“Well?” asked the detective as soon as the doctor entered the room. “What’s the news, man?”

The doctor slowly and methodically removed his gloves and placed them on the table. Then he divested himself of his coat and folded it carefully, his deliberation almost driving Shelley insane.

“Not good news, I fear,” he said at length.

“What do you mean? Was he murdered? What was the poison?” It was not often that Shelley lost control of himself to this extent, but he had counted much on this exhumation, and he hoped that the evidence would be enough to make a conviction a fairly easy matter.

“Professor Wilkinson,” said Dr. Maguire slowly, choosing his words with care, “was suffering from long-established valvular disease of the heart. He died, quite simply, from heart failure. There was no evidence of any poison in the body at all.”

“He was not murdered?”

“He was not murdered.”

“He died a perfectly natural death?”

“He died a perfectly natural death.”

Shelley picked up a pencil that lay on the desk before him and toyed with it idly. His heart sank within him. Had he been building up his whole case on a false theory? Had he committed the unforgivable sin of making his theory before he had enough facts on which to build? Who could tell? At any rate, there was no doubt that he would have to think the whole affair out again from the beginning. There was no doubt at all about that.

“Are you dead certain about that, doctor?” he asked, hoping against hope that there might be somewhere a loophole which would let him through.

“Dead certain,” answered the doctor.

“Then what do we do next?”

“That,” said the doctor, “is a matter for you to decide.”

And as he left the room he saw Shelley lean his elbows on the desk, his chin propped on his clenched fists, his brow deeply furrowed with thought. Poor old Shelley, he thought. What a muddle! Where would it all lead?

Chapter XII

Chapter XII

The Will Again

Mr. Fairhurst shook his head despondently.

“I’m afraid, my dear Miss Arnell, that there is little to be done,” he said.

Violet Arnell gazed mournfully at him, tears forming in her eyes.

“Now, don’t be silly, Henry,” snapped his sister. “If all you can do is be a Job’s comforter like that, then you’re a bigger fool than I took you for, and that’s a pity.”

“Well,” Henry argued, “if all that the police will tell me is that Wilkinson died a natural death, that Mr. Baker was on the spot (that is, at Pinner) at which he could easily have put a poisoned sweet in the packet in your father’s pocket, and that he was undoubtedly outside the British Museum gates (if not inside them) on the night when Crocker was murdered, what can I do?”