It gradually dawned on people, said Dwight-Rankin, that this between Mrs. Amp and Lady Surplice was not an affair which could be settled by a duel at Mah Jongg, that this was a case of war to the death. Mrs. Amp died first. On that Friday evening, Mrs. Amp was dressing for dinner in her house near the Champs Élysées. She sat at her toilet-table, and whilst her maid did this and that to her hair, which, said Dwight-Rankin, aspired doggedly rather than beautifully to the mode, Mrs. Amp passed the time by looking out of the windows upon the noble trees of the Champs Élysées; and presently drew her maid’s attention to the fact that a circus was at that moment taking its station beneath them. “I want to tell you,” said Mrs. Amp to her maid, “that I am just crazy about circuses. Don’t forget to remind me to engage one the next time I pull a party.” Those, her maid later told Dwight-Rankin, were almost the last words Mrs. Amp spoke in this world. For even as she uttered them an uproar became audible from without: the air was filled with screams, yells and curses: while the roars of savage beasts struck terror into the most stable heart and convinced the maid, she told Dwight-Rankin, that the end of the world was at hand. With a cry to Mrs. Amp, who sat staring out of the window as though transfixed, the maid fled; for the uproar from the circus was caused by nothing less than the escape of the lions from their cages; and these, their maddened nostrils attracted by Heaven knows what odour, were rushing furiously on Mrs. Amp’s house, vainly pursued by their keepers. For the keepers, said Dwight-Rankin, appeared to be quite helpless: their whips lashed the air with inconceivable energy, but there seemed to be a grave lack of _entente_ between their commands and the lions’ movements; which was later only half-explained by the fact that they were Italian keepers in charge of French lions. The lions, with a bound, with a series of bounds, passed the _concierge’s_ lodge, wherein the _concierge_ was clinging to an excrescence from the ceiling; and when the mangled corpse of poor Mrs. Amp was later found, it was recognisable, said Dwight-Rankin, only by the perfume which the poor lady was used to affect and which gave proof of its quality by rising superior even to the lively odour of the lions. However.... In such manner, said Dwight-Rankin, did Mrs. Amp give up the spirit. Nor was the sensation caused by her nasty death at all soothed by the evidence of her trembling _concierge_, who, before the Conference of Ambassadors that sat to enquire on the great hostess’s death, gave testimony to the effect that as the lions rushed into her bedroom Mrs. Amp was distinctly heard to cry: “This is the doing of Muriel Surplice! I will be revenged, if I roast in hell-fire for it!”