t up very straight.
Jamieson was looking slightly skeptical, and the coroner made a note.

"The Children's Hospital, you say, Doctor?" he asked.

"Yes. But the child, who was entered as Lucien Wallace, was taken away
by his mother two weeks ago. I have tried to trace them and failed."

All at once I remembered the telegram sent to Louise by some one signed
F. L. W.--presumably Doctor Walker. Could this veiled woman be the
Nina Carrington of the message? But it was only idle speculation. I
had no way of finding out, and the inquest was proceeding.

The report of the coroner's physician came next. The post-mortem
examination showed that the bullet had entered the chest in the fourth
left intercostal space and had taken an oblique course downward and
backward, piercing both the heart and lungs. The left lung was
collapsed, and the exit point of the ball had been found in the muscles
of the back to the left of the spinal column. It was improbable that
such a wound had been self-inflicted, and its oblique downward course
pointed to the fact that the shot had been fired from above. In other
words, as the murdered man had been found dead at the foot of a
staircase, it was probable that the shot had been fired by some one
higher up on the stairs. There were no marks of powder. The bullet, a
thirty-eight caliber, had been found in the dead man's clothing, and
was shown to the jury.

Mr. Jarvis was called next, but his testimony amounted to little.

He had been summoned by telephone to Sunnyside, had come over at once
with the steward and Mr. Winthrop, at present out of town. They had
been admitted by the housekeeper, and had found the body lying at the
foot of the staircase. He had made a search for a weapon, but there
was none around. The outer entry door in the east wing had been
unfastened and was open about an inch.

I had been growing more and more nervous. When the coroner called Mr.
John Bailey, the room was filled with suppressed excitement. Mr.
Jamieson went forward and spoke a few words to the coroner, who nodded.
Then Halsey was called.

"Mr. Innes," the coroner said, "will you tell under what circumstances
you saw Mr. Arnold Armstrong the night he died?"

"I saw him first at the Country Club," Halsey said quietly. He was
rather pale, but very composed. "I stopped there with my automobile
for gasolene. Mr. Armstrong had been playing cards. When I saw him
there, he was coming out of the card-