His hair was iron-gray, and round his brow were wreathed some blossoms of blue larkspur. Across his chest, diagonally, was a garland of the same flowers. The blossoms were not tied or twined, they had merely been laid in a row in order to form a vinelike garland.

The right hand, bent to rest on his breast, held a crucifix, and in the left hand was, of all things, a small orange.

His head lay on one large pillow, and on the other pillow was a folded handkerchief and also two small sweet crackers. And encircling the head and shoulders, framing all these strange details, a long and wide scarf, of soft and filmy scarlet chiffon, a beautiful scarf, from a woman’s point of view, but a peculiar adjunct to a man’s taking-off.

I stared at all this, quite forgetting to look at Moore to see how he was taking it.

When I did glance up at him, hearing his voice, I saw he had evidently completed his scrutiny of the bed and had turned to Harper Ames.

“Why do you think Mr. Tracy was murdered?” Kee asked of the glum-faced one.

“What other theory is possible?” Ames returned. “A suicide would not place all that flumadiddle about himself. A natural death wouldn’t have such decorations, either. So, he was killed, either by some one with a most distorted sense of humour, or there is a meaning in each seeming bit of foolishness.”

“What did he die of, exactly?”

“That we don’t know yet, the doctor will be here any minute, and the coroner, too.”

Even as he spoke, Doctor Rogers arrived. He was the family physician, and as Farrell opened the door to his knock, he went straight to the bed.

“What’s all this rubbish?” he exclaimed, reaching for the scarf.

“Don’t touch it, If you can help it, Doctor,” March implored him. “It may be evidence——”

“Evidence of what?”

“Crime—murder—or is it a natural death?”

Doctor Rogers was making his examination with as little disturbance as might be of the flowers and scarf.

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