"Nor have I exceeded my duty as I conceive it," retorted the detective. "As your Lordship refused to honour me with your confidence, I had to find out the facts by other means; and you must surely realise that without facts it is impossible for me to construct a theory, and till I can do that my work is practically valueless." "But my wife has nothing to do with the case." "Quite so, my lord, but a lady who claimed to be her Ladyship is intimately concerned with it." "I repeat that is all nonsense." "If your Lordship will listen to me, I think I can prove to you that as far as the lady's identity is concerned, I have made no mistake. But to do this convincingly, I must reconstruct the tragedy as I conceive that it happened." "Go ahead; I don't mind hearing your theory." "First, I must ask you to take it for granted that I am right in believing that Prentice was ignorant of her Ladyship's flight." "I will admit that much," agreed Cyril. "Thank you, my lord. Now let us try and imagine exactly what was her Ladyship's position on the night of the murder. Her first care must have been to devise some means of eluding his Lordship's vigilance. This was a difficult problem, for Mustapha tells me that his Lordship was not only a very light sleeper but that he suffered from chronic insomnia. You may or may not know that his Lordship had long been addicted to the opium habit and would sometimes for days together lie in a stupor. Large quantities of the drug were found in his room and that explains how her Ladyship managed to get hold of the opium with which she doctored his Lordship's coffee." "This is, however, mere supposition on your part," objected Cyril. "Not at all, my lord. I had the sediment of the two cups analysed and the chemist found that one of them contained a small quantity of opium. Her Ladyship, being practically ignorant as to the exact nature of the drug and of the effect it would have on a man who was saturated with it, gave his Lordship too small a dose. Nevertheless, he became immediately stupefied." "Now, how on earth can you know that?" "Very easily, my lord. If his Lordship had not been rendered at once unconscious, he would--knowing that an attempt had been made to drug him--have sounded the alarm and deputed Mustapha to guard her Ladyship, which was what he always did when he knew that he was not equal to the task." "Well, that sounds plausible, at all events," acknowledged Cyril. "As soon as her Ladyship knew that she was no longer watched," continued the detective, "she at once set to work to disguise herself. As we know, she had provided herself with clothes, but I fancy her hair, her most noticeable feature, must have caused her some anxious moments."