the chief what you know about this. Knox, will you telephone to the
coroner?"

In an incredibly short time the club-house was emptied, and before
midnight the coroner himself arrived and went up to the room. As for me,
I had breakfasted, lunched and dined on horrors, and I sat in the
deserted room down-stairs and tried to think how I was to take the news
to Margery.

At twelve-thirty Wardrop, Hunter and the coroner came down-stairs,
leaving a detective in charge of the body until morning, when it could
be taken home. The coroner had a cab waiting, and he took us at once to
Hunter's chief. He had not gone to bed, and we filed into his library
sepulchrally.

Wardrop told his story, but it was hardly convincing. The chief, a large
man who said very little, and leaned back with his eyes partly shut,
listened in silence, only occasionally asking a question. The coroner,
who was yawning steadily, left in the middle of Wardrop's story, as if
in his mind, at least, the guilty man was as good as hanged.

"I am--I was--Mr. Allan Fleming's private secretary," Wardrop began. "I
secured the position through a relationship on his wife's side. I have
held the position for three years. Before that I read law. For some time
I have known that Mr. Fleming used a drug of some kind. Until a week ago
I did not know what it was. On the ninth of May, Mr. Fleming sent for
me. I was in Plattsburg at the time, and he was at home. He was in a
terrible condition--not sleeping at all, and he said he was being
followed by some person who meant to kill him. Finally he asked me to
get him some cocaine, and when he had taken it he was more like himself.
I thought the pursuit was only in his own head. He had a man named
Carter on guard in his house, and acting as butler.

"There was trouble of some sort in the organization; I do not know just
what. Mr. Schwartz came here to meet Mr. Fleming, and it seemed there
was money needed. Mr. Fleming had to have it at once. He gave me some
securities to take to Plattsburg and turn into money. I went on the
tenth--"

"Was that the day Mr. Fleming disappeared?" the chief interrupted.

"Yes. He went to the White Cat, and stayed there. No one but the
caretaker and one other man knew he was there. On the night of the
twenty-first, I came back, having turned my securities into money. I
carried it in a package in a small Russia leather bag that never left my
hand for a moment. Mr. Knox here suggested that I had