oth overcome again by the fumes. Gatton was the first to recover
sufficiently to stoop and examine the victim of this fiendish outrage.
I clutched dizzily at an upright of the porch, and:

"Don't tell me he's dead," I whispered.

But Gatton stood up and nodded sternly.

"He was the last!" he said strangely. "They have triumphed after all."

The man who had driven the car and who now stood in a state of
evident stupefaction looking over the gate, where he had been warned
to remain by the Inspector, came forward on seeing Gatton beckoning to
him.

"Notify the local officer in charge and bring a doctor," said Gatton.
He turned to me. "Which is the nearest?"

Rapidly I gave the man the necessary instructions and he went running
out to the car and soon was speeding away towards the house of a local
physician.

I find it difficult to recapture the peculiar horror of the next few
minutes, during which, half-fearful of entering the cottage, Gatton
and I stood in the little sheltered garden adjoining the porch looking
down at the body of this man who had met his end under my roof, in
circumstances at once dreadful and incomprehensible.

Tragically, Eric Coverly was vindicated; by his death he was proved
innocent. And by the manner of his death we realized that he had
fallen a victim to the same malign agency as his cousin.

I have explained that my cottage stood in a strangely secluded spot,
although so near to the sleepless life of London; and I remember that
throughout the period between the departure of the man with the car
and his return with the doctor and two police officers whom he had
brought from the local depot, only one pedestrian passed my door and
he on the opposite side of the road.

How little that chance traveler suspected what a scene was concealed
from his eyes by the tall hedges which divided the garden from the
highroad! It was as the footsteps of this wayfarer became faint in the
distance, that suddenly:

"Come along!" said Gatton. "We might chance it now. I want to get to
the bottom of this telephone trick."

We returned to the door of the ante-room, and side by side stood
looking down at the telephone which had only been extracted from the
grip of the dead man with so much difficulty. The Inspector stooped
and took it up from the floor. The deadly gray mist was all but
dissipated now, and together we stood staring stupidly at the
telephone which Gatton held in his hand.

To all outward see