round with startled
eyes. He opened his lips to interrupt the speaker, but the physician
had already resumed his narrative. "Besides, I had only suspicions,"
he said, "suspicions based, it is true, upon strange and alarming
circumstances. I am a man, that is to say, I am liable to error. In
the kingdom of science it would be unpardonable temerity on my part to
affirm----"

"To affirm what?" interrupted M. Wilkie.

The physician did not seem to hear him, but continued in the same
dogmatic tone. "The count apparently died from an attack of apoplexy,
but certain poisons produce similar and even identical symptoms which
are apt to deceive the most experienced medical men. The persistent
efforts of the count's intellect, his muscular rigidity alternating with
utter relaxation, the dilation of the pupils of his eyes, and more than
aught else the violence of his last convulsions, have led me to ask
myself if some criminal had not hastened his end."

Whiter than his shirt, and trembling like a leaf, M. Wilkie sprang
from his chair. "I understand!" he exclaimed. "The count was
murdered--poisoned."

But the physician replied with an energetic protest. "Oh, not so fast!"
said he. "Don't mistake my conjectures for assertions. Still, I ought
not to conceal the circumstances which awakened my suspicions. On
the morning preceding his attack, the count took two spoonfuls of the
contents of a vial which the people in charge could not or would not
produce. When I asked what this vial contained, the answer was: 'A
medicine to prevent apoplexy.' I don't say that this is false, but prove
it. As for the motive that led to the crime, it is apparent at once.
The escritoire contained two millions of francs, and the money has
disappeared. Show me the vial, find the money, and I will admit that I
am wrong. But until then, I shall have my suspicions."

He did not speak like a physician but like an examining magistrate, and
his alarming deductions found their way even to M. Wilkie's dull brain.
"Who could have committed the crime?" he asked.

"It could only have been the person likely to profit by it; and only one
person besides the count knew that the money was in the house, and had
possession of the key of this escritoire."

"And this person?"

"Is the count's illegitimate daughter, who lived in the house with
him--Mademoiselle Marguerite."

M. Wilkie sank into his chair again, completely overwhelmed. The
coincidence between the doct