his room? How many of your
cigars have I made away with?"

"Not half enough recently," I said. "You haven't been here for
months."

"I'm sure to drift back, sooner or later, because you seem to have a
knack of getting in on the interesting cases. And I want to say this,
Lester, that of all I ever had, not one has promised better than
this one does. If it only keeps up--but one mustn't expect too much!"

"You've been working on it, of course?"

"I haven't been idle, and just now I'm feeling rather pleased with
myself. The coroner's physician finished his post-mortem half an hour
or so ago."

"Well?" I said again.

"The stomach was absolutely normal. It showed no trace of poison of
any kind."

He stretched himself, lay back in his chair, sent a smoke-ring
circling toward the ceiling, and watched it, smiling absently.

"Rather a facer for our friend Goldberger," he added, after a minute.

"What's the matter with Goldberger? He seemed rather peeved with you
this afternoon."

"No wonder. He's Grady's man, and we're after Grady. Grady isn't fit
to head the detective bureau--he got the job through his pull with
Tammany--he's stupid, and I suspect he's crooked. The _Record_ says
he has got to go."

"So, of course, he _will_ go," I commented, smiling.

"He certainly will," assented Godfrey seriously, "and that before
long. But meanwhile it's a little difficult for me, because his
people don't know which way to jump. Once he's out, everything will
be serene again."

I wasn't interested in Grady, so I came back to the case in hand.

"Look here, Godfrey," I said, "if it wasn't poison, what was it?"

"But it _was_ poison."

"Inserted at the hand?"

He nodded.

"Goldberger says there's no poison known which could be used that way
and which would act so quickly."

"Goldberger is right in that," agreed Godfrey; "but there's a poison
unknown that will--because it did."

"It wasn't a snake bite?"

"Oh, no; snake poison wouldn't kill a man that quickly--not even a
fer-de-lance. That fellow practically dropped where he was struck."

"Then what was it?"

Godfrey was sitting erect again. He was not smiling now. His face was
very stern.

"That is what I am going to find out, Lester," he said; "that is the
problem I've set myself to solve--and it's a pretty one. There is one
thing certain--that fellow was killed by some agency outside himself.
In some way, a drop or two of poison was introduced into his blood