dy can."
She paused a moment, then added, "No doubt you have read of the death of
my guardian the other day."

Of course we had. Who did not know that "Jim" Bisbee, the southern
California oil-magnate, had died suddenly of typhoid fever at the
private hospital of Dr. Bell, where he had been taken from his
magnificent apartment on Riverside Drive? Kennedy and I had discussed
it at the time. We had commented on the artificiality of the twentieth
century. No longer did people have homes; they had apartments, I had
said. They didn't fall ill in the good old-fashioned way any more,
either in fact, they even hired special rooms to die in. They hired
halls for funeral services. It was a wonder that they didn't hire
graves. It was all part of our twentieth century break-up of tradition.
Indeed we did know about the death of Jim Bisbee. But there was nothing
mysterious about it. It was just typical in all its surroundings of the
first decade of the twentieth century in a great, artificial city--a
lonely death of a great man surrounded by all that money could buy.

We had read of his ward, too, the beautiful Miss Eveline Bisbee, a
distant relation. As under the heat of the room and her excitement, she
raised her veil, we were very much interested in her. At least, I am
sure that even Kennedy had by this time completely forgotten the lecture
on toxins.

"There is something about my guardian's death," she began in a low and
tremulous voice, "that I am sure will bear investigating. It may be only
a woman's foolish fears, but--I haven't told this to a soul till now,
except Mrs. Fletcher. My guardian had, as you perhaps know, spent his
summer at his country place at Bisbee Hall, New Jersey, from which he
returned rather suddenly about a week ago. Our friends thought it merely
a strange whim that he should return to the city before the summer was
fairly over, but it was not. The day before he returned, his gardener
fell sick of typhoid. That decided Mr. Bisbee to return to the city on
the following day. Imagine his consternation to find his valet stricken
the very next morning. Of course they motored to New York immediately,
then he wired to me at Newport, and together we opened his apartment at
the Louis Quinze.

"But that was not to be the end of it. One after another, the servants
at Bisbee Hall were taken with the disease until five of them were down.
Then came the last blow--Mr. Bisbee fell a victim in New York. So far
I have