IT was after ten the next morning that Raymond, the butler, made the discovery. Knocking at the door of Sir Anthony’s room and receiving no answer, he opened it, and found the body of the valet.

Had Raymond, instead of calling in the policeman on point duty at the corner, telephoned instead to New Scotland Yard, he would have found coming, as a reply, neither Inspector Alanson or Fairchild, both being away on duty. He would have found a much younger man acting as their locum tenens. A clean-shaved, almost boyish person, suggestive of a café waiter in his Sunday clothes. In other words, he would have found Gustave Freyberger, then unknown, now a European celebrity.

Freyberger, a naturalized Englishman, was exactly twenty-six years of age when the Gyde case fell into his hands like a gift from heaven and it fell into his hands at half-past ten in the morning, heralded by the ringing of the bell of the telephone connecting Marlborough Street Police Station and New Scotland Yard.

It was half-past ten exactly when the message came through, and the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, who had just arrived, received it in person.

“Who’s on duty?” he asked, and on being told “Freyberger,” sent for him.

“Take a cab,” he said, “and go at once to 110B Piccadilly—man dead there—make your report to me personally here as soon as possible.”

“As soon as possible,” answered Freyberger, and, taking his hat and overcoat from the waiting-room, he ran swiftly down the two flights of stairs, across the hall, and into the street. There was nothing to indicate that tragedy stood behind the solid and respectable oak doors of No. 110B. They were opened by a policeman, and the detective, having entered, they were immediately shut.

“You have touched nothing, altered nothing, meddled with nothing, I hope,” said Freyberger, as he slipped out of his overcoat.

“Nothing,” replied the man in blue. “The corpse is just where it fell when it expired.”

“Who sent for you?”

“The butler.”

“Call him up.”

The officer of the law disappeared for a moment, and then returned, followed by Raymond. Raymond was very white and shaky, and had evidently been fortifying himself with strong waters, but he was quite capable of telling what he knew.

In a few words he told how Sir Anthony, his valet and secretary, had arrived the night before; how the household had retired to rest; how he had received instructions from the secretary, Mr Folgam, not to allow him to be awakened till ten.

How he had searched for Leloir, without finding him, to tell him of this order; how he had gone into the bedroom to find Leloir lying dead on the floor, and Sir Anthony gone.

“Gone!” said Freyberger.

“The bed had not been slept in,” replied the other.

“Before proceeding further I will go up and see the body,” said the detective. Raymond led the way, and Freyberger followed him to the fatal bedroom; bending over the body was a tall, clean-shaved man.

“Dr Murrell,” said Raymond.

The doctor rose to his full height, and exposed what he had been bending over. It was a sight that gave even Freyberger a thrill.

He introduced himself. “I can’t find a trace of injury,” said the police surgeon.

“What do you think he died of?”

“Fright,” replied Dr Murrell. “Most possibly he had a weak heart, we will see at the autopsy; but it was fright that killed him—look at his face.”

Now Freyberger was a junior man at the Yard. He recognized at once that this case was no ordinary case of a man being found dead. The position of Gyde, his great place in the world, his absence, and the extraordinary death of his valet, conspired to make it an affair of the first importance.

A weak man might have sent for assistance, but he was not a weak man by any manner of means, and as he stood looking at the object on the floor, it seemed to him that he could hear the waters of that flood that leads on to fortune.

In a moment he had made up his mind. Leaving the corpse exactly where it lay, he withdrew downstairs to the dining-room, asking the people around to accompany him.

He shut the dining-room door and began to interrogate Raymond.

“How many people slept in the house last night?”

“Sir Anthony, sir, myself, the secretary, Mr Folgam, Leloir and the servants.” Then, answering the questions of the detective, he told nearly all that we know.

As he was finishing, the door opened, and Mr Folgam came in; divining the presence of the law he introduced himself, and told of the cry he had heard and of how he had met Sir Anthony dressed, apparently, for going out.

“In what state was the front door this morning,” asked Freyberger of Raymond.

“The chain was undone, sir, all the bolts drawn, and the door held only by the latch.”

“Had Sir Anthony any valuables in the house?”

“His jewels, sir, in the big Morocco case he always carries about with him travelling; he keep............