rovided my
theory is correct, I should have expected that. A thing that comes and
goes through windows must, at some period, leave some mark of its
passage. Of course that particular window opened upon a balcony or
something of that sort, didn't it?"

"No, it is a perfectly unbroken descent from the window sill to the
ground. But there's a big tree close by, and the branches of that brush
the pane of glass."

"Ah! I see! I see! All the soap dishes in the house left filled last
night and found filled this morning, captain?"

"Good heavens! I don't know. What on earth can soap dishes have to do
with it, man?"

"Possibly nothing, probably a great deal--particularly if there's found
to be a cake of soap in each. But that we can discover later. Now one
word more. Was that same minute swelling--the mark like a gnat's
bite--on the neck of the boy's body, too? And had it been on that of the
mother's as well?"

"I can't answer either question, Mr. Cleek. I don't remember to have
heard about it being remarked in the case of Mrs. Comstock's death; and
the murder of little Paul was such a horrible thing and so upset
everybody that none of us thought to look."

"An error of judgment that; however, it is one easily rectified, since
the body is not yet interred," said Cleek. "Ever read Harvey's
'Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Sanguinis,' Captain?--the volume in which
William Harvey first gave to the world at large his discovery regarding
the circulation of the blood."

"Good heavens, no! What would I be doing reading matters of that kind?
I'm not a medico, Mr. Cleek--I'm a soldier."

"I know. But, still--well, I thought it just possible that you might
have read the work, or, at least, heard something regarding the contents
of the volume. Men who have a hobby are rather given to riding it and
boring other people with discussions and dissertations upon it; and I
seem to think that I have heard it said that Sir Gilbert Morford's
greatest desire in the time of his youth was to become a medical man. In
fact, that he put in two or three years as a student at St.
Bartholomew's, and would have qualified, but that the sudden death of
his father compelled him to abandon the hope and to assume the
responsibilities of the head of the house of Morford & Morford, tea
importers, of Mincing Lane."

"Yes; that's quite correct. He bitterly resented the compulsion--the
'pitchforking of a man out of a profession into the abomination of
trade,