Dinner, even though a stately affair, was quite a pleasant function, for the old millionaire was most unassuming and affable. One of his eccentricities displayed itself in his dress. His dining-jacket was old and quite glossy about the back and elbows, he wore a paper collar, his white tie showed unmistakable signs of having done duty on at least a dozen previous occasions, and across his vest was suspended an albert, not of gold but of rusty steel. There had never been any pretence about Ben Keppel in his earlier days, as all the world knew, and there was certainly none in these days of his affluence. He had amassed his fabulous fortune by shrewdness and sheer hard work, and he despised the whole of that chattering little ring which calls itself Society. Ere I had been an hour in this man’s society I grew to like him for his honest plain-spokenness. He possessed none of that sarcastic arrogance which generally characterizes those whose fortunes are noteworthy, but in conversation spoke softly, with a carefully cultivated air of refinement. Not that he was refined in the least. He had gone to the States as an emigrant from a little village in Norfolk, and had succeeded by reason of several striking inventions in the manufacture of steel in amassing the third largest fortune in the United States. He sat at the head of the table in his great dining-room, while Ulrica and myself sat on either hand. As a matter of course, our conversation turned upon the mysterious death of poor Reggie, and both of us gave him the exact version of the story. “Most extraordinary!” he ejaculated. “Gerald has already explained the painful facts to me. There seems no doubt whatever that the poor fellow was murdered for the money. Yet to me the strangest part of the whole affair is why he should have left you so suddenly at the Hermitage. If he changed the money for large notes, as we may suppose he did, why didn’t he return to you?” “Because he must in the meantime have met someone,” I suggested. “That’s just it,” he said. “If the police could but discover the identity of the friend, then I feel convinced that all the remainder would be plain sailing.” “But, my dear guv’nor, the police hold the theory that he did not meet anyone until he arrived in Nice,” Gerald observed. “The police here are a confounded set of idiots,” cried the old millionaire. “If it had occurred in New York or Chicago, or even in Pittsburg, they would have arrested the murderer long before this. Here, in France, there’s too much confounded controle.” “I expect if the truth were known,” observed Miss Keppel in her thin, squeaky voice, “the authorities of Monaco don’t relish the idea that a man should be followed and murdered after successful play, and they won’t help the Nice police at all.”