ite and shaky, she neither shrieked, went into
hysterics, nor fainted. I remember rushing down to the manager; I
remember running with him breathlessly through obscure passages of
the hotel in search of a doctor who was attending a sick member of the
staff. I remember the rush back, the doctor bending over the body, which
Lola had partially unclothed, and saying:

"He is dead. The blade has gone straight through his heart."

And I have in my mind the unforgettable and awful picture of Anastasius
Papadopoulos disregarded in a corner of the room, with his absurd silk
hat on--some reflex impulse had caused him to pick it up and put it on
his head--sitting on the floor amid a welter of documents relating to
the death of the horse Sultan, one of which he was eagerly perusing.

After this my memory is clear. It was only the first awful shock and
horror of the thing that dazed me.

The man was dead, said the doctor. He must lie until the police arrived
and drew up the _proces-verbal_. The manager went to telephone to the
police, and while he was gone I told the doctor what had occurred.
Anastasius took no notice of us. Lola, holding her nerves under iron
control, stood bolt upright looking alternately at the doctor and
myself as we spoke. But she did not utter a word. Presently the manager
returned. The alarm had not been given in the hotel. No one knew
anything about the occurrence. Lola went into her bedroom and came back
with a sheet. The manager took it from her and threw it over the dead
man. The doctor stood by Anastasius. The end of a strip of sunlight by
the window just caught the dwarf in his corner.

"Get up," said the doctor.

Anastasius, without raising his eyes from his papers, waved him away.

"I am busy. I am engaged on important papers of identification. He had a
white star on his forehead, and his tail was over a metre long."

Lola approached him.

"Anastasius," she said gently. He looked up with a radiant smile. "Put
away those papers." Like a child he obeyed and scrambled to his feet.
Then, seeing the unfamiliar face of the doctor for the first time, he
executed one of his politest and most elaborate bows. The doctor after
looking at him intently for a while, turned to me.

"Mad. Utterly mad. Apparently he has no consciousness of what he has
done."

He lured him to the sofa and sat beside him and began to talk in a low
tone of the contents of the papers. Anastasius replied cheerfully, proud
at b