hand of the young man, "I'm glad you're here. Did Janet send for you?"

[Pg 47]

[Pg 47]

"Yes, doctor; she telephoned, and I came at once. I'm indeed surprised and shocked at Uncle Robert's sudden death. Had you ever thought such a thing likely to happen?"

"No," said Doctor Masterson, and his voice had a peculiar ring, as of a man proving his own opinion.

Apparently Janet Pembroke was accustomed to the inflections of the old doctor's voice, for she looked suddenly up at him, as if he had said something more. Her crying spell was over, for the time at least, and her white face had again assumed its haughty and inscrutable expression.

"Was it heart disease?" she inquired, looking straight at Doctor Masterson.

"No," he replied; "it was not. Nor was it apoplexy, nor disease of any sort. Mr. Robert Pembroke did not die a natural death; he was killed while he slept."

I suppose to a man of Doctor Masterson's brusk, curt manner it was natural to announce this fact so baldly; but it seemed to me nothing short of brutality to fling the statement in the face of that quivering, shrinking girl.

"Killed!" she said, clasping her hands tightly. "Murdered!"

"Yes," said the doctor; "murdered in a peculiar fashion, and by a means of devilish ingenuity.[Pg 48] Indeed, I must confess that had it not been for Doctor Post's conviction that the death was not natural, and his determination to discover the cause, it might never have been found out."

[Pg 48]

"Was he shot?" asked Janet, and it seemed to me she spoke like one in a trance.

"Shot? No!" said Doctor Masterson. "He was stabbed, or rather pierced, with a long, thin pin—a hat-pin, you know. Stabbed in the back of his neck, at the base of the brain, as he lay asleep. He never knew it. The pin broke off in the wound, and death was immediate, caused by cerebral hemorrhage. Doctor Post and I have made a most thorough examination, and we are convinced that these are the facts. Mr. Pembroke was lying on his side, in a most natural position, and was, in all probability, sleeping soundly. This gave the murderer an excellent opportunity to aim the 

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