determined to make an effort to get up. To his surprise
he met with no resistance and easily climbed out of the sort of box in
which he had been lying.

As his eyes became accustomed to the semi-obscurity, he started upon
seeing the bed he had been lying in. It was a coffin.

Juve then shuddered at the thought of the horrible death he might have
undergone. He might have been buried alive! But a further surprise was
in store for him. Not far away stood another coffin, and in this second
one lay a corpse.

The dead man was about fifty, strongly built and robust. A small clot of
blood had congealed on his temple and this was enough to show Juve the
cause of his death.

He had been shot through the head with a revolver, and his death had
been instantaneous. The rigidity of the body showed that the crime had
been committed some time before. And then he made a still further
discovery. By the side of the coffin lay a pile of clothes, and to
Juve's amazement he recognized them as being his own!

"Well," he exclaimed, "there can be no harm in putting them on, since
they are mine." A further search disclosed, tucked away in a corner of
the coffin, his pocketbook. Not only that, but some generous person had
stuffed it literally full of bank notes, and in a small pocket he also
found a first-class ticket from Glotzbourg to the frontier.

"What on earth does all this mean?" he exclaimed.

A search of his erstwhile bed now brought to light a sheet torn from a
railway time-table, upon which a certain train was underscored in red
ink. From another corner of the coffin he brought out a false beard and
a pair of yellow spectacles! In a twinkling Juve dressed himself and
crossing to the door, pushed it open and looked out.

"The deuce!" he cried, "that's a funereal outlook!"

Before him stretched away on all sides ... tombstones! tombstones big
and little--some with crosses, others with crowns and flowers.

Juve was in a cemetery, and the strange room in which he found himself
was the mortuary chapel. Nothing disturbed the impressive silence of
this vast resting place. In the distance a clock struck five, and far
off Juve perceived the silhouette of the Glotzbourg Cathedral.

The detective pulled himself together and began to piece out by his
well-known habit of induction some solution to this incomprehensible
mystery.

"To begin with," he exclaimed, "my being still alive is evidently due
to the will of my adversaries. It is