“But the very first night the supposed ghouls were discovered.  Dana Phelps, already suspicious regarding the death of his brother, wondering at the lack of sentiment which Mrs. Phelps showed, since she felt that her husband was not really dead—­Dana was there.  His suspicions were confirmed, he thought.  Montague had been, in reality, murdered, and his murderers were now making away with the evidence.  He fought with the ghouls, yet apparently, in the darkness, he did not discover their identity.  The struggle was bitter, but they were two to one.  Dana was bitten by one of them.  Here are the marks of teeth—­teeth—­of a woman.”

Anginette Phelps was sobbing convulsively.  She had risen and was facing Doctor Forden with outstretched hands.

“Tell them!” she cried wildly.

Forden seemed to have maintained his composure only by a superhuman effort.

“The—­body is—­at my office,” he said, as we faced him with deathlike stillness.  “Phelps had told us to get him within ten days.  We did get him, finally.  Gentlemen, you, who were seeking murderers, are, in effect, murderers.  You kept us away two days too long.  It was too late.  We could not revive him.  Phelps is really dead!”

“The deuce!” exclaimed Andrews, “the policy is incontestible!”

As he turned to us in disgust, his eyes fell on Anginette Phelps, sobered down by the terrible tragedy and nearly a physical wreck from real grief.

“Still,” he added hastily, “we’ll pay without a protest.”

She did not even hear him.  It seemed that the butterfly in her was crushed, as Dr. Forden and Miss Tracy gently led her away.

They had all left, and the laboratory was again in its normal state of silence, except for the occasional step of Kennedy as he stowed away the apparatus he had used.

“I must say that I was one of the most surprised in the room at the outcome of that case,” I confessed at length.  “I fully expected an arrest.”

He said nothing, but went on methodically restoring his apparatus to its proper place.

“What a peculiar life you lead, Craig,” I pursued reflectively.  “One day it is a case that ends with such a bright spot in our lives as the recollection of the Shirleys; the next goes to the other extreme of gruesomeness and one can hardly think about it without a shudder.  And then, through it all, you go with the high speed power of a racing motor.”

“That last case appealed to me, like many others,” he ruminated, “just because it was so unusual, so gruesome, as you call it.”

He reached into the pocket of his coat, hung over the back of a chair.

“Now, here’s another most unusual case, apparently.  It begins, really, at the other end, so to speak, with the conviction, begins at the very place where we detectives send a man as the last act of our little dramas.”

“What?” I gasped, “another case before even this one is fairly cleaned up?  Craig—­you are impossible.  You get worse instead of better.”