“I think myself,” Waldon remarked to Kennedy, “that it must have been from the open window that she made her way to the outside.  It seems that all agree that the door was locked, while the window was wide open.”

“There had been no sound—­no cry to alarm you?” shot out Kennedy suddenly to Juanita.

“No, sir, nothing.  I could not sleep myself, and I thought of Madame.”

“You heard nothing?” he asked of Dr. Jermyn.

“Nothing until I heard the maid call,” he replied briefly.

Mentally I ran over again Kennedy’s first list of possibilities—­ taken off by another boat, accident, drugs, suicide, murder.

Was there, I asked myself, sufficient reason for suicide?  The letter seemed to me to show too proud a spirit for that.  In fact the last sentence seemed to show that she was contemplating the surest method of revenge, rather than surrender.  As for accident, why should a person fall overboard from a large houseboat into a perfectly calm harbor?  Then, too, there had been no outcry.  Somehow, I could not seem to fit any of the theories in with the facts.  Evidently it was like many another case, one in which we, as yet, had insufficient data for a conclusion.

Suddenly I recalled the theory that Waldon himself had advanced regarding the wireless, either from the boat itself or from the wireless station.  For the moment, at least, it seemed plausible that she might have been seated at the window, that she might have been affected by escaped wireless, or by electrolysis.  I knew that some physicians had described a disease which they attributed to wireless, a sort of anemia with a marked diminution in the number of red corpuscles in the blood, due partly to the over etherization of the air by reason of the alternating currents used to generate the waves.

“I should like now to inspect the little wireless plant you have here on the Lucie,” remarked Kennedy.  “I noticed the mast as we were approaching a few minutes ago.”

I had turned at the sound of his voice in time to catch Edwards and Dr. Jermyn eyeing each other furtively.  Did they know about the letter, after all, I wondered?  Was each in doubt about just how much the other knew?

There was no time to pursue these speculations.  “Certainly,” agreed Mr. Edwards promptly, leading the way.

Kennedy seemed keenly interested in inspecting the little wireless plant, which was of a curious type and not exactly like any that I had seen before.

“Wireless apparatus,” he remarked, as he looked it over, “is divided into three parts, the source of power whether battery or dynamo, the making and sending of wireless waves, including the key, spark, condenser and tuning coil, and the receiving apparatus, head telephones, antennae, ground and detector.”

Pedersen, the engineer, came in while we were looking the plant over, but seemed uncommunicative to all Kennedy’s efforts to engage him in conversation.