Attached to it was a little bath and directly across from the bath, on
the other side, was another small room which was occupied by her maid,
Cecilie, a French girl.

In the main bedroom was a double bed, a couch, a wardrobe, and a small,
thin-legged writing or dressing table.

On the white bed lay the now cold and marble figure of the once
vivacious little dancer who had enchanted thousands in life--petite,
brunette, voluptuous. Rawaruska was beautiful, even in death.

Her finely chiseled features, lacking that heaviness which often
characterizes European women, were, however, terribly drawn and her
perfect complexion on which she had prided herself was now all mottled
and bluish.

As Kennedy examined the body, I could not help observing that there
seemed to be every evidence that the girl had been asphyxiated in some
strange manner.

Had it been by a deft touch on a nerve of her beautiful, soft neck that
had constricted the throat and cut off her breath? I had heard of such
things. Or had it been asphyxiation due to a poison that had paralyzed
the chest muscles?

The purser, as soon as we came aboard, had summoned the ship's surgeon,
and we had scarcely arrived at Rawaruska's room when he joined us. He
was one of those solid, reliable doctors, not brilliant, but one in whom
you might place great confidence, a Dr. Sanderson, educated in
Edinburgh, and long a follower of the sea.

"Was there any evidence of a struggle?" asked Kennedy.

"No, none whatever," replied the doctor.

"No peculiar odor, no receptacle of any kind near her that might have
held poison?"

"No, nothing that could have been used to hold poison or a drug."

Kennedy was regarding the face of the little dancer attentively. "Most
extraordinary," he remarked slowly, "that congested look she has."

"Yes," agreed Dr. Sanderson, "her face was flushed and blue when I got
to her--cyanotic, I should say. There seemed to be a great dryness of
her throat and the muscles of her throat were paretic. Her pupils were
dilated, too, and her pulse was rapid, as if from a greatly increased
blood pressure."

"Was she conscious?" asked Kennedy, almost reverently turning over her
rigid body and looking at the back of her neck and the upper spine. "Did
she recognize anything, say anything?"

"She seemed to be in a state of amnesia," replied Sanderson slowly.
"Evidently if she had seen anything she had forgotten or wouldn't tell,"
he added cautiously.