Some private papers, accounts and ledgers, were in the drawers, but the envelope of which they were in search they failed to discover. It seemed evident that Jerome Jerrold had written the envelope in which he had enclosed a letter, but, on reflection, he had torn it up. Though the crumpled fragments of the envelope were there, yet the letter-- whatever it might have been--was missing. And their careful examination of the waste-paper basket revealed nothing, whereupon Sir Houston Bird remarked-- "He may, of course, have changed his mind, and burned it, after all!" "Perhaps he did," Jack agreed. "But I wonder what could have been the message he wished to give me a year after his death? Why not now?" "People who take their own lives sometimes have curious hallucinations. I have known many. Suicide is a fascinating, if very grim study." "Then you really think this is a case of suicide?" "I can, I fear, give no opinion until after the post-mortem, Mr Sainsbury," was Sir Houston's guarded reply, his face grave and thoughtful. "But it is all so strange, so remarkable," exclaimed the younger man. "Why did he tell me that he'd been shot, if he hadn't?" "Because to you, his most intimate friend, he perhaps, as you suggested, wished to conceal the fact that he had been guilty of the cowardly action of taking his own life," was the reply. "It is a mystery--a profound mystery," declared Jack Sainsbury. "Jerome dined with Mr Trustram, and the latter came back here with him. Meanwhile, Mr Lewin Rodwell was very anxious concerning him. Why? Was Rodwell a friend of Jerome's? Do you happen to know that?" "I happen to know to the contrary," declared the great pathologist. "Only a week ago we met at Charing Cross Hospital, and some chance remark brought up Rodwell's name, when Jerrold burst forth angrily, and declared most emphatically that the man who posed as such a patriotic Englishman would, one day, be unmasked and exposed in his true colours. In confidence, he made an allegation that Lewin Rodwell's real name was Ludwig Heitzman, and that he was born in Hanover. He had become a naturalised Englishman ten years ago in Glasgow, and had, by deed-poll, changed his name to Lewin Rodwell." Jack Sainsbury stared the speaker full in the face. Lewin Rodwell, the great patriot who, since the outbreak of war, had been in the forefront of every charitable movement, who had been belauded by the Press, and to whom the Prime Minister had referred in the most eulogistic terms in the House of Commons, was a German! "That's utterly impossible," exclaimed Jack. "He is one of the directors of the Ochrida Copper Corporation, in whose office I am. I know Mr Rodwell well. There's no trace whatever of German birth about him."