r making war from the
darkness--and with light they cease to exist."

As the neurologist broke off the aged and decrepit dog for which Eben
Tollman had discovered no fondness until it had been exiled to the
garage, came limping around the corner of the terrace and licked
wistfully at Stuart's knee.

"That dog," commented the physician, "ought to be put out of his misery.
He's a hopeless cripple and he needs a merciful dose of morphine. I'll
mention it to Eben."

"It would be a gracious act," assented the younger man. "Life has become
a burden to the old fellow."

Dr. Ebbett rose and tossed his cigar stump outward. "We've been sitting
here theorizing for hours after the better-ordered members of the
household have gone to their beds," he said. "It's about time to say
good night." And the two men climbed the stairs and separated toward the
doors of their respective rooms.

Dr. Ebbett left just after breakfast the next day, but on the verge of
his departure he remembered and mentioned the dog.

"I've been meaning to shoot him," confessed Tollman, "but I've shrunk
from playing executioner."

"Shooting is an awkward method," advised the doctor. "I have here a
grain and a half of morphine in quarter-grain tablets. They will cause
no suffering. They are readily soluble, won't be tasted, and will do the
work."

"How much shall I give? I don't want to bungle it."

"It's simply a question of dosage. Let him have a half grain, I
shouldn't care to give that much to either a dog or a man--unless a drug
habitue--without expecting death--but there's the car and it's been a
delightful visit."

Possibly some instinct warned the superannuated dog of his master's
design. At all events he was never poisoned--he merely disappeared, and
for the mystery of his fading from sight there was no solution.

* * * * *

The case for the prosecution was going well, thought Eben Tollman, and
building upward step by step toward a conviction. But step by step, too,
was growing the development of his own condition toward madness, the
more grewsomely terrible because its monomania gave no outward
indication.

One evening as the three sat on the terrace, it pleased Eben Tollman to
regale them with music. He was not himself an instrumentalist, but in
the living-room was a machine which supplied that deficiency, and this
afternoon had brought a fresh consignment of records from Boston. This,
too, was a night of