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"Rather odd," commented the captain. "However, I'll look after it for you. If necessary, I'll loan the bank enough additional securities as collateral to cover the loan. Don't let it disturb you, Miss Carwell. It is merely a small detail of business that often crops up. Securities in these days so often fluctuate that banks are forced to call for more, and different ones, to cover loans secured by them. I'll attend to the matter for you."

"Thank you so much. And now I believe I may safely call Viola. She would not forgive me if she knew you had been here and she had not seen you to thank you for your care of her yesterday."

"Oh, that was nothing. I was very glad - "

Captain Poland was interrupted by a ring at the door.

"Perhaps that is a message from the doctors now," suggested Miss Carwell.

"It is Dr. Lambert himself," announced the captain, looking from a window that gave a view of the front porch. "Dr. Baird is with him. They must have completed the autopsy. Shall I see them for you?"

"Please do. And please tell me at once that everything is all right, and that we may proceed with the funeral arrangements," begged the sister of the dead man.

"I will do so, Miss Carwell."

Captain Poland, anticipating the maid, went into the hall and himself opened the door for the medical men.

"Oh! I'm glad you're here!" exclaimed the rather gruff voice of Dr. Lambert. "Yes, I'm glad you're here."

The captain was on the point of asking why, when Dr. Lambert motioned to him to step into a little reception room off the main hall. Somewhat wonderingly, Captain Poland obeyed, and when the door had closed, shutting him in with the two doctors, he turned to the older physician and asked:

"Is anything the matter?"

"Well, we have completed the autopsy," said Dr. Lambert.

"That's good. Then you are ready to sign a certificate, or at least get Dr. Rowland to, so that we can proceed with the arrangements. Miss Mary Carwell is anxious to have - "

"Well, I suppose the funeral will have to be held," said Dr. Lambert slowly. "That can't be held up very long, even if it was worse than it is;"

"Worse than it is! What do you mean?" cried Captain Poland sharply. "Is there any suspicion - "

"There is more than suspicion, my dear sir," went on Dr. Lambert, as he sank into a chair as though very, very tired. "There is, I regret to say, certainty."

"Certainty of what?"

"Certainty that my old friend, Horace Carwell, committed suicide!"

"Suicide!"

"By poisoning," added Dr. Baird, who had been anxious to get in a word. "We found very plain evidences of it when we examined the stomach and viscera."

"Poison!" cried Captain Poland. "A suicide? I don't believe it! Why should Horace Carwell kill himself? He hadn't a reason in the world for it! There must be some mistake! Why did he do it? Why? Why?"

And then suddenly he became strangely thoughtful.

CHAPTER IV

VIOLA'S DECISION

"That is the very question we have been asking ourselves, my dear Captain," said Dr. Lambert wearily. "And we are no nearer an answer now than, apparently, you are. Why did he do it?"

The three men, two gravely professional, one, the younger, more so than his elder colleague, and the third plainly upset over the surprising news, looked at one another behind the closed door of the little room off the imposing reception hall at The Haven. They were in the house of death, and they had to do with more than death, for there was, in the reputed action of Horace Carwell, the hint of disgrace which suicide always engenders.

"I suppose," began Captain Poland, rather weakly, "that there can be no chance of error He looked from one medical man to the other.

"Not the least in the world !" quickly exclaimed Baird. "We made a most careful examinaof the deceased's organs. They plainly show traces of a violent poison, though whether it was irritant or one of the neurotics, we are not yet prepared to say."

"It couldn't have been an irritant," said Dr. Lambert gently. It was as though he had corrected a too zealous student