spread out on the table. "I should like to see the body," he said, at length.
It was lying in the next room, awaiting Dr. Leslie's permission to be removed.
"At first," explained the doctor, leading the way, "we thought it might be a case of knock-out drops, chloral, you know—or perhaps chloral and whiskey, a combination which might unite to make chloroform in the blood. But no. We have tested for everything we can think of. In fact there seems to be no trace of a drug present. It is inexplicable. If Maitland really committed suicide, he must have taken something—and as far as we can find out there is no trace of anything. As far as we have gone we have always been forced back to the original idea that it was a natural death—perhaps due to shock of some kind, or organic weakness."
Kennedy had thoughtfully raised one of the lifeless hands and was examining it.
"Not that," he corrected. "Even if the autopsy shows nothing, it doesn't prove that it was a natural death. Look!"
On the back of the hand was a tiny, red, swollen mark. Dr. Leslie regarded it with pursed-up lips as though not knowing whether it was significant or not.
"The tissues seemed to be thickly infiltrated with a reddish serum and the blood-vessels congested," he remarked slowly. "There was a frothy mucus in the bronchial tubes. The blood was liquid, dark, and didn't clot. The fact of the matter is that the autopsical research revealed absolutely nothing but a gen-
