"Francis Graeme! Why, no; nothing has been said to me." "Well, I don't think his death was a natural one." It startled me, the assured manner in which he spoke; in an instant, the atmosphere of this quiet country room seemed to have grown tense and heavy. "Go on," I said briefly. "As you know," continued Doctor Marcy, "Mr. Graeme died suddenly on Tuesday, June 21, presumably from heart failure or a cerebral hemorrhage. As a matter of record, my routine certificate gives the latter as the cause of death. The fact of a brain lesion was fully established, as I'll explain later, but I'm not at all satisfied as to the predisposing cause." "Yes." "You'll understand what I'm driving at when I tell you that I saw Francis Graeme professionally that very morning, and I know that he was in the best of health for a man of[Pg 58] his age. He had been thinking of taking out additional life insurance, and as I am the county examiner for the company, he asked me to drop in Tuesday morning and go over him. Mind you, I had been his regular physician for a number of years, long before he came to the 'Hundred,' and I knew him inside and out. A straighter, cleaner man never lived, and he had always kept himself in top condition; I had never discovered the least sign of any degenerative process. [Pg 58] "Well, I did come over, and I saw him in this very room where we are sitting. He was cheerful as usual, and even joked me on the possibility that I might at last uncover one of the insidious enemies to health that so often make their appearance in middle life. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing—heart, lungs, circulatory system—all in first-class shape. As a matter of form, there would have to be a laboratory analysis, but otherwise I was prepared to give him a clean bill of health, and I told him so. He took it quite as a matter of course, and, after arranging for a round of golf that same afternoon at the Lost River Country Club, we parted. That was around ten o'clock, and at half past two I had a telephone from the 'Hundred,' asking me to come over at once. When I arrived I[Pg 59] was taken in here. Graeme lay on the floor, alongside the big library table. On his right temple there was a noticeable contusion, triangular in shape. He was stone dead." [Pg 59] "Could you tell how long?"
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