Errol in the mean time was pacing the floor like one in a dream.  Events had followed one another so fast in the confusion that I had only an unrelated series of impressions.  It was not until a moment later that I realized the full import of the affair, when I saw Kennedy standing near the table in the position Karatoff had assumed, a strange look of perplexity on his face.  Slowly I realized what was the cause.  The papers on which were written the requests for the exhibitions of Karatoff’s skill were gone!

Whatever was done must be done quickly, and Kennedy looked about with a glance that missed nothing.  Before I could say a word about the papers he had crossed the room to where Marchant had been standing in the little group about Edith Gaines as we entered.  On a side-table stood the teacup from which he had been sipping.  With his back to the rest, Kennedy drew from his breast pocket a little emergency case he carried containing a few thin miniature glass tubes.  Quickly he poured the few drops of the dregs of the tea into one of the tubes, then into others tea from the other cups.

Again he looked at the face of Marchant as though trying to read in the horrified smile that had petrified on it some mysterious secret hidden underneath.  Slowly the question was shaping in my mind, was it, as Karatoff would have us believe, an accident?

The clang of a bell outside threw us all into worse confusion, and a moment later, almost together, a white-coated surgeon and a blue-coated policeman burst into the room.  It seemed almost no time, in the swirl of events, before the policeman was joined by a detective assigned by the Central Office to that district.

“Well, doctor,” demanded the detective as he entered, “what’s the verdict?”

“Arteriosclerosis, I think,” replied the young surgeon.  “They tell me there was some kind of hypnotic seance going on.  One of them named Errol struck at him with a rubber dagger, and—­”

“Get out!” scoffed the Central Office man.  “Killed by a rubber dagger!  Say, what do you think we are?  What did you find when you entered, sergeant?”

The policeman handed the detective the rubber dagger which he had picked up, forgotten, on the floor where Errol had dropped it when he came out from the hypnotization.

The detective took it gingerly and suspiciously, with a growl.  “I’ll have the point of this analyzed.  It may be—­well—­we won’t say what may be.  But I can tell you what is.  You, Doctor Karatoff, or whatever your name is, and you, Mr. Errol, are under arrest.  It’s a good deal easier to take you now than it will be later.  Then if you can get a judge to release you, we’ll at least know where you are.”

“This is outrageous, preposterous!” stormed Karatoff.

“Can’t help it,” returned the officer, coolly.

“Why,” exclaimed Carita Belleville, excitedly projecting herself before the two prisoners, “it’s ridiculous!  Even the ambulance surgeon says it was arteriosclerosis, an accident.  I—­”