ed it suspicion. They did not seem to
know just whether to take it as an accident or as something worse,
and each seemed to entertain a reserve toward the rest which was very
uncomfortable.

Mr. Langley's attorney in New York had been notified, but apparently was
out of town, for he had not been heard from. They seemed rather anxious
to get word from him.

Dinner over, the family group separated, leaving Tom an opportunity to
take us into the gruesome living-room. Of course the remains had
been removed, but otherwise the room was exactly as it had been when
Harrington discovered the tragedy. I did not see the body, which was
lying in an anteroom, but Kennedy did, and spent some time in there.

After he rejoined us, Kennedy next examined the fireplace. It was full
of ashes from the logs which had been lighted on the fatal night.
He noted attentively the distance of Lewis Langley's chair from the
fireplace, and remarked that the varnish on the chair was not even
blistered.

Before the chair, on the floor where the body had been found, he pointed
out to us the peculiar ash-marks for some space around, but it really
seemed to me as if something else interested him more than these
ash-marks.

We had been engaged perhaps half an hour in viewing the room. At last
Craig suddenly stopped.

"Tom," he said, "I think I'll wait till daylight before I go any
further. I can't tell with certainty under these lights, though perhaps
they show me some things the sunlight wouldn't show. We'd better leave
everything just as it is until morning."

So we locked the room again and went into a sort of library across the
hall.

We were sitting in silence, each occupied with his own thoughts on the
mystery, when the telephone rang. It proved to be a long-distance call
from New York for Tom himself. His uncle's attorney had received the
news at his home out on Long Island and had hurried to the city to take
charge of the estate. But that was not the news that caused the grave
look on Tom's face as he nervously rejoined us.

"That was uncle's lawyer, Mr. Clark, of Clark & Burdick," he said.
"He has opened uncle's personal safe in the offices of the Langley
estate--you remember them, Craig--where all the property of the Langley
heirs is administered by the trustees. He says he can't find the will,
though he knows there was a will and that it was placed in that safe
some time ago. There is no duplicate."

The full purport of this inform