had written the note before killing himself, perhaps to direct suspicion
to some innocent person, broke down before the brief wording, its patent
incompleteness. One possibility remained. Garth could imagine no motive,
but another person might have prepared the strange message.

A number of books littered the reading table at the side of the bed.
Garth examined them eagerly. He found a blank page torn from one--the
sheet which Taylor had clenched in his fingers. In another was Taylor's
signature. When Garth had compared it with the message on the crumpled
paper no doubt remained. Taylor himself had written those obscure and
provocative words.

Garth found the pencil on the floor beneath the bed, as if it had rolled
there when Taylor had dropped it. The place at the moment had nothing
else to offer him beyond an abnormally large array in the bath room of
bottles containing for the most part stimulants and sedatives. They
merely strengthened, by suggesting that Taylor was an invalid, his
appearance of suicide.

The coroner and Taylor's doctor, who came together, only added to the
puzzle. The coroner declared unreservedly for suicide, and, in reply to
Garth's anxious question, swore that no measurable time could have
elapsed between the firing of the shot, which had pierced the heart, and
Taylor's death. The physician was satisfied even after Garth
confidentially had shown him the note.

"Mr. Taylor," he said then, "understood he had an incurable trouble.
Every one knows that his wife, whom he worshipped, had practically left
him by going to California for so long. It may have appealed to a grim
sense of humour, not unusual with chronic invalids, to puzzle us with
that absurdly worded note. I might tell you, too, that Mr. Taylor for
some time had had a fear that he might go out of his head. Perpetually
he questioned me about insanity, and wanted to know what treatment I
would give him if his mind went."

Garth, however, when they had left, went to the library on the lower
floor and telephoned headquarters. The inspector agreed that the case
held a mystery which must be solved.

Garth walked to the embrasure of a high colonial window. The early
winter night was already thick above the world. The huge room was too
dark. There was a morbid feeling about the house. He had noticed that
coming in, for the place had offered him one of those contrasts familiar
to New York, where some antique street cars still rattle over so