‘Now, Mr. Felix,’ he said, ‘I want you please to tell me everything you know of this unhappy affair--everything, no matter how seemingly minute or unimportant. Remember--I cannot impress it on you too strongly--for a man in your position it is suicidal to withhold information. Keep nothing back. Your confidence will be as safe as the confessional. If you have made mistakes, done foolish things, or criminal things, or even--forgive me--if you have committed the crime you are charged with, tell me the whole truth. Else I shall be a blind man leading the blind, and we shall both have our fall.’ Felix rose to his feet. ‘I will do so, Mr. Clifford. I will keep nothing back. And first, before we go on to the details, one point must be settled.’ He raised his hand. ‘I swear to you, in the presence of Almighty God, in whom I believe, that I am innocent of this crime.’ He sat down and then continued: ‘I don’t ask you if you believe me; I am willing to leave that till afterwards, but I want now, at the commencement of our intercourse, to put that fact as it were on record. I absolutely and categorically deny all knowledge of this hateful and ghastly crime. Now let us get on.’ ‘I am glad you have made this statement and in this way, Mr. Felix,’ said the lawyer, who was impressed by his client’s manner and earnestness. ‘Now, please, begin at the beginning and tell me with all the detail you can, what you know of the matter.’ Felix had the gift of narration, and, apart from the appeal to Clifford’s professional instincts, he held the lawyer enthralled as he related the strange story of his experiences. ‘I hardly know where to begin,’ he said. ‘The first thing directly bearing on the affair was a meeting between myself and some friends at the Café Toisson d’Or in Paris, but before I come to that I think I ought to explain just who I am and how I, a Frenchman, come to be living in London. I think this is necessary, as the question of my previous knowledge of poor Annette Boirac is certain to come up. What do you say, Mr. Clifford?’ ‘Necessary to tell this?’ thought the lawyer, to whom the fact that Felix had had knowledge of the dead woman came as an ugly discovery. ‘Why, my good fellow, no other point in the whole case is likely to be more important for you.’ But aloud he only said:-- ‘Yes, I consider it most necessary.’ ‘Very good, then. As I said, I am a Frenchman, and I was born in Avignon in 1884. I was always keen on drawing, and, as my teachers thought there was promise in my work, I early moved to Paris and entered the _atelier_ of M. Dauphin. I studied there for several years, living in a small hotel off the Boule Miche. My parents were both dead, and I had inherited a little money--not much, but enough to live on.