Beeton leant up against the mantelpiece and buried his face in his hands, whilst his shoulders shook convulsively.  He had evidently been greatly attached to his master, and I found something very pathetic in this breakdown of a physically strong man.  Smith laid his hands upon his shoulders.

“You have passed through a very trying ordeal,” he said, “and no man could have done his duty better; but forces beyond your control have proved too strong for you.  I am Nayland Smith.”

The man spun around with a surprising expression of relief upon his pale face.

“So that whatever can be done,” continued my friend, “to carry out your master’s wishes, will be done now.  Rely upon it.  Go into your room and lie down until we call you.”

“Thank you, sir, and thank God you are here,” said Beeton dazedly, and with one hand raised to his head he went, obediently, to the smaller bedroom and disappeared within.

“Now, Petrie,” rapped Smith, glancing around the littered floor, “since I am empowered to deal with this matter as I see fit, and since you are a medical man, we can devote the next half-hour, at any rate, to a strictly confidential inquiry into this most perplexing case.  I propose that you examine the body for any evidences that may assist you determining the cause of death, whilst I make a few inquiries here.”

I nodded, without speaking, and went into the bedroom.  It contained not one solitary item of the dead man’s belongings, and in every way bore out Beeton’s statement that Sir Gregory had never inhabited it.  I bent over Hale, as he lay fully dressed upon the bed.

Saving the singularity of the symptom which had immediately preceded death—­viz., the paralysis of the muscles of articulation—­I should have felt disposed to ascribe his end to sheer inanition; and a cursory examination brought to light nothing contradictory to that view.  Not being prepared to proceed further in the matter at the moment I was about to rejoin Smith, whom I could hear rummaging about amongst the litter of the outer room, when I made a curious discovery.

Lying in a fold of the disordered bed linen were a few petals of some kind of blossom, three of them still attached to a fragment of slender stalk.

I collected the tiny petals, mechanically, and held them in the palm of my hand studying them for some moments before the mystery of their presence there became fully appreciable to me.  Then I began to wonder.  The petals (which I was disposed to class as belonging to some species of Curcas or Physic Nut), though bruised, were fresh, and therefore could not have been in the room for many hours.  How had they been introduced, and by whom?  Above all, what could their presence there at that time portend?

“Smith,” I called, and walked towards the door carrying the mysterious fragments in my palm.  “Look what I have found upon the bed.”

Nayland Smith, who was bending over an open despatch case which he had placed upon a chair, turned—­and his glance fell upon the petals and tiny piece of stem.