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202 I wanted Miss Meade to keep the other one, Miss Brown, with her for a day or two, as she was so terribly broken up by my wife's death that I was afraid she would be ill herself; but she said that she wanted to be alone with me and the children. Of course Miss Risby could have had nothing to do with the further events which occurred here in this house; and I can't even now bring myself to suspect her of causing my wife's death, but that warning must have meant something. My poor wife must have known instinctively that she was being done to death, and mistakenly suspected the Risby woman. Then came the morning when we found Julian up there with his throat cut, and I began to feel that fear of a damnable conspiracy at work against all of us!"

"I think that your wife's words alone would have justified official investigation, Mr. Lorne," the detective remarked. "In view of the fact that the specialists themselves could not agree as to why she had not responded to treatment, they seem particularly significant."

"I know; but I thought I should only be laughed at, and I shrank from the idea of the notoriety which would ensue." Lorne flushed again. "I didn't even tell Titheredge of what my wife had said. He's a man of sound common sense with a trained legal mind; and when he ridiculed the suggestion that there could be anything more than coincidence in the two deaths, I realized the reception I would probably receive from the authorities if I went to them with my story. I was getting desperate, though, and I would have summoned you people that night before the portrait fell if Titheredge hadn't stopped me."

"How? Why should he have stopped you?" Odell