, with being escaped or released convicts from the
State prison of the capital of Gloria, in