I'm a stranger.

I know nothing--I was summoned and found a man lying dead on the floor in that room"-- he pointed to the study--"and a woman in a dreadful state.

I've only had time to make sure that the poor fellow was dead.

Could you tell me something about them ?" So we told him, the three of us together, as people will, who Adrian Boldero was, and how he and his genius were all this world and a bit of the next to his wife.

How I managed to talk sensibly I don't know, for beating against the walls of my head was the thought that Adrian lay there in the room where I had seen the strange woman, lifeless and stiff, with the laughing eyes forever closed and the last mockery gone from his lips.