Mario Provana had been murdered in his own house--shot through the heart by an unknown assassin, who had done his work well enough to leave no clue to his identity. Speculation might rove at will, theory and hypothesis might run riot. Here was endless talk for dinner-tables--inexhaustible copy for the newspaper. A man of great wealth, of exalted position in the world of finance--finance, not commerce. Here was no dealer in commodities, no manufacturer of cocoa, or sugar, or reels of cotton, but a man who dealt in the world's wealth, and could make peace or war by opening or closing his money-bags. People who had never seen the great man's face in the flesh were just as keenly interested in the circumstances of his death as the people who had dined at his table and had known him as intimately as such men ever are known. A rough print of his photograph was in every halfpenny paper, and the likeness of his beautiful young wife was travestied in some of them. Pictures of the house in Portland Place, front and back view, were in all the papers. Columns of picturesque reporting described the man and the house, the beautiful young wife, the sumptuous furniture, the numerous household, the splendid entertainments which had made the house famous for the last six or seven years. And for the murdered man himself, no details were omitted. Interviews were invented, in which, during the last year, Signor Provana had expounded his opinions and views of that sphere of life in which he exercised so vast an influence--his ideas political, his tastes in art and literature, music, and the drama. Minute descriptions of his person were given in the same glowing style. The picturesque reporter made the dead man alive again for the million readers who were panting for details that would help them to strengthen their own pet theory or to crush an opponent. Thousands of sensation-hunters went to Portland Place to look at the house that held that dreadful mystery of a life untimely cut short by the hand of a murderer. Loafers stood on the pavement and gazed and gazed, as if their hungry eyes would have pierced dead walls and darkened windows. The loafers knew that the house was in charge of the police, and that a vigilant watch was being kept there. They wondered whether the lovely young wife was in the house. They pictured her weeping alone in one of those darkened rooms; yet were inclined to think that her friends would have insisted on her leaving that house of gloom, and would have carried her off to some less terrible place for rest and comfort.