Little happened during the rest of the day, which I spent in the laboratory, while Craig checked up the results of his previous observations on the case.

Toward the end of the afternoon I strolled out, uncertain just what to do. On the street I saw a boy selling papers and I called to him.

As my eye fell on a black head-line I fairly jumped with surprise. I read it again, hardly able to believe it. It was a startling bit of news that stared me in the face.

Vina Lathrop had committed suicide at the Sainte-Germaine!

Practically the whole story was told in the head-lines—that is, all except what little we knew. I turned the pages quickly. Belle Balcom had got in her brief interview with Vina, but it contained nothing new, either.

As I hastened back to the laboratory there ran through my mind the swift succession of events of the morning—our learning of the separation, the visit to the hotel, the meeting, the coming of Belle [262] Balcom, and finally the appearance of Doyle. Without a doubt it was this succession of events that had convinced Vina that there was no escape from the social disgrace that awaited her after the action of Doctor Lathrop.

"What do you think?" I almost shouted, as I burst into the laboratory and threw the paper before Craig, who was still at work in his acid-stained smock. "And, do you know, often I had almost come to regard Vina as a possible suspect in the case, too! Could I have been right? Is it a confession?"

Kennedy read the news item, then tore off his smock and reached for his hat and coat.

"I\'ll admit that suicide might be taken as a confession, as a general rule," he exclaimed. "But it\'s not so in this case. Come—we must get over to the hotel. I doubt whether half the story can be known, even by this time. I wish I had been informed of this earlier. However, maybe it won\'t make any difference."

It did not take us many minutes to get down to the fashionable hotel, nor long to get up to the room from which, in spite of the demands of the hotel people, the body had not been removed.

Leslie, already notified in the course of the city routine, had arrived perhaps five minutes before us.

"I was out on a case," he explained. "When I got back to the office I saw the police notification. But you had already left when I tried to call you up."
[263]

I looked about. There was great excitement among the guests and employees on the floor on which Vina had taken her rather cheap and unpretentious room. But in all the group I could not see one familiar face, except that of Doyle, who had arrived just a few moments before Leslie.

"Has Doctor Lathrop been told?" asked Kennedy.

"Yes, but he didn\'t show any emotion. He has given orders that everything necessary must be done. But he absolutely refuses to allow the funeral to take place from his apartment. He insists that it must be from a private establishment. Even in death he will not forgive her. Said he would be over—but he hasn\'t come yet. I doubt whether he will. Her relatives live in the Middle West. He did give orders that they were to be notified."

"What was the cause of death?" asked Craig.

Leslie looked at him significantly. "I wanted your advice on that," he remarked. "Look."

He had led Kennedy over to the white bed on which the body of Vina lay.

"The eyes show the characteristic contraction of the pupils that I have come to recognize as from physostigmine. In fact, I don\'t think there can be much doubt about it in this case. What do you think?"

Kennedy bent over and examined the body.

"I quite agree with you," he added, as he rose. "It is a case of the same poisoning—only I think not by the bean this time, but by the pure drug."
[264]

"Where do you suppose she got it?" asked Doyle. "I\'ll try to trace it in some of the drugstores to make sure."

"Craig," I exclaimed, "do you recall that Doctor Lathrop said he had no use for the bean itself, but that naturally in his medicine-chest he had the drug? She heard us talking the thing over that time when we visited them. Without a doubt it was where she got it—that is," I corrected, "where she might have got it."

Kennedy nodded.

"No doubt you are right. It\'s a case of suicide by suggestion. She heard of the drug—and tried it. It\'s the way they all do. Suicide is a sort of insanity. If one person uses bichloride tablets, you find that a dozen, learning of it, do the same. It\'s a curious bit of psychology."

"I agree with you," chimed in Leslie. "This was a case of the use of the pure alkaloid. Nothing else could have acted so swiftly—and everything indicates swift action. The chambermaid had been in the room only a few minutes before. Then when she knocked on the door again she got no answer. She thought there was something strange about it, for she was sure that Mrs. Lathrop had not gone out. So she tried the door. It was locked. But through the keyhole she could see that Vina had fallen across the foot of the bed. She screamed and then they got the pass key and opened the door."

Kennedy had gone over to the window and was [265] looking out. On a little roof below he pointed out something gleaming. Even from where we were we could see that it was a plain little vial.

"More than likely she took some of the drug from her husband\'s office," he commented. "By every indication the act was premeditated—or at least she contemplated doing it."

We glanced at each other, then at the former lovely form on the lonely bed, as the undertaker, sent by her husband, prepared to carry out the last offices, now that Doctor Leslie had given his permission.

"What about this new development?" asked Leslie at length of Kennedy. "Does it affect your plans at all?"

"Very much," asserted Kennedy, energetically. "It forces my hand. Now I must act immediately."

For a moment he stood, planning hastily just what to do.

"I\'m going to try a little piece of psychology," he decided, finally, turning to us. "There are many things I need to know yet. For one thing, I\'m not exactly sure just how much Mrs. Wilford actually knew about her husband and Vina Lathrop—not what she suspected or guessed. Oh, there are innumerable points that must be cleared up. I know no better or quicker way than to get them all together at once at my laboratory. Then I am sure that we can straighten this thing out quickly."

He paused and looked about us.

"Now," he added, assuming direction of affairs, [266] with the tacit consent of both Doyle and Leslie, "I want each of you to help me. You, Walter, perhaps will be the best one to go after Mrs. Wilford. But don\'t, for Heaven\'s sake, tell her anything—except that it has been discovered that Vina Lathrop is a suicide.

"Doyle, you have worked some parts of the case up to a final point—in your own mind. I delegate you to go after Mr. Shattuck and bring him to the laboratory."

"Very well," agreed Doyle, with alacrity. "I don\'t mind that duty." He almost grinned.

Nor did I imagine that he did. Shattuck had made himself particularly obnoxious to Doyle and I fancied that Doyle would take a particular pleasure in this errand, especially as it might lead to the humiliation, or worse, of Shattuck.

"You, Leslie, as a doctor, I think would be the best to go after Doctor Lathrop," ordered Kennedy. "And all of you are to remember you are not to talk of the case, but merely to compel the attendance of the persons you are sent after. If they refuse or resist, you know where to get the authority to coerce them. But I don\'t think any of them will. It would look badly."

As we parted, I jumped into a taxicab. I felt sure now that something must break. In spite of all the discouragements, I saw that Kennedy had been biding his time. He had seemed to be quite willing to wait, much more so than either Doyle or Leslie. I had realized some time before what [267] his game was. Anything might have happened to unmask some one. The death of Vina was that thing. Now was the time to follow up his surprise attack.

While we were gone, Craig hurried to the laboratory and there completed some simple preparations for our reception. From his cabinet he took and adjusted several little instruments, with an attachment that could be placed about the wrist, like a cuff or strap. These cuffs were hollow and from each ran a tube attached to an indicator. Both the hollow cuffs and the tubes were filled with a colored liquid which registered on a scale on the indicator part. But I anticipate my story.

I found my end of the duty far from pleasant, although under other circumstances, suspicion or not of Honora, I should have enjoyed an opportunity to meet her.

In spite of her feeling against Vina, the first news as I broke it to her came............