hine in
or near Mrs. Close's room. Such a thing could never have been concealed.
The alternative? Radium! Ah! that was different. I determined on
an experiment. Mrs. Close's maid was prevailed on to sleep in her
mistress's room. Of course radiations of brief duration would do her no
permanent harm, although they would produce their effect, nevertheless.
In one night the maid became extremely nervous. If she had stayed under
them several nights no doubt the beginning of a dermatitis would have
affected her, if not more serious trouble. A systematic application,
covering weeks and months, might in the end even have led to death.

"The next day I managed, as I have said, to go over the room thoroughly
with a vacuum cleaner--a new one of my own which I had bought myself.
But tests of the dust which I got from the floors, curtains, and
furniture showed nothing at all. As a last thought I had, however,
cleaned the mattress of the bed and the cracks and crevices in the brass
bars. Tests of that dust showed it to be extremely radioactive. I had
the dust dissolved, by a chemist who understands that sort of thing,
recrystallised, and the radium salts were extracted from the refuse.
Thus I found that I had recovered all but a very few milligrams of the
radium that had been originally purchased in London. Here it is in this
deadly tube in the leaden casket.

"It is needless to add that the night after I had cleaned out this
deadly element the maid slept the sleep of the just--and would have been
all right when next I saw her but for the interference of the unjust on
whom I had stolen a march."

Craig paused while the lawyers whispered again to their clients. Then he
continued: "Now three persons in this room had an opportunity to secrete
the contents of this deadly tube in the crevices of the metal work of
Mrs. Close's bed. One of these persons must have placed an order through
a confidential agent in London to purchase the radium from the English
Radium Corporation. One of these persons had a compelling motive,
something to gain by using this deadly element. The radium in this tube
in the casket was secreted, as I have said, in the metal work of Mrs.
Close's bed, not in large enough quantities to be immediately fatal,
but mixed with dust so as to produce the result more slowly but no
less surely, and thus avoid suspicion. At the same time Mrs. Close was
persuaded--I will not say by whom--through her natural pride, to take a
cou