into the house, made his way up to the library, and "used
threatening language." The house-keeper found cousin Joseph gasping,
the whites of his eyes showing "something awful." The doctor was
sent for, and the attack warded off; and the police had ordered the
Italian from the neighbourhood.

But cousin Joseph, thereafter, languished, had "nerves," and lost
his taste for toast and butter-milk. The doctor called in a
colleague, and the consultation amused and excited the old man--he
became once more an important figure. The medical men reassured the
family--too completely!--and to the patient they recommended a more
varied diet: advised him to take whatever "tempted him." And so one
day, tremulously, prayerfully, he decided on a tiny bit of melon. It
was brought up with ceremony, and consumed in the presence of the
house-keeper and a hovering cousin; and twenty minutes later he was
dead...

"But you remember the circumstances," Granice went on; "how
suspicion turned at once on the Italian? In spite of the hint the
police had given him he had been seen hanging about the house since
'the scene.' It was said that he had tender relations with the
kitchen-maid, and the rest seemed easy to explain. But when they
looked round to ask him for the explanation he was gone--gone clean
out of sight. He had been 'warned' to leave Wrenfield, and he had
taken the warning so to heart that no one ever laid eyes on him
again."

Granice paused. He had dropped into a chair opposite the lawyer's,
and he sat for a moment, his head thrown back, looking about the
familiar room. Everything in it had grown grimacing and alien, and