white crepe. The occupants were Italians who spoke some English.
They said that four-year-old Pietro had been playing around a
woodpile the afternoon before, when he was taken sick and came home,
staggering. The doctor could do nothing. The little one passed
from spasm into spasm, and died in an hour.

"Was there a mark like a ring anywhere on the hand or face?" asked
Average Jones.

The dead child's father looked surprised. That, he said, was what
the strange gentleman who had come that very morning asked, a queer,
bent little gentlemen, very bald and with big eye-glasses, who was
kind, and wept with them and gave them money to bury the "bambino."

"Moseley, by the Lord Harry!" exclaimed Mr. Curtis Fleming. "But
what was the death-agent?"

Average Jones shook his head. "Too early to do more than guess.
Will you take me to Professor Moseley's place?"

The old house stood four-square, with a patched-up conservatory on
one wing. In the front room they found the recluse's body decently
disposed, with an undertaker's assistant in charge. From the
greenhouse came a subdued hissing.

"What's that?" asked Jones.

"Fumigating the conservatory. There was a note found near the body
insisting on its being done. 'For safety,' it said, so I ordered it
looked to."