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210 composedly awaiting the next question. Could she have anticipated this scene and carefully rehearsed it? Her poise seemed all at once too perfect not to have been studied.

"Miss Risby, there must have been something else to arouse your suspicions. You would not, in the ordinary performance of your duty, prevent a man from having a private interview with his dying wife merely because on an earlier visit of his the bandage about her arm had become loosened and her fever increased."

The shot told, as he could note by the sudden tightening of the girl's lips; but she shook her head.

"You forget that the irritation of the infected area had also increased and to an alarming extent. It—it looked to me, Sergeant Odell, like a deliberate reinfection. I cannot even under the present circumstances discuss the private affairs of a family whose household I enter in a professional capacity, and I do not pretend to hazard any motive for such a possible act on Mr. Lorne's part; my only duty was toward my patient and I fulfilled it to the best of my ability."

"Yet you did learn something of the private affairs of that family." Odell seized upon the opening she had unwittingly given to him. "You do know or suspect a possible motive on Mr. Lorne's part for such a crime. Miss Risby, there are certain occasions when professional ethics must be put aside. The truth will not bring Mrs. Lorne back to life, but it may save others from dying as she did."

"Others?" The girl was startled from her serene composure at last. "What do you mean, Sergeant Odell? Surely there have been no further cases!"

"You encountered all the members of the family during your stay, did you not?"