"What has happened ?" he asked quietly.
"Something terrible." With shaking fingers Wethermill held out a newspaper.

"Read it," he said.
It was a special edition of a local newspaper, Le Journal de Savoie, and it bore the date of that morning.
"They are crying it in the streets," said Wethermill.

"Read!" A short paragraph was printed in large black letters on the first page, and leaped to the eyes.
"Late last night," it ran, "an appalling murder was committed at the Villa Rose, on the road to Lac Bourget.Mme.Camille Dauvray, an elderly, rich woman who was well known at Aix, and had occupied the villa every summer for the last few years, was discovered on the floor of her salon, fully dressed and brutally strangled, while upstairs, her maid, Helene Vauquier, was found in bed, chloroformed, with her hands tied securely behind her back.

At the time of going to press she had not recovered consciousness, but the doctor, Emile Peytin, is in attendance upon her, and it is hoped that she will be able shortly to throw some light on this dastardly affair.

The police are properly reticent as to the details of the crime, but the following statement may be accepted without hesitation: "The murder was discovered at twelve o'clock at night by the sergent-de-ville Perrichet, to whose intelligence more than a word of praise is due, and it is obvious from the absence of all marks upon the door and windows that the murderer was admitted from within the villa.
Meanwhile Mme.