At this hint of scandal, Mrs. Ogden Fitzhugh sat up very straight.

Jamieson was looking slightly skeptical, and the coroner made a note.

"The Children's Hospital, you say, Doctor?" he asked.

"Yes. But the child, who was entered as Lucien Wallace, was taken away

by his mother two weeks ago. I have tried to trace them and failed."

All at once I remembered the telegram sent to Louise by some one signed

F. L. W.--presumably Doctor Walker. Could this veiled woman be the

Nina Carrington of the message? But it was only idle speculation. I

had no way of finding out, and the inquest was proceeding.

The report of the coroner's physician came next. The post-mortem

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examination showed that the bullet had entered the chest in the fourth

left intercostal space and had taken an oblique course downward and

backward, piercing both the heart and lungs. The left lung was

collapsed, and the exit point of the ball had been found in the muscles

of the back to the left of the spinal column. It was improbable that

such a wound had been self-inflicted, and its oblique downward course

pointed to the fact that the shot had been fired from above. In other

words, as the murdered man had been found dead at the foot of a

staircase, it was probable that the shot had been fired by some one

higher up on the stairs. There were no marks of powder. The bullet, a

thirty-eight caliber, had been found in the dead man's clothing, and

was shown to the jury.

Mr. Jarvis was called next, but his testimony amounted to little.

He had been summoned by telephone to Sunnyside, had come over at once

with the steward and Mr. Winthrop, at present out of town. They had

been admitted by the housekeeper, and had found the body lying at the

foot of the staircase. He had made a search for a weapon, but there

was none around. The outer entry door in the east wing had been

unfastened and was open about an inch.

I had been growing more and more nervous. When the coroner called Mr.

John Bailey, the room was filled with suppressed excitement. Mr.

Jamieson went forward and spoke a few words to the coroner, who nodded.

Then Halsey was called.

"Mr. Innes," the coroner said, "will you tell under what circumstances

you saw Mr. Arnold Armstrong the night he died?"

"I saw him first at the Country Club," Halsey said quietly. He was

rather pale, but very composed. "I stopped there with my automobile

for gasolene. Mr. Armstrong had been playing cards. When I saw him

there, he was coming out of the card-room, talking to Mr. John Bailey."

"The nature of the discussion--was it amicable?"

Halsey hesitated.

"They were having a dispute," he said. "I asked Mr. Bailey to leave

the club with me and come to Sunnyside over Sunday."




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