"You're not hinting at--suicide?"

"Emphatically no."

"What had he eaten?"

"Nothing but soup, except that he drank a portion of a glass of
water. I am wondering if he took anything at Mr. Wilson's house."
He stared hard at Doctor McMurdoch. "It may surprise you to learn
that I have already taken steps to have the remains of the soup
from Sir Charles's plate examined, as well as the water in the
glass. I now propose to call upon Mr. Wilson in order that I may
complete this line of enquiry."

"I sympathize with your suspicions, Mr. Harley," said the
physician dourly, "but you are wasting your time." A touch of the
old acidity crept back into his manner. "My certificate will be
'syncope due to unusual excitement'; and I shall stand by it."

"You are quite entitled to your own opinion," Harley conceded,
"which if I were in your place would be my own. But what do you
make of the fact that Sir Charles received a bogus telephone
message some ten minutes before my arrival, as a result of which
he visited Mr. Wilson's house?"

"But he's attending Wilson," protested the physician.

"Nevertheless, no one there had telephoned. It was a ruse. I
don't assume for a moment that this ruse was purposeless."