"Did you know any thing of him?"
"Nothing. He was a nobody, I believe. A man of ample means, but of no social standing."
"His life was a social mystery; and it is in that mysterious existence that I find an interest surpassing anything I have hitherto met with in the history of crime."
"Really!" exclaimed Julian Wyllard, with something of a sneer in his tone. "I perceive you have begun the business of amateur detective on a large scale. I understood from Dora that you were coming to Paris solely with a view to finding out anything there was to be discovered about that poor little girl who tumbled off the viaduct, and whom, I think, you call Louise Lemarque."
"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."