The interest in Phelps lay, a great deal, in the fact that the young man had married the popular dancer, Anginette Petrovska, a few months previously.  His honeymoon trip around the world had suddenly been interrupted, while the couple were crossing Siberia, by the news of the failure of the Phelps banking-house in Wall Street and the practical wiping-out of his fortune.  He had returned, only to fall a victim to a greater misfortune.

“A few days before his death,” continued Andrews, measuring his words carefully, “I, or rather the Great Eastern, which had been secretly investigating the case, received this letter.  What do you think of it?”

He spread out on the table a crumpled note in a palpably disguised handwriting: 

To whom it may concern: 

You would do well to look Into the death of Montague Phelps, Jr.  I accuse no one, assert nothing.  But when a young man apparently in the best of health, drops off so mysteriously and even the physician in the case can give no very convincing information, that case warrants attention.  I know what I know.

Anoutsider.

XXI

THE GHOULS

“H-M,” mused Kennedy, weighing the contents of the note carefully, “one of the family, I’ll be bound—­unless the whole thing is a hoax.  By the way, who else is there in the immediate family?”

“Only a brother, Dana Phelps, younger and somewhat inclined to wildness, I believe.  At least, his father did not trust him with a large inheritance, but left most of his money in trust.  But before we go any further, read that.”

Andrews pulled from the papers a newspaper cutting on which he had drawn a circle about the following item.  As we read, he eyed us sharply.

  Phelps tomb desecrated

Last night, John Shaughnessy, a night watchman employed by the town of Woodbine, while on his rounds, was attracted by noises as of a violent struggle near the back road in the Woodbine Cemetery, on the outskirts of the town.  He had varied his regular rounds because of the recent depredations of motor-car yeggmen who had timed him in pulling off several jobs lately.  As he hurried toward the large mausoleum of the Phelps family, he saw two figures slink away in opposite directions in the darkness.  One of them, he asserts positively, seemed to be a woman in black, the other a man whom he could not see clearly.  They readily eluded pursuit in the shadows, and a moment later he heard the whir of a high-powered car, apparently bearing them away.

At the tomb there was every evidence of a struggle.  Things had been thrown about; the casket had been broken open, but the body of Montague Phelps, Jr., which had been interred there about ten days ago, was not touched or mutilated.