Lydon interrupted with a question. “There are only three nights on which he has dined away from the hotel where we were staying together. I suppose he paid several day visits?” “Madame Makris tells me hardly a day has passed that he did not come here, staying for longer or shorter periods. The young people have known each other for some five years. Well, the mother upon those occasions did not intrude herself very much; she left the lovers alone as much as possible. She followed her usual course this evening, occupying herself in writing letters and attending to her household accounts. “Suddenly she was startled by the sound of shots proceeding from the veranda where Mr. Craig and her daughter were seated. She rushed hastily from the room in which she was sitting and was horrified at the sight which presented itself. Mademoiselle was bleeding from a wound in the neck. After shooting her, the young man turned the pistol on himself and sent a bullet through his brain. The young woman was still alive, Mr. Craig was dead when she reached him. The second shot had done its work instantaneously. “Madame Makris at once rang up the police. We came with a doctor and Mademoiselle was taken to the hospital behind the railway station. For the unfortunate young man nothing could be done. After Madame had made her statement to us, we telephoned to you to come up.” Dazed as he was by the tragic occurrence, Lydon could grasp the fact that, although Hugh had never breathed to his friend a word of his secret connection with the denizens of the Villa des Cyclamens, he had been perfectly frank with them as to his relations with Lydon. Otherwise, how did Madame Makris know that they were staying together at the same hotel? So the volcano which he had always suspected was slumbering under that placid exterior had suddenly burst into flame with these awful consequences to Elise Makris and the man himself. “Can Madame suggest any explanation of this frenzied act?” was Lydon’s next question. The courteous official shook his head. “Madame says she knows nothing, that the whole thing is inexplicable to her.” “Mademoiselle Makris is in the hospital, you say. Do they give any hope of her recovery? Is the wound a serious one?” “Very serious, I am told,” was the reply. “They can pronounce no definite opinion at the moment. From what I can gather she seems to be hovering between life and death. Perhaps you would like to see the body; we have laid it in one of the bedrooms?” Leonard went to the chamber, and gazed upon the pallid features of the friend whom he had last seen in full health and strength. As he stood there, looking down on the rigid form, he felt overcome by the memories of their long association. They had been intimate so many years.