“Then I went to Paris and, as you have guessed, learned how to get things out of a safe like that of uncle’s.  Before God, all I planned to do was to get that will, change it, replace it, and trust that uncle would never notice the change.  Then when he was gone, I would have contested the will.  I would have got my full share either by court proceedings or by settlement out of court.  You see, I had planned it all out.  The school would have been founded—­I, we would have founded it.  What difference, I said, did thirty millions or fifty millions make to an impersonal school, a school not yet even in existence?  The twenty million dollars or so difference, or even half of it, meant life and love to me.

“I had planned to steal the cash in the safe, anything to divert attention from the will and make it look like a plain robbery.  I would have done the altering of the will that night and have returned it to the safe before morning.  But it was not to be.  I had almost opened the safe when my uncle entered the room.  His anger completely unnerved me, and from the moment I saw him on the floor to this I haven’t had a sane thought.  I forgot to take the cash, I forgot everything but that will.  My only thought was that I must get it and destroy it.  I doubt if I could have altered it with my nerves so upset.  There, now you have my whole story.  I am at your mercy.”

“No,” said Kennedy, “believe me, there is a mental statute of limitations that as far as Jameson and myself are concerned has already erased this affair.  Walter, will you find Fletcher?”

I found the professor pacing up and down the gravel walk impatiently.

“Fletcher,” said Kennedy, “a night’s rest is all Miss Bond really needs.  It is simply a case of overwrought nerves, and it will pass off of itself.  Still, I would advise a change of scene as soon as possible.  Good afternoon, Miss Bond, and my best wishes for your health.”

“Good afternoon, Dr. Kennedy.  Good afternoon, Dr. Jameson.”

I for one was glad to make my escape.

A half-hour later, Kennedy, with well-simulated excitement, was racing me in the car up to the Greenes’ again.  We literally burst unannounced into the tete-a-tete on the porch.

“Fletcher, Fletcher,” cried Kennedy, “look what Walter and I have just discovered in a tin strong-box poked off in the back of your uncle’s desk!”

Fletcher seized the will and by the dim light that shone through from the hall read it hastily.  “Thank God,” he cried; “the school is provided for as I thought.”

“Isn’t it glorious!” murmured Helen.

True to my instinct I muttered, “Another good newspaper yarn killed.”

III.  The Bacteriological Detective

Kennedy was deeply immersed in writing a lecture on the chemical compositions of various bacterial toxins and antitoxins, a thing which was as unfamiliar to me as Kamchatka, but as familiar to Kennedy as Broadway and Forty-second Street.