cured of the disease."

Kennedy was forging straight ahead now in his exposure.
"Crotalin," he continued, "is one of the new drugs used in the
treatment of epilepsy. But it is a powerful two-edged instrument.
Some one who knew the drug, who perhaps had used it, has tried an
artificial bite of a rattler on Veda Blair, not for epilepsy, but
for another, diabolical purpose, thinking to cover up the crime,
either as the result of the so-called death thought of the Lodge
or as the bite of the real rattler at the Lodge."

Kennedy had at last got under Dr. Vaughn's guard. All his
reticence was gone.

"I joined the cult," he confessed. "I did it in order to observe
and treat one of my patients for epilepsy. I justified myself. I
said, 'I will be the exposer, not the accomplice, of this modern
Satanism.' I joined it and--"

"There is no use trying to shield anyone, Vaughn," rapped out
Kennedy, scarcely taking time to listen. "An epileptic of the most
dangerous criminal type has arranged this whole elaborate setting
as a plot to get rid of the wife who brought him his fortune and
now stands in the way of his unholy love of Mrs. Langhorne. He
used you to get the poison with which you treated him. He used the
Rapports with money to play on her mysticism by their so-called
death thought, while he watched his opportunity to inject the
fatal crotalin."

Craig faced the criminal, whose eyes now showed more plainly than