Having ordered everyone out of the room except Henfrey, he bent and made an examination of the prostrate woman.

“Ah! m’sieur,” he said, “the unfortunate lady has certainly been shot at close quarters.  The wound is, I tell you at once, extremely dangerous,” he added, after a searching investigation.  “But she is still alive,” he declared.  “Yes—­she is still breathing.”

“Still alive!” gasped Henfrey.  “That’s excellent!  I—­I feared that she was dead!”

“No.  She still breathes,” the doctor replied.  “But, tell me exactly what has occurred.  First, however, we will get them to remove her upstairs.  I will telephone to my colleague Duponteil, and we will endeavour to extract the bullet.”

“But will she recover, doctor?” asked Hugh eagerly in French.  “What do you think?”

The little man became serious and shook his head gravely.

“Ah! m’sieur, that I cannot say,” was his reply.  “She is in a very grave state—­very!  And the brain may be affected.”

Hugh held his breath. Surely Yvonne Ferad was not to die with the secret upon her lips!

At the doctor’s orders the servants were about to remove their mistress to her room when two well-dressed men of official aspect entered.  They were officers of the Bureau of Police.

“Stop!” cried the elder, who was the one in authority, a tall, lantern-jawed man with a dark brown beard and yellow teeth.  “Do not touch that lady!  What has happened here?”

Hugh came forward, and in his best French explained the circumstances of the tragedy—­how Mademoiselle had been shot in his presence by an unknown hand.

“The assassin, whoever he was, stood out yonder—­upon the veranda—­but I never saw him,” he added.  “It was all over in a second—­and he has escaped!”

“And pray who are you?” demanded the police officer bluntly.  “Please explain.”

Hugh was rather nonplussed.  The question required explanation, no doubt.  It would, he saw, appear very curious that he should visit Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo at that late hour.

“I—­well, I called upon Mademoiselle because I wished to obtain some important information from her.”

“What information?  Rather late for a call, surely?”

The young Englishman hesitated.  Then, with true British grit, he assumed an attitude of boldness, and asked: 

“Am I compelled to answer that question?”

“I am Charles Ogier, chief inspector of the Surete of Monaco, and I press for a reply,” answered the other firmly.

“And I, Hugh Henfrey, a British subject, at present decline to satisfy you,” was the young man’s bold response.

“Is the lady still alive?” inquired the inspector of Doctor Leneveu.

“Yes.  I have ordered her to be taken up to her room—­of course, when m’sieur the inspector gives permission.”

Ogier looked at the deathly countenance with the closed eyes, and noted that the wound in the skull had been bound up with a cotton handkerchief belonging to one of the maids.  Mademoiselle’s dark well-dressed hair had become unbound and was straying across her face, while her handsome gown had been torn in the attempt to unloosen her corsets.