I paused, put down the newspaper, and looked at St. Nivel.
"Yes," he said, interpreting my look; "you will be troubled with him no more in this world; he's dead. Read it and see."
I took up the paper and read on—
"MUNICH, Tuesday.
"Considerable consternation was caused this morning in the Castle of Rittersheim and its neighbourhood upon the fact becoming known that His Serene Highness the Duke had passed away during the night. It appears that the Duke has been in bad health ever since his return from England two months ago, where he had the misfortune to break his arm; he suffered also the loss of a very dear friend, in Mr. Summers, an American gentleman who, for some time, had been acting as his secretary, and whose body, it will be remembered, was found under very mysterious circumstances, at the time the Duke left England, in a tunnel on the Great Western Railway, just after the Bath express had passed through, in which train it is known Mr. Summers had been travelling with an elderly gentleman. A rumour concerning the connection of Mr. Summers with a murder which had taken place in the Bath train seems to have preyed on the Duke's mind, and he has been unable to sleep for some weeks past.
"It is presumed that for this reason he had commenced the habit of injecting morphia, as a large hypodermic syringe, with an empty morphia bottle, were found beside his dead body. The general opinion is, that he succumbed to an overdose."
"Well, what do you think," asked St. Nivel, as I laid down the paper, "accident or suicide?"
"It is impossible to say," I replied. "Nobody can tell, and I should think that will be one of the problems which will go down to posterity unsolved."
"As unsolved, I suppose," he answered, "as the mystery of your old lady of Bath?"
That was a subject I had barred since my pledge to Don Juan. "Who can tell?" I answered with a shrug of the shoulders, "I have given it up. I never think of it."