“Yes,” said the police officer; “they had better take her upstairs.  We will remain here and make inquiries.  This is a very queer affair—­to say the least,” he added, glancing suspiciously at Henfrey.

While the servants carried their unconscious mistress tenderly upstairs, the fussy little doctor went to the telephone to call Doctor Duponteil, the principal surgeon of Monaco.  He had hesitated whether to take the victim to the hospital, but had decided that the operation could be done just as effectively upstairs.  So, after speaking to Duponteil, he also spoke to the sister at the hospital, asking her to send up two nurses immediately to the Villa Amette.

In the meantime Inspector Ogier was closely questioning the young Englishman.

Like everyone in Monte Carlo he knew the mysterious Mademoiselle by sight.  More than once the suspicions of the police had been aroused against her.  Indeed, in the archives of the Prefecture there reposed a bulky dossier containing reports of her doings and those of her friends.  Yet there had never been anything which would warrant the authorities to forbid her from remaining in the Principality.

This tragedy, therefore, greatly interested Ogier and his colleague.  Both of them had spent many years in the service of the Paris Surete under the great Goron before being appointed to the responsible positions in the detective service of Monaco.

“Then you knew the lady?” Ogier asked of the young man who was naturally much upset over the startling affair, and the more so because the secret of his father’s mysterious death had been filched from him by the hand of some unknown assassin.

“No, I did not know her personally,” Henfrey replied somewhat lamely.  “I came to call upon her, and she received me.”

“Why did you call at this hour?  Could you not have called in the daytime?”

“Mademoiselle was in the Rooms until late,” he said.

“Ah!  Then you followed her home—­eh?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

The police officer pursed his lips and raised his eyes significantly at his colleague.

“And what was actually happening when the shot was fired?  Describe it to me, please,” he demanded.

“I was standing just here”—­and he crossed the room and stood upon the spot where he had been—­“Mademoiselle was over there beside the window.  I had my back to the window.  She was about to tell me something—­to answer a question I had put to her—­when someone from outside shot her through the open glass door.”

“And you did not see her assailant?”

“I saw nothing.  The shot startled me, and, seeing her staggering, I rushed to her.  In the meantime the assailant—­whoever he was—­disappeared!”

The brown-bearded man smiled dubiously.  As he stood beneath the electric light Hugh saw doubt written largely upon his countenance.  He instantly realized that Ogier disbelieved his story.