“I believe not. As far as I could make out, he was trying to escape along the roof, intending to climb down one of the trees which grew near the end of the house, when Gregorescu discovered his absence and turned out the Dardanians. When he saw they were after him, he turned off to the edge of the roof, intending to drop from it to the back verandah, and so to the ground; but the parapet was rotten all along, and a great piece of it fell with him. He struggled up and threw himself over the edge of the verandah, and actually ran a few steps; then they saw him give a convulsive leap and fall to the ground. When they got to him he was dead. The shock and the fall together were too much for him, after the excitement and anxiety of the past weeks. That was Gregorescu’s account, and I have no reason to doubt it.” “No; it’s in accordance with the medical evidence,” said Mr Hicks. “Death due to shock, bruises inflicted before death; that was all.” “But it doesn’t explain our finding the body in the river,” said Usk. “That was to throw you off the scent,” said Cyril quickly. “Didn’t you all go off to some place on the Mœsian frontier, miles away, to see whether I was in that neighbourhood? But you didn’t rise to the occasion as they hoped. You were quite expected to leave Drinitza, and take up your quarters at Bagnanera.” “Then you heard something of our movements?” “Oh yes; they talked quite openly before me, at first to try and catch me off my guard, and afterwards, when they were quite sure the drug had taken effect, because there was no reason why they shouldn’t. They had one more try to make me betray myself when they found Paschics was dead, telling me of it suddenly, and I had to affect ignorance and mystification, and go through the whole sickening show over again. It was so long before Gregorescu was really convinced of my madness that I suppose, in spite of all my care, I must have failed in some points, but he seems to have satisfied himself at last that it was more likely the drug should produce slightly different effects on different people than that a man should carry on such a deception for so long. Then came the news of the Neustrian revolution and Malasorte’s dictatorship, and Soudaroff must have seen immediately that his plans for making use of me were foiled. In a sense, all that had been done was useless, except as a matter of personal revenge, and he could not hope to do any successful trading with me in the future, since his Emperor had gone behind him and was in league with Malasorte, and Malasorte was in league with the Jews. I gathered that the plan now was to smuggle me into Pannonia and leave me in a lunatic asylum there, to be discovered or not by my friends, as circumstances might determine----” “No, sir,” said Mr Hicks quickly; “you were to be discovered. Mlle. Garanine took the trouble to come here on purpose to give the plan away to us.”