“This was received from our client, and your friend, the Honourable Hugh Craig, very shortly after the terrible tragedy, with instructions to hand it to you after the lapse of a certain period which has now expired. I am filled with curiosity to know if this letter, dispatched to us on the morning of the day on which this awful thing occurred, throws any light upon the affair.” Leonard read slowly through the long communication, and, laying it down, met the inquiring gaze of the solicitor. “Yes,” he said, in a sad voice. “This reveals the motives which impelled him to attempt the life of Elise Makris, and make an end of his own. I will tell you.” CHAPTER THREE “First, I will read you the opening sentences of the letter,” said Leonard. And this is what he read: “To you, my very dear friend, whose friendship has been one of the most pleasurable things in my life, to the memories of which I look back with a feeling of great tenderness as I pen these lines, the last I shall ever write upon earth, I reveal the secret of the tragedy which will shortly take place. In Nice the affair will, naturally, be a nine days’ wonder. Nice, this fair and lovely city of aristocratic crookdom, where vice and virtue rub shoulders at every hour of the twenty-four, and where the cleverest criminals of the world congregate in the pursuit of their nefarious calling! Nice, where I first met the only woman who ever stirred my pulses, who made me realize the meaning of ardent, overmastering love! When you read these words, perhaps you will smile at the idea of the cautious diplomatist, the rather cynical young man of the world, confessing to being violently in love. But it is the truth. I had passed unscathed up to a few years ago, indifferent to the charms of the many beautiful women I had met in my own country and elsewhere, until I made the acquaintance of Elise Makris. Then suddenly I realized, poor fool as I was, that I had found my ideal. To me she stood for the perfection of womanhood. “To-night I am going to kill her, because she has betrayed my faith in her, because I have proved she is base and unworthy. And when I have accomplished this justifiable vengeance, there is nothing left for me but to end my own life. By the time you receive this letter the nine days’ wonder will have died out, and the memory of Hugh Craig will only linger in the hearts of one or two faithful friends like yourself. The details I am about to relate will not interest the world, but you are at perfect liberty to communicate them to anybody you think it may concern.” “As you are such an old and confidential friend of the Clandon family, Mr. Shelford,” said the young man when he had finished reading this preliminary portion of the letter, “I feel quite justified in reading to you what my poor, unfortunate friend has disclosed to me.”