"Well, Mr. Granice, the stars in their courses are against you, as
the bard says. Can't get a trace of Flood, or of Leffler either. And
you say you bought the motor through Flood, and sold it through him,
too?"

"Yes," said Granice wearily.

"Who bought it, do you know?"

Granice wrinkled his brows. "Why, Flood--yes, Flood himself. I sold
it back to him three months later."

"Flood? The devil! And I've ransacked the town for Flood. That kind
of business disappears as if the earth had swallowed it."

Granice, discouraged, kept silence.

"That brings us back to the poison," McCarren continued, his
note-book out. "Just go over that again, will you?"

And Granice went over it again. It had all been so simple at the
time--and he had been so clever in covering up his traces! As soon
as he decided on poison he looked about for an acquaintance who
manufactured chemicals; and there was Jim Dawes, a Harvard
classmate, in the dyeing business--just the man. But at the last
moment it occurred to him that suspicion might turn toward so
obvious an opportunity, and he decided on a more tortuous course.
Another friend, Carrick Venn, a student of medicine whom
irremediable ill-health had kept from the practice of his
profession, amused his leisure with experiments in physics, for the