"People who take their own lives sometimes have curious hallucinations. I have known many. Suicide is a fascinating, if very grim study."

"Then you really think this is a case of suicide?"

"I can, I fear, give no opinion until after the post-mortem, Mr Sainsbury," was Sir Houston's guarded reply, his face grave and thoughtful.

"But it is all so strange, so remarkable," exclaimed the younger man. "Why did he tell me that he'd been shot, if he hadn't?"

"Because to you, his most intimate friend, he perhaps, as you suggested, wished to conceal the fact that he had been guilty of the cowardly action of taking his own life," was the reply.

"It is a mystery--a profound mystery," declared Jack Sainsbury. "Jerome dined with Mr Trustram, and the latter came back here with him. Meanwhile, Mr Lewin Rodwell was very anxious concerning him. Why? Was Rodwell a friend of Jerome's? Do you happen to know that?"

"I happen to know to the contrary," declared the great pathologist. "Only a week ago we met at Charing Cross Hospital, and some chance remark brought up Rodwell's name when Jerrold burst forth angrily, and declared most emphatically that the man who posed as such a patriotic Englishman would, one day, be unmasked and exposed in his true colors. In confidence, he made an allegation that Lewin Rodwell's real name was Ludwig Heitzman and that he was born in Hanover. He had become a naturalized Englishman ten years ago in Glasgow, and had, by deed-poll, changed his name to Lewin Rodwell."

Jack Sainsbury stared the speaker full in the face.

Lewin Rodwell, the great patriot who, since the outbreak of war, had been in the forefront of every charitable movement, who had been belauded by the Press, and to whom the Prime Minister had referred in the most eulogistic terms in the House of Commons, was a German!

"That's utterly impossible," exclaimed Jack. "He is one of the directors of the Ochrida Copper Corporation, in whose office I am. I know Mr Rodwell well. There's no trace whatever of German birth about him."

"Jerrold assured me that his real name was Heitzman, that he had been born of poor parents, and had been educated by an English shipping-agent in Hamburg, who had adopted him and sent him to England. On the Englishman's death, he inherited about two thousand pounds, which he 

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