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Rh physician felt the woman's limp wrist and pressed his head against her heart.

Then he straightened and faced the others solemnly. "She is dead," he announced. "That final paroxysm was too much for her already over-strained heart, and it failed. It was a merciful end."

"Too merciful!" cried Richard Lorne in a voice of agony. "Think of my wife! It was hatred, and crafty, awful revenge, not madness, which brought about her murder. Think of Julian, cut off in his youth!"

"It was the germ of insanity born in her, the heritage from her father." Doctor Adams turned to Blake and Shaw. "Help me lift her to the bed."

The others sat in a stricken silence while the frail little figure was composed upon the snowy coverlet and the hands which unseen had wrought such fearful tragedy were folded peacefully upon her breast.

"Still I cannot understand, Sergeant, how you first discovered the truth."

Richard Lorne was the speaker as he, Gene, Rannie, Samuel Titheredge, and the detective were seated in his room on the following day. Cissie was slowly recovering under the care of the discreet Miss Risby; and below in the darkened drawing-room the still form of Effie Meade rested where so lately the bodies of her victims had lain.

"The point which puzzles me is why I did not discover it at once," Odell replied frankly. "The finding of the saw and file in so obvious a place as the chest where the other tools were kept ought to have led me to suspect the person who had as obviously suggested that your step-son sit be-