"Anthony Winton, do you mean? Yes, of course I do. If my memory holds right, he is the son of a California millionaire, and with a pretty taste in jewels. Made a hobby of outlandish settings, photographs were in the _Connoisseur_. The woman who marries him will never go short of unique jewels. Wasn't he to have been married to-day, by the way, according to the papers?" "'Was' is the correct word, Cleek," said Narkom in a hushed tone. "There will be no wedding for him, poor chap. The man has been murdered----" "Murdered!" Cleek interrupted, sitting up suddenly. "Winton murdered! How? When?" "Last night," said Narkom. "Robbery is supposed to have been the motive, and suspicion points in half-a-dozen directions." "What has been stolen, something from his collection?" "Yes. As you yourself said, he had a mania for queer jewels, and the one that is missing is the queerest of the lot--rubies mounted on a stem. A Burmese thing, known as the 'Rose of Fire,' made of priceless pigeon-blood rubies, and supposed to have been stolen from the temple of Buddha in Mandalay. "I was told it was a rose with ruby petals and emerald stem and worth thousands." "Of course; everyone knows of it. Thousands won't replace it," said Cleek. "Its historical value alone makes it priceless. It is supposed to have belonged to Buddha himself. But to come back to Winton. How was he killed? Stabbed? Shot?" "I can't say for certain," said Narkom, "save that he was certainly not shot or stabbed. There is no mark or blemish on the body at all. All that is positive, according to the doctor, who did not arrive until after his death, is that he had been asphyxiated by some unknown fumes. He was found by his servant, who says he heard him struggling with an assailant, but when he forced the door in, the room was empty, the windows shut, and he was only just in time to reach his master and hear him say with his last gasp 'Death's Head!' Then he fell back, dead as the skeleton to which he pointed." "'Death's Head'," repeated Cleek, knitting his brows. "Does anybody know what he meant?" "Not unless he was still thinking of his words with Miss Parradine, the bride-to-be." "What had she to do with it?" asked Cleek. "A great deal, I should say. As you know, Winton had queer taste in jewels and it seems that he had had some of his finest diamonds mounted in skull-and-crossbones brooches as his present to the bride and as bridesmaid gifts. He was obsessed with breaking superstitions--insisted on sitting down thirteen at table when possible, had the knives crossed, had skull and crossbones on his notepaper and cutlery. He defied, in fact, every legend and superstition known, even to having a skeleton present at the table." "H'm, cheerful companion! Every man has some whim, but for a young man all this was peculiar, to say the least of it. I suppose he wanted his future wife to indulge in the same tricks, eh?"