ed my head to look at him. He was lying back in his chair, his
eyes closed, apparently lost in thought, and for long minutes there
was no movement in the room.

At last the doctor returned, looking more cheerful than when he had
left the room. He had given Miss Vaughan an opiate and she was
sleeping calmly; the nervous trembling had subsided and he hoped that
when she waked she would be much better. The danger was that brain
fever might develop; she had evidently suffered a very severe shock.

"Yes," said Godfrey, "she discovered her father strangled in the chair
yonder."

"I saw the body when I came in," the doctor remarked, imperturbably.
"So it's her father, is it?"

"Yes."

"And strangled, you say?"

Godfrey answered with a gesture, and the doctor walked over to the
body, glanced at the neck, then disengaged one of the tightly clenched
hands from the chair-arm, raised it and let it fall. I could not but
envy his admirable self-control.

"How long has he been dead?" Godfrey asked.

"Not more than two or three hours," the doctor answered. "The muscles
are just beginning to stiffen. It looks like murder," he added, and
touched the cord about the neck.

"It _is_ murder."

"You've notified the police?"

"They will be here soon."

I saw the doctor glance at Godfrey and then at me, plainly puzzled as
to our footing in the house; but if there was a question in his mind,
he kept it from his lips and turned back again to the huddled body.

"Any clue to the murderer?" he asked, at last.

"We have found none."

And then the doctor stooped suddenly and picked up something from the
floor beside the chair.

"Perhaps this is a clue," he said, quietly, and held to the light an
object which, as I sprang to my feet, I saw to be a blood-stained
handkerchief.

He spread it out under our eyes, handling it gingerly, for it was
still damp, and we saw it was a small handkerchief--a woman's
handkerchief--of delicate texture. It was fairly soaked with blood,
and yet in a peculiar manner, for two of the corners were much
crumpled but quite unstained.

The doctor raised his eyes to Godfrey's.

"What do you make of it?" he asked.

"A clue, certainly," said Godfrey; "but scarcely to the murderer."

The doctor looked at it again for a moment, and then nodded. "I'd
better put it back where I found it, I guess," he said, and dropped it
beside the chair.

And then, suddenly, I remembered Swain. I turned to find him stil