"Léonie Lemarque. That was the girl's name. Léonie Lemarque's death is only the last link in a chain of events beginning with the murder of Marie Prévol." Julian Wyllard started impatiently from his chair. "My dear Heathcote, I thought you the most sensible man I ever met, but really this sounds like rank lunacy. What in Heaven's name can the murder at Saint-Germain ten years ago have to do with the death of that girl the other day?" "Only this much. Léonie Lemarque was Marie Prévol's niece: and I have the strongest reason for believing that she went to London to meet the murderer of her aunt." CHAPTER VI. STRUCK DOWN. As Edward Heathcote uttered those words, the conviction of their truth flashed into his mind. In thoughtful days and wakeful nights this question as to the identity of the person who was to meet Léonie Lemarque at the railway-station had been a perplexity to him, the subject of many a new theory: and now it came upon him all at once that this assertion, which he had made on the spur of the moment, in the heat of argument, was the true solution of the mystery. It was to Georges himself--her daughter's generous adoring lover, her daughter's suspected murderer--that Madame Lemarque had sent her granddaughter, as to one who, of all other men, would be most inclined to act generously to the orphan girl, were it only in remorse for his crime. He tried to realise the thoughts of the lonely old woman, dying in penury, leaving her orphan grandchild to face the world without a friend. She would go over the list of those whom she had known in the past--those who were rich enough to be generous. Alas! how few there are who remain the friends of poverty! One man she had known of, although she had never seen him--rich, generous to lavishness. She had at one time believed him to be the murderer of her daughter. But it might be that she had afterwards modified her opinion, that she had received some communication from this Georges, that he had assured her of his innocence, that he had sent her money, had helped her to struggle on against adverse times, had helped her for a while, and then grown weary. And she, knowing the place of his exile, had, in her desperation, determined upon committing her grandchild to this man's care; rather than to the pitiless world of strange faces and careless hearts, the outside world, to which one helpless girl the more is but as one drop in the ocean of sorrowing humanity. She had sent Léonie Lemarque to meet this man, and the girl had recognised the murderer of her aunt. And yet this could hardly be, since the cabman's evidence showed that Léonie had been on the best possible terms with the person in whose company she drove to Paddington Station. After that speech of his, Edward Heathcote had no longer the power to withhold any details of his investigation from Julian Wyllard and his wife. He told them in fewest words all that he had discovered since he crossed the Channel.