"Yes," she cried hoarsely, after the question had been repeated, "I killed him! I killed him because I was jealous! I thought that instead of coming to visit your Highness he, in reality, came to visit Miss Grainger. Therefore without knowing why I did it, I dashed into the room where Miss Grainger was at the piano and attacked her. The Prince rose quickly and stretched out his arm to save her. Then rushing upon him I stabbed him to the heart! Since that day," she added, in her low voice, scarcely audible, "since that day I have lived upon the meagre charity of Roesch, and yesterday came here to take up a position as Miss Grainger's maid." "Your interests were mutual in the preservation of your secret, therefore you resolved to adjust your differences and live together, eh?" remarked Hickman. She gave vent to a shrill peal of hideous laughter, as though there were something humorous in that grim and terrible tragedy. It jarred upon our nerves, but it also explained to us the ghastly truth. The woman Natalie Joliot was hopelessly insane. "Your Highness recognises the state of the wretched woman's mind," observed Edna Grainger, with a pitying look. "She has been so ever since the homicidal frenzy which seized her on that fatal night, and I have now taken her beneath my charge, for with me she is as docile as a child." The truth was a startling one. We all three stood by in wondering silence. The crime had been committed in a sudden access of madness by that miserable creature who could not be held responsible for her actions. "Roesch and Gechkuloff, with their elaborate preparations for the assassination of the heir to the Bulgarian throne, were murderers at heart, but, by that strange combination of circumstances which so often render truth stranger than fiction, their work was accomplished by another hand," I remarked. "There seems no doubt," said Edna, "that large sums were raised in London and in Paris upon the deed executed by the young Prince, who evidently had no knowledge of its true nature, and during the first six months before the hue-and-cry as to his disappearance all was plain sailing. When, however, suspicion arose that the heir had met with foul play they feared to continue using the deed, and hit upon the expedient of the concessions which I induced you to negotiate." "And these two men, Roesch and Gechkuloff, where are they?" inquired Hickman. "They were in England yesterday. The mystery surrounding the whereabouts of Prince Alexander has been used for political purposes in Bulgaria, with the result that the Ministry has been forced to resign. The defalcations of the head of the Treasury and his assistant being discovered, they were both forced to fly. They are, I believe, on their way to Australia." "We must arrest them," said Hickman briefly. "Such a pair of villains must, not be allowed to go scot free."