"I had already conceived the idea of communicating with you when--so small is the world in this our time--accident actually threw me into the society of one of your personal friends. At an entertainment given by the British Ambassador at Rome, a young soldier, one Colonel Vane, was able to do me some service in a crush of people, and I enjoyed the privilege of his acquaintance as the result. I would not have inflicted myself upon another generation, but he took an interest in conversing with one who knew his own language. He was also intelligent--for a military man. Needless to say, he made no allusion to the tragedy at Chadlands, but when he spoke of espionage in war and kindred matters, I found him familiar with the details concerning the death of the great English detective, Peter Hardcastle. I then asked him, as being myself deeply interested in the matter, whether it would be possible to get further and fuller details of the story of 'the Grey Room,' whereupon he told me, to my amazement, that he had been at Chadlands when your lamented son-in-law, Captain Thomas May, passed out of life. I then recollected Colonel Vane's name, among others mentioned in the 'Times,' as at Chadlands when the disaster occurred. "Finding that my curiosity was not idle, Colonel Vane accepted an invitation to dinner, and I enjoyed the pleasure of entertaining him and learning many personal and intimate particulars of the event. These were imparted in confidence, and he knew that I should not abuse his trust. Indeed, I had already told him that it was my determination to communicate with you upon the strength of his narrative. "It seems improbable that anything I can say will bear upon the case, and I may presently find that I lack the means to serve you, or throw light where all is so profoundly buried in darkness. Yet I am not sure. Small things will often lead to greater, and though the past is unhappily beyond recall, since our Maker Himself cannot undo the work of yesterday, or obliterate events embalmed in vanished time, yet there is always the future; and if we could but read the past aright, which we never can, then the future would prove less of a painful riddle than mankind generally finds it.