"a very suspicious affair with a highly unsatisfactory end. I am not sure that I entirely agree with your police officer. Nor do I fancy that some of my acquaintances at Scotland Yard would have agreed with him."
"Do you think I ought to have taken any further measures?" I asked uneasily.
"No; I don't see how you could. You did all that was possible under the circumstances. You gave information, which is all that a private individual can do, especially if he is an overworked general practitioner. But still, an actual crime is the affair of every good citizen. I think we ought to take some action."
"You think there really was a crime, then?"
"What else can one think? What do you think about it yourself?"
"I don't like to think about it at all. The recollection of that corpse-like figure in that gloomy bedroom has haunted me ever since I left the house. What do you suppose has happened?"
Thorndyke did not answer for a few seconds. At length he said gravely:
"I am afraid, Jervis, that the answer to that question can be given in one word."
"Murder?" I asked with a slight shudder.
He nodded, and we were both silent for a while.
"The probability," he resumed after a pause, "that Mr. Graves is alive at this moment seems to me infinitesimal. There was evidently a conspiracy to murder him, and the deliberate, persistent manner in which that object was being pur-
