the bush, but the hands were visible, flecked
with mud, their short fingers curved rigidly inward like talons,
grasping, clutching at the air. All around lay glittering fragments of
broken glass. What did it mean?

"Quiet that woman, someone--Chalmers, see to her," Roger cried,
vaulting over the balustrade.

He knelt and pushed aside the sheltering branches of the rose-bush so
as to reveal the head and face, the messenger bending close to him,
breathing heavily. The grey eyes were stretched wide with a stare of
terror, the mouth hung open. On the temple over the right eyebrow
gaped a deep wound from which a vast quantity of blood had poured, down
the side of the face and neck and shoulder, where it now stuck clotted
and dark. There was no doubt whatever that life was extinct. She had
probably been dead for several hours. All the clothing was sopping
with water and beaten into the soil.

"Do you think it's suicide, sir?" asked Chalmers in a low voice.

Roger shook his head without replying. Certain odd details now became
apparent. Tiny red scratches marred the skin in two or three places,
giving a scarred appearance. Broken twigs on the rose-bush told their
story also, but it was not at these that Roger looked so fixedly.

"_Qu'est-ce qu'elle porte autour de son cou?_" whispered the messenger
in a curious but awed voice.

Carefully Roger lifted a mauve, mudstained wet scarf, the two ends of
which were knotted about the throat. Some object was fastened securely
to the middle of the strip of silk, tied by a ribbon. He examined it
wonderingly. It was the broken, jagged neck of a bottle.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

All the servants of the household, drawn by Aline's screams, now
crowded upon the steps and looked on with frightened faces. From them
issued a confusion of hazarded explanations, all wide of the truth.
Madame had started to go out and had had a stroke of some sort; Madame
had shot herself; Madame had been lured outside by a bandit and struck
with a club, the object being to secure her pearls. Yet, no--the
pearls were not missing, there they were around her neck, stained dark
with blood. Ah! ... what a terrible sight! Then it was not robbery
after all. What could it be, then?

The neck of the bottle hung around her throat caused complete
mystification, likewise the fact that upon the feet were no shoes, only
the cobwebby black stockings, laced with delicate clocks, which she had
worn the n