“Mrs. Fletcher, of Great Neck,” she explained, “has told me.  I believe Professor Kennedy performed a great service for the Fletchers, though I do not know what it was.  At any rate, I have come to you with my case, in which I have small hope of obtaining assistance unless you can help me.  If Professor Kennedy cannot solve it, well, I’m afraid nobody can.”  She paused a moment, then added, “No doubt you have read of the death of my guardian the other day.”

Of course we had.  Who did not know that “Jim” Bisbee, the southern California oil-magnate, had died suddenly of typhoid fever at the private hospital of Dr. Bell, where he had been taken from his magnificent apartment on Riverside Drive?  Kennedy and I had discussed it at the time.  We had commented on the artificiality of the twentieth century.  No longer did people have homes; they had apartments, I had said.  They didn’t fall ill in the good old-fashioned way any more, either in fact, they even hired special rooms to die in.  They hired halls for funeral services.  It was a wonder that they didn’t hire graves.  It was all part of our twentieth century break-up of tradition.  Indeed we did know about the death of Jim Bisbee.  But there was nothing mysterious about it.  It was just typical in all its surroundings of the first decade of the twentieth century in a great, artificial city—­a lonely death of a great man surrounded by all that money could buy.

We had read of his ward, too, the beautiful Miss Eveline Bisbee, a distant relation.  As under the heat of the room and her excitement, she raised her veil, we were very much interested in her.  At least, I am sure that even Kennedy had by this time completely forgotten the lecture on toxins.

“There is something about my guardian’s death,” she began in a low and tremulous voice, “that I am sure will bear investigating.  It may be only a woman’s foolish fears, but—­I haven’t told this to a soul till now, except Mrs. Fletcher.  My guardian had, as you perhaps know, spent his summer at his country place at Bisbee Hall, New Jersey, from which he returned rather suddenly about a week ago.  Our friends thought it merely a strange whim that he should return to the city before the summer was fairly over, but it was not.  The day before he returned, his gardener fell sick of typhoid.  That decided Mr. Bisbee to return to the city on the following day.  Imagine his consternation to find his valet stricken the very next morning.  Of course they motored to New York immediately, then he wired to me at Newport, and together we opened his apartment at the Louis Quinze.