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Rh to the kitchen, then put the tray down hastily on a chair near Rannie's door, and raised the cup to his lips. It contained beef tea undoubtedly, but beef tea with a sweetish, metallic taste; and the detective replaced the cup and softly opened Rannie's door.

"Have you a bottle or some small receptacle that is perfectly clean and sterilized?" he demanded in hushed tones.

"Several in the medicine-chest.—Here, wait a minute." Rannie made his way slowly and painfully to the bathroom, and returned with a tiny vial in his hand. "What is it? You haven't got hold of some of the stuff already, have you?"

Without waiting to reply Odell dashed back, and filling the vial with the beef tea, he deliberately overturned the cup. Then he dashed down the front stairs and out the entrance door, beckoning to the ubiquitous Blake, who was still upon his post at the corner.

"Take this as quickly as you can up to Villard's laboratory; tell him to put aside everything else and analyze it at once. Say that I suggested the surest test he knows of for arsenic and wait for his report."

As the operative pocketed the vial and started down the steps he almost collided with Doctor Adams, who greeted Odell with a certain decorous triumph in his tones.

"I have just come from the autopsy on the body of Mrs. Lorne," he announced. "It revealed nothing but what we anticipated; pyemic focci in the kidneys and liver. You see, my dear Sergeant Odell, it was a clear case of septicemia, after all."

"Doctor Adams," the detective brushed the statement