That evening after dinner we were all sitting in the open summer house over the boat-house.  Smudges of green pine were burning and smoking on little artificial islands of stone near the lake shore, lighting up the trees on every side with a red glare.  Tom and his sister were seated with Kennedy and myself on one side, while some distance from us Harrington was engaged in earnest conversation with Isabelle.  The other members of the family were further removed.  That seemed typical to me of the way the family group split up.

“Mr. Kennedy,” remarked Grace in a thoughtful, low tone, “what do you make of that Record article?”

“Very clever, no doubt,” replied Craig.

“But don’t you think it strange about the will?”

“Hush,” whispered Tom, for Isabelle and Harrington had ceased talking and might perhaps be listening.

Just then one of the servants came up with a telegram.

Tom hastily opened it and read the message eagerly in the corner of the summer house nearest one of the glowing smudges.  I felt instinctively that it was from his lawyer.  He turned and beckoned to Kennedy and myself.

“What do you think of that?” he whispered hoarsely.

We bent over and in the flickering light read the message: 

New York papers full of spontaneous combustion story.  Record had exclusive story yesterday, but all papers to-day feature even more.  Is it true?  Please wire additional details at once.  Also immediate instructions regarding loss of will.  Has been abstracted from safe.  Could Lewis Langley have taken it himself?  Unless new facts soon must make loss public or issue statement Lewis Langley intestate.

Daniel Clark

Tom looked blankly at Kennedy, and then at his sister, who was sitting alone.  I thought I could read what was passing in his mind.  With all his faults Lewis Langley had been a good foster-parent to his adopted children.  But it was all over now if the will was lost.

“What can I do?” asked Tom hopelessly.  “I have nothing to reply to him.”

“But I have,” quietly returned Kennedy, deliberately folding up the message and handing it back.  “Tell them all to be in the library in fifteen minutes.  This message hurries me a bit, but I am prepared.  You will have something to wire Mr. Clark after that.”  Then he strode off toward the house, leaving us to gather the group together in considerable bewilderment.

A quarter of an hour later we had all assembled in the library, across the hall from the room in which Lewis Langley had been found.  As usual Kennedy began by leaping straight into the middle of his subject.

“Early in the eighteenth century;” he commenced slowly, “a woman was found burned to death.  There were no clues, and the scientists of that time suggested spontaneous combustion.  This explanation was accepted.  The theory always has been that the process of respiration by which the tissues of the body are used up and got rid of gives the body a temperature, and it has seemed that it may be possible, by preventing the escape of this heat, to set fire to the body.”