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12 "Why, It's the portrait! The portrait of grandfather that hangs directly over the desk where I've been at work! It must weigh tons!" Gene had wheeled about, and his squeal of terror died in his throat as he turned again to face the other two, his own countenance convulsed with horror at the thought he could not utter.

For a moment they stood spellbound and then leaped past him and through the open door. The life-sized portrait with its massive gilt frame had crashed down over the desk and the space where Gene had been sitting but a minute before, splintering the heavy chair to matchwood.

"If Gene had not come to us with that letter just when he did—" Samuel paused.

"The third coincidence would be complete," Lorne finished for him. "He would have been crushed to atoms. Beginning to believe in my crazy idea a little bit, Sam? Beginning to see that there is some damnable reason for it all?"

"I'm willing now to admit the coincidence, Dick," the attorney said cautiously. "But the legal mind is not adapted to ghost-hunting; and I'd like to address your attention to the strands of wire cable which held the picture to the wall. They have been hacked almost through!"