ell the truth, was by no means reassuring.

"Well," he answered slowly, "I suffer a good deal from such terrible
dyspepsia, Professor Kennedy. My stomach and digestion are all
upset--bad health and growing weakness--pain, discomfort--vomiting after
meals, even bleeding. I've tried all sorts of cures, but still I can
feel that I am still losing health and strength, and, so far, at least,
the doctors don't seem to be doing me much good. I have begun to wonder
whether it is a case for the doctors, after all. Why, the whole thing is
getting on my nerves so that I'm almost afraid to eat," he concluded.

"You have eaten nothing today, then, I am to understand?" asked Craig
when Seabury had finished with his minute and puzzling account of his
troubles.

"Not even breakfast this morning," he replied. "Mrs. Seabury urged me to
eat, but--I--I couldn't."

"Good!" exclaimed Kennedy, much to our surprise. "That will make it just
so much easier to use a test I have in mind to determine whether there
is anything in your suspicions."

He had risen and gone over to a cabinet.

"Would you mind baring your arm a moment?" he asked Seabury.

With a sharp little instrument, carefully sterilized, Craig pricked a
vein in the man's arm. Slowly a few drops of darkened venous blood
welled out. A moment later Kennedy caught them in a sterile test tube
and sealed the tube.

Before our second visitor could start again in retailing his suspicions
which now seemed definitely, in his own mind at least, directed in some
way against Mrs. Seabury, Kennedy skillfully closed the interview.

"I feel sure that the test I shall make will tell me positively, soon,
whether your fears are well grounded or not, Mr. Seabury," he concluded
briefly, as he accompanied the man out into the hall to shake hands
farewell with him at the elevator door. "I'll let you know as soon as
anything develops, but until we have something tangible there is no use
wasting our energies."

CHAPTER V

THE "THE DANSANT"

I felt, however, that Seabury accepted this conclusion reluctantly, in
fact with a sort of mental reservation not to cease activity himself.

The remainder of the forenoon, and for some time during the early
afternoon, Craig plunged into one of his periods of intense work and
abstraction at the laboratory.

It was, indeed, a most unusual and delicate test which he was making.
For one thing, I noticed that he had, in a sterilizer, some peculiar
gr