"Mr. Van Ingen, you don't seem quite to realise the importance of this tragedy. Grayson was a financial king--a multimillionaire. Or, at least, he was so considered up to this morning. It now appears that he had speculated heavily during the last few weeks--we gathered this from Lady Dinsmore--who kindly told us what she knew--and lost everything, every penny of his own and his daughter's fortune. Last night, in a fit of despair, he ended his life." Van Ingen looked at him in a kind of stupefaction. Was it of Grayson the man was talking such drivel? Grayson who only the week before had told him in high gratification that within the last month he had added a cool million to his girl's marriage portion. Grayson who but yesterday had hinted mysteriously of a gigantic financial coup in the near future. He passed a bewildered hand across his eyes. And now all that fortune was lost, and the loser was lying at the bottom of the Thames! "I think I must be going mad!" he muttered. "Grayson wasn't the kind to kill himself. Why, I tell you," he cried, "that last night, when I bade him good-night, he was gay, smiling. He looked like a man who goes forth to meet success." "You saw him, then?" the reporter queried eagerly. "When? Where? Please give us full details, Mr. Van Ingen. This may turn out to be of tremendous importance." He pulled out his note-book. "I was at the opera with his party last night," replied Van Ingen. He repeated the events of the previous evening. "Grayson was not meditating suicide when I left him," he concluded positively. "I could swear it! Rather, he seemed to be reflecting with relish upon some particularly fine joke. May I see that note he is supposed to have written?" "Certainly!" The reporter vanished into an inner room, and presently returned holding a scrap of white paper in his hand. "Torn from his memorandum book, you see," he observed quietly. Van Ingen read it through. "It's his handwriting, right enough," he admitted. "But somehow, it doesn't sound like Grayson himself. Too theatrical, dramatic!" He frowned, as if trying to catch some haunting impression. "It sounds like----" He broke off sharply, his face paling. "Good God, no!" he whispered, "that couldn't be! And yet"--his eyes sought the paper again--"it's the dead ringer of the kind of rot he talks! But why----" He pressed his hand to his temples. "I give it up!" He returned the slip to the reporter, who had been watching him with cool, level eyes. "You have a clue?" he asked. "No, no!" replied Van Ingen hurriedly. "The whole affair is utterly inexplicable to me at present. I cannot believe that Grayson deliberately killed himself. The thing is beyond reason! The paper says that his hat and overcoat were found?"