They were quite unanimous on the point.
"Did the Grand Duke make any statement at the time of the seizure
which would confirm the theory of a heart attack?"
No. He had fallen down unconscious outside the door of his box, and
from this unconsciousness he had never recovered. (Depositions of
witnesses, medical evidence and other documents are available for
the guidance of whoever may care to see them, but, as is well known,
the death of the Grand Duke was ascribed to natural causes and it
seemed as though my trouble would after all prove to be in vain.)
Let us see what happened.
Leaving the hotel, on the night of the Grand Duke's death, I joined
the man who was watching the cafe telephone.
There had been a message during the course of the evening, but it had
been for a Greek cigarette-maker and it referred to the theft of
several bales of Turkish tobacco--useful information, of minor kind,
but of little interest to me. I knew that it would be useless to
question the man Miguel, although I strongly suspected him of being
a member of "The Scorpion's" organization. Any patron of the
establishment enjoyed the privilege of receiving private telephone
calls at the cafe on payment of a small fee.
A man of less experience in obscure criminology might now have assumed
that he had been misled by a series of striking coincidences. Remember,
there was not a shadow of doubt in the minds of the medical experts
that the Grand Duke had died from syncope.
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