is life. As to heart trouble, Allerdyke knew that a
few years previous to his death, James had taken out a life-policy with a
first-rate office, and had been passed as a first-class life: he
remembered, as he sat there thinking over these things, the
self-satisfied grin with which James had come and told him that the
examining doctor had declared him to be as sound as a bell. It was true,
of course, that disease might have set in after that--still, it was only
six weeks since he had seen James and James was then looking in a fit,
healthy, hearty state. He had gone off on one of his Russian journeys as
full of life and spirits as a man could be--and had not the hotel
manager just said that he seemed full of health, full of go, at ten
o'clock last night? And yet, within a couple of hours or so--according to
what the medical men thought from their hurried examination--this active
vigorous man was dead--swiftly and mysteriously dead.

Allerdyke felt--felt intensely--that there was something deeply strange
in all this, and yet it was beyond him, with his limited knowledge, to
account for James's sudden death, except on the hypothesis suggested by
the two doctors. All sorts of vague, half-formed thoughts were in his
mind. Was there any person who desired James's death? Had any one tracked
him to this place--got rid of him by some subtle means? Had--

"Pshaw!" he muttered, suddenly interrupting his train of thought, and
recognizing how shapeless and futile it all was. "It just comes to
this--I'm asking myself if the poor lad was murdered! And what have I to
go on? Naught--naught at all!"

Nevertheless, there were papers before him which had been taken from
James's pocket; there was the little journal or diary which he always
carried, and in which, to Allerdyke's knowledge, he always jotted down
a brief note of each day's proceedings wherever he went. He could
examine these, at any rate--they might cast some light on his cousin's
recent doings.

He began with the diary, turning over its pages until he came to the date
on which James had left Bradford for St. Petersburg. That was on March
30th. He had travelled to the Russian capital overland--by way of Berlin
and Vilna, at each of which places he had evidently broken his journey.
From St. Petersburg he had gone on to Moscow, where he had spent the
better part of a week. All his movements were clearly set out in the
brief pencilled entries in the journal. From Moscow he had r