tims. I was now out
to obtain direct and undeniable evidence of his crimes.

Yet up to the present I could not go much further than mere surmise.
Two of his business friends, Count Chamartin and Baron van Veltrup,
had died quite suddenly. In the case of the latter, the valet
expressed a positive belief that his master had not died of natural
causes. This was supported by the fact that the Baron received a
mysterious visitor at an obscure hotel at The Hague, a man who was
apparently disguised by big horn spectacles, and was certainly not a
Dutchman.

And above all that, I held most conclusive evidence that both De Gex
himself and the dead bandit, Despujol, had used that deadly drug
orosin to secure their nefarious ends.

But the most irritating feature of the affair was that I was as far
off as ever from solving the mystery of what happened on that
memorable night in Stretton Street, or with what motive I had been
induced to give a death certificate that had enabled the body of an
unknown girl to be cremated.

I questioned the valet, Folcker, still further, telling him that I had
come especially from London to endeavour to elucidate the truth
concerning his master's death. He was devoted to the Baron, and was
highly incensed at the attitude taken by the Dutch police.

"I will give you every assistance, sir," he replied.

"Excellent," I said. "I would very much like to go to the Baron's
house. Could you take me there?"

"Most certainly, sir," was his response, and with willingness he
accompanied me in a horse cab up the cobbled Leidwche Straat with its
many canals to the pleasant Vondel Park, just outside the city. We
stopped before a great white house, square and rather inartistic,
standing back behind very high iron railings, to which we were
admitted by an elderly man-servant who was in charge of the place now
that its owner was dead.

Folcker showed me his master's handsome dressing-room which had been
left practically as it was on the night of his tragic end. He showed
me how the Baron had put on his evening clothes and descended to dine.

He took me into the fine, handsomely-furnished dining-room, with big
long carved table in the centre, and showed me the small round table
set in the big bow window looking out upon the garden, at which the
Baron always ate his meals when alone.

"After finishing his dinner the Baron smoked one of his Petroff
cigarettes which were especially made for him in Odessa, and