"Yes, it is true. I witnessed the murder of Charles Holroyde. On that night I had left the Cafe de la Regence, and crossing the road overtook, in the Avenue de la Gare, Nelly Bridson, Captain Brooker's adopted daughter. We had met before on several occasions, and after she had told me that she had been to a chemist's to obtain something for Liane, who was not well, I offered, as it was late, to accompany her as far as her house in the Rue Dalpozzo. To this she made no objection, and we walked together along the Rue de France as far as the corner of the street wherein she lived. The moon, however, was bright upon the sea, and at my suggestion she consented to accompany me for a stroll along the Promenade. To reach the latter we had to pass through a narrow lane, which we had just entered, when we saw straight before us figures of men struggling together. Instantly I dragged Nelly back into the deep shadow where we could see without being observed. Suddenly I heard one of the men cry in English `My God! I'm stabbed!' and he staggered back and fell. Then, discerning for the first time that the man had been attacked by two assailants, I rushed forward, but already they had bent and secured the contents of their victim's pocket, and as I approached one of them threw the knife away. That man I recognised in the moonlight as Captain Brooker!" A low groan escaped the lips of the pale-faced, agitated man who had been thus denounced, and he stood paralysed by fear, clutching the back of a chair for support. "The man, however, who threw away the knife he had snatched up, was not the murderer," Richards continued, in a clear, calm voice. "Both Nelly and myself were afterwards in complete accord that it was his companion who had, in the melee, struck the fatal blow. The murderer was the man there--Zertho d'Auzac." "It's a lie!" cried the man indicated, "a foul, abominable falsehood! Brooker crept up behind him and tried to gag him with a scarf, when, finding that he was too powerful for him, he struck him full in the breast. In an instant he was dead."