"You nearly fell as you sat down," she said gravely. "Melusine, bring me the blue casket." It was a diminutive box in blue enamel. What heathen stimulant could it contain? As soon as I had inhaled it at Aurora's bidding, I started as if I'd had an electric shock. "There!" she said, "you're better already." And added: "Begin as soon as you feel you can. We're listening." I told her everything you already know, from my first researches into the Königsmark drama to the final climax, my visit to the secret chamber in the armoury and my sinister discovery. From beginning to end she listened, calm and self-possessed, only occasionally exchanging with Melusine a glance which revealed astonishment rather than emotion. When I had finished she did not speak for a moment, and then said quietly: "You have told us an extraordinary exciting story, but you mustn't be surprised to hear that it does not arouse any other emotion in me. There's one thing I admit, which comes as rather a shock: the fact that at Lautenburg you have found a skeleton in the very same place where there must be one in the palace of Hanover. But what does it prove, granting that natural death is out of the question, but that the old Dukes of Lautenburg had no greater respect for human life than their Hanoverian neighbours? I have always thought so, and it's no great surprise." "But it isn't the presence of the skeleton which has been such a shock, madame," I answered. "What is it, then?" she said, in that slightly scornful tone she immediately assumed when she thought you were trying to mystify her. "It is," I said simply, but picking my words carefully, "that I had in my hands the right tibia of the corpse which was concealed there, and that in the middle of that tibia, on its outer surface, was the join of an old fracture." Aurora was standing now. She was pressing her hands to her temples. She had turned deadly pale. Her staring eyes grew bigger and bigger. "You're mad! You're mad!" she screamed. "Melusine, tell him he's mad!" Fräulein von Graffenfried rushed to the Grand Duchess, who had fallen back, rigid, on the sofa. Her eyelids were half closed. I read inexpressible terror in the look she gave me. "Mad! Mad!" she screamed again. "He's at Sangha. I have his letters. Sangha!" "At Sangha! At Sangha!" the heartrending voice rang out again. "I've only done what I thought was my duty," I murmured to Melusine, helping her to get her mistress to inhale the little blue casket. The kind creature gave me a look charged with meaning, as much as to say: "I know it, you've no need to apologize." "Don't be alarmed," she said in an undertone. "Her brain fever has left her extremely sensitive. And you must admit there's good reason on this occasion. Look, she's coming round."