“You were here on that fatal morning, and you then told me a fact which has puzzled me ever since, namely, that my poor friend committed suicide at Monte Carlo months before. Do you not think you were mistaken, when you recollect that he died only half an hour after you left me?”
“What I told you was the truth,” she replied. “I was present when he took his own life.”
“At Monte Carlo?”
“At Monte Carlo!”
“Well, how do you account for the fact that for six or seven months afterwards he was here, in London, occupying his seat in the House of Commons, and mixing with his friends, when, if what you say is truth, he was then lying in a grave in the suicides’ cemetery at La Turbie?”
“I do not attempt to reason,” she responded, in a voice which sounded so strange that it appeared far distant, while the cup she still held was shaken by a slight tremor. “I only tell you the true facts. It was myself who identified your friend, and gave his name to the Administration of the Casino.”
“And you say he killed himself because he lost everything?”
“That is what I surmise. Those who have good fortune at the tables do not generally seek the last extremity.”
“But I knew nothing of his visit there. Even his man was in ignorance,” I said. “I cannot help thinking that there must be some mistake. It must have been a man who resembled him.”
“I know that he went to the Riviera secretly.”