norous
subways. The Taylor home was a large, colonial frame farmhouse which had
eventually been crowded by the modern and extravagant dwellings of a
fashionable up-town district. In spite of its generous furnishings it
projected even to this successful and materialistic detective a heavy
air of the past, melancholy and disturbing.

Garth sighed. He had made up his mind. The best way to get at the truth
was to accept for the present the dead man's message at its face value.
He turned on the single light above the desk in the center of the room.
He arranged a chair so that the glare would search its occupant. He sat
opposite in the shadow and pressed a button. Almost at once he heard
dragging footsteps in the hall, then a timid rapping at the door. The
door opened slowly. A bent old man in livery shuffled across the
threshold. It was the servant who had admitted Garth on his arrival a
few minutes earlier. The detective indicated the chair on which the
light fell.

"Sit down there, please."

As the old man obeyed his limbs shook with a sort of palsy. From his
sallow and sunken face, restless, bloodshot eyes gleamed.

"I understand from the doctor," Garth began, "that you are McDonald, Mr.
Taylor's trusted servant. The coroner says death occurred last night or
early this morning. Tell me why you didn't find the body until nearly
four o'clock this afternoon."

The old servant bent forward, placing the palm of his hand against his
ear.

"Eh? Eh?"

On a higher key Garth repeated his question. McDonald answered in
tremulous tones, clearing his throat from time to time as he explained
that because of his master's bad health his orders had been never to
disturb him except in cases of emergency. He drew a telegram from his
pocket, passing it across to Garth.

"Mrs. Taylor is on her way home from California. I don't think Mr.
Taylor knew just what connection she would make at Chicago, but he
expected her to-morrow. That telegram sent from the train at Albany says
she will be in this afternoon on the Western express. I thought it my
duty to disturb him and get him up to welcome her, for he was very fond
of her, sir. It will be cruel hard for her to find such a welcome as
this."

"Then," Garth said, "you heard no shot?"

McDonald indicated his ears. Garth tugged at his watch chain.

"I must know," he said, "more about the conditions in this house last
night."

He had spoken softly, musingly, yet the man, who had disp