You say the body was lying right here?"

"Yes—the head there, and the feet there. I suppose you are going to try to clear Miss Langmore, aren't you?" went on Mrs. Morse curiously.

"I am—if she is innocent."

"You'll have a task doing it. Everybody around here thinks her guilty."

To this Adam Adams did not reply. He was down on his hands and knees, close to where the head of the murdered woman had rested. He placed his nose to the carpet and drew in a long breath. His olfactory nerves were sensitive, and detected a certain pungent, stinging odor, of a sort not easily forgotten.

"You must be pretty short-sighted," was the woman's comment. The sight of the man on his hands and knees amused her.

"Well, I might have a better pair of eyes, I admit."

From his examination of the carpet, the detective turned to the window. Outside was the roof to the side piazza of the mansion. On the tin roof were some dried-up spots of mud. He looked them over carefully, and came to the conclusion that they were footprints, but how old was a question.

"When did it rain last around here?" he asked.

"We haven't had a real storm for ten days or two weeks. We have had several showers, though."

He took a glance into Mrs. Langmore's dressing room. Everything was in perfect order, even to the powder-box and the cologne bottles on the dresser.

"That is all I wish to see up here," he said, and passed below, where he encountered the policeman in charge. Like the woman, this officer had taken him to be a lawyer, and he readily consented to let the detective inspect the library.

"Mr. Langmore was found in that chair," said he. "He looked as if he had suffered great pain before he died. I think he was strangled, although he didn't show the marks of it."

The library was a richly-furnished apartment. Along two walls were rows of costly volumes, many relating to modern inventions. On the walls hung some rare steel engravings, including one of Fulton and his first steamboat. There was a large library table, with a student's lamp, a mahogany roller-top desk, half a dozen comfortable chairs, and a small, but well-built safe, which, as said before, was closed and locked.

"The coroner locked and sealed the desk, and put all the loose papers in it," said the policeman.

There were two windows to the library, and one was close to the side porch, the roof of which the detective had examined from above. A person dropping from above could easily have entered the library by the window, thus saving himself the trouble of walking through the halls and down the stairs. Adam Adams looked outside, and saw on the ground a number of footprints, some running to a gravel path but a few feet away.

"Where are the bodies?" he asked, as he continued his examination of the room.

"At Camboin's morgue. The doctors have been looking for poison, but they can't find any."

The detective got down in front of the safe and examined it critically. Had it been opened after the murder and then closed again? That was an important question, but he was unable to answer it.

More by instinct than anything else, he got down and peered under the safe. A crumpled-up bit of paper caught his eye, and he picked it up and slipped it into his pocket without the policeman being the wiser.

"Has anybody else been here?" he asked. "I mean any outsiders."

"A good many folks from the village."

"Anybody else?"

"Yes, a detective from Brooklyn. He thought there might be a job for him, but there wasn't, so he went away," and the policeman smiled grimly.

"What was his name?"

"I think he said it was Peterson."

"Is that the Bardon house yonder?" And Adam Adams pointed through the window and across the side lawn.

"Yes. Doctor Bardon was the first to come over—he and his mother."

"So I heard. I think I'll step over and speak to them a moment."

"So you are working for Miss Langmore?"

"Yes, in a way."

"You'll have an uphill job clearing her. The coroner thinks he has a clear case against her."

"Do you know what evidence he possesses?"

"Not exactly. He isn't telling all he knows," returned the officer of the law. "There is the doctor now."

A buggy was coming down the road. It turned in at the next house, and a young man, carrying a small case, leaped out and disappeared into the dwelling.

In a few minutes more, Adam Adams made his way next door. An elderly servant admitted him and ushered him into the doctor's office, where the young physician sat marking down some calls in his notebook.

"This is Doctor Bardon, I believe. I just came over from the Langmore house. I am working on this mystery, and I understand you were the physician who tried to bring Mr. and Mrs. Langmore to life after they were found."

"I worked over Mr. Langmore, yes," was the young physician's answer. "I saw at once that it was impossible to do anything for his wife. She had a weak heart naturally, and was stone dead some time before I got there."

"You thought you saw a spark of life in Mr. Langmore?"

"Not exactly a spark, but I thought there might be hope. But I was mistaken, although I did everything I could."

"I have been told that working over the corpse made you sick."

At these words, the face of the young physician showed his annoyance.
He drew himself up.

"Excuse me, but you are—" and he paused inquiringly.

"I am working on this case in the interests of Miss Langmore. My name is Adams."

"Oh!"

"What I would like to know is, What made you sick? Was it merely that a crime had been committed—something you were not accustomed to?"

"No, it was not, Mr. Adams. I am young, I know, but I have had a good hospital experience, and such things do not unnerve me. To be sure, Mr. Langmore was a good neighbor, and I thought much of him. But it was not that."

"Then what was it?"

"It was something about the corpse. As I worked I had to sneeze—something seemed to get into my nose and throat, and in a minute more I began to have cramps and grew deathly sick. It was the queerest sensation I ever experienced in my life. I haven't gotten over it yet."

"You had to go out to get some fresh air?"

"I did. If I had not, I think I should have suffered much more."

"And you found no trace of any poison, or anything of that sort?"

"Not the slightest. Another doctor was called in, and then I went back. The peculiar odor, or whatever it was, was gone, and I could find no further trace of it."

"You think it must have evaporated?"

"What else is there to think? The windows and blinds had been thrown wide open, and the sun was shining into the room."

This was all the young doctor could tell, and as he was in a hurry to get away on more business, the detective did not detain him further. He ascertained that Mrs. Bardon was also away, and then left the house.

In his pocket he still carried the bit of paper which he had picked up from under the safe. It had evidently been part of the wrapper around some small object, and bore the following, printed in blue ink: