Quickly he opened the pocketbook which she had carried.  It seemed to be empty, and he was about to shut it when something white, sticking in one corner, caught his eye.  Craig pulled out a clipping from a newspaper, and we crowded about him to look at it.  It was a large clipping from the section of one of the metropolitan journals which carries a host of such advertisements as “spirit medium,” “psychic palmist,” “yogi mediator,” “magnetic influences,” “crystal gazer,” “astrologer,” “trance medium,” and the like.  At once I thought of the sallow, somewhat mystic countenance of Dudley, and the idea flashed, half-formed, in my mind that somehow this clue, together with the purchase of the book on clairvoyance, might prove the final link necessary.

But the first problem in Kennedy’s mind was to keep in touch with what the authorities were doing.  That kept us busy for several hours, during which Craig was in close consultation with the coroner’s physician.  The physician was of the opinion that Miss Gilbert had been drugged as well as strangled, and for many hours, down in his laboratory, his chemists were engaged in trying to discover from tests of her blood whether the theory was true.  One after another the ordinary poisons were eliminated, until it began to look hopeless.

So far Kennedy had been only an interested spectator, but as the different tests failed, he had become more and more keenly alive.  At last it seemed as if he could wait no longer.

“Might I try one or two reactions with that sample?” he asked of the physician who handed him the test tube in silence.

For a moment or two Craig thoughtfully regarded it, while with one hand he fingered the bottles of ether, alcohol, distilled water, and the many reagents standing before him.  He picked up one and poured a little liquid into the test tube.  Then, removing the precipitate that was formed, he tried to dissolve it in water.  Not succeeding, he tried the ether and then the alcohol.  Both were successful.

“What is it?” we asked as he held the tube up critically to the light.

“I can’t be sure yet,” he answered slowly.  “I thought at first that it was some alkaloid.  I’ll have to make further tests before I can be positive just what it is.  If I may retain this sample I think that with other clues that I have discovered I may be able to tell you something definite soon.”

The coroner’s physician willingly assented, and Craig quickly dispatched the tube, carefully sealed, to his laboratory.

“That part of our investigation will keep,” he remarked as we left the coroner’s office.  “To-night I think we had better resume the search which was so unexpectedly interrupted this morning.  I suppose you have concluded, Walter, that we can be reasonably sure that the trail leads back through the fortune-tellers and soothsayers of New York,—­which one, it would be difficult to say.  The obvious thing, therefore, is to consult them all.  I think you will enjoy that part of it, with your newspaperman’s liking for the bizarre.”