of Mrs. Comstock and her children, didn't you?
Well, here he is, the rascal!"

"Good God! Then it--it's not a mistake? You mean it--mean it? And Uncle
Phil! You accuse Uncle Phil?"

"Uncle Nothing!" flung back Cleek with a sort of laugh--and, hazarding a
guess which afterwards was proved to be the truth--"I'll lay my life,
Captain, that when you apply to the Australian authorities you will find
that old Mr. Philip Harmstead is in his grave; that he was attended in
his last illness by one Dr. Frederick Finch, to whom his fortune would
revert in the event of Mrs. Comstock and her children dying. Finch is
the fellow's name--isn't it, doctor, eh?"

"Finch?" repeated the Captain. "Good Heaven! Why that was the name of
the woman who was old Mr. Harmstead's housekeeper--you know, the widow I
told you about to-night."

"Oho!" said Cleek. "That's possibly where the threads join and this
little game begins. Or perhaps it may really be said to begin again
where Shorty, the chemist, died, and the celebrated Spofford mystery
ended--eh, doctor? Look here, Captain, look here, Mr. Narkom, you
remember what I told you this morning about that case in New Zealand
which so strongly resembled this one? That was the Spofford mystery. Do
you remember what I said about hitting upon a theory and offering it to
the medical fraternity, only to get laughed at for my pains? Well, it
was to this man, Dr. Frederick Finch, I advanced that theory, and it was
Dr. Frederick Finch who jeered at it, but has now made deadly use of it,
the hound. Do you want to know how he killed his victims, and what he
used? Look at this thing that you saw me take from the pocket of his
dressing-gown. It is a hypodermic syringe, but there is nothing in
it--there never has been anything in it. Air was his poison--air his
shaft of death; and he killed by injecting it into the veins of his
victims. The result of air coming into contact with the circulating
blood of a human being is the formation of a blood-clot, and death is
instantaneous the instant the clot reaches either the brain or the
heart! That was his method. But thank God it's done with for ever now,
and the next tenth day of the month will pass over this stricken family
and leave it unscathed!"

* * * * *

"How did I know the man?" said Cleek, answering Narkom's query, as they
came down the Tor-side afoot and forged on in the direction of
Lyntonhurst Old Church--whither Captain