ortunity like that some day."

"Some day! Yes, some day! I believe there is a song that begins that
way. I always detested it. I do not like that word 'some day.' It's so
beastly indefinite. I prefer 'to-day' or even 'to-morrow.' But let me
read to you the account of this case. It is about that young woman who
died so mysteriously, up in the boarding-house on West Twenty-sixth
Street."

"I don't know anything about it, Robert. I haven't read the papers for
three days. Tell me the main facts."

"Well, it is really a very curious story. It seems there was a young
girl, twenty or thereabouts, living in town temporarily, whilst she
studied music. Her name was Mabel Sloane. She is described as pretty,
though that is a detail that the reporters always add. But, pretty or
ugly, she died last Sunday morning, under rather peculiar
circumstances. The doctors differed as to the cause of death."

"Why, there is nothing odd about that, is there?" Mr. Dudley smiled at
his own wit. "Doctors disagree and the patient dies. That is the old
adage. You have only reversed it. Your patient died, and the doctors
then disagreed. Where's the odds?"

"The odds amount to this, Mortimer. One doctor signed a certificate of
death, naming diphtheria as the cause. The other physician reported to
the Board of Health that there were suspicious circumstances which led
him to think that the woman might have died from poison."

"Poison? This is interesting."

"The more you hear, the more you will think so. In yesterday's papers
it was announced that the Coroner had taken up the case, and that an
autopsy would be held."

"Does this morning's paper give the result of the post-mortem?"

"Yes. Listen! 'The autopsy upon the body of Mabel Sloane, the
beautiful young musician'--you see they still harp on the
beautiful--'young musician, whose mysterious death was reported
yesterday, shows conclusively that the girl was poisoned. The doctors
claim to have found morphine enough to kill three men. Thus the
caution of Dr. Meredith, in notifying the Health Board of his
suspicions, is to be commended. It is but just to say, however, that
the doctors who made the post-mortem, entirely exonerate Dr. Fisher,
the physician who certified that the death was caused by diphtheria,
for they claim, curiously enough, that the woman would undoubtedly
have died of that disease even if the morphine had not been
administered. This opens up a most interesting set of complica