LITMIR.BIZ

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waiting. "We must see Mrs. Maitland first," said Kennedy, as we left the nonplused coroner and his assistants.

      The Maitlands lived, we soon found, in a large old-fashioned brownstone house just off Fifth Avenue.

      Kennedy's card with the message that it was very urgent brought us in as far as the library, where we sat for a moment looking around at the quiet refinement of a more than well-to-do home.

      On a desk at one end of the long room was a typewriter. Kennedy rose. There was not a sound of any one in either the hallway or the adjoining rooms. A moment later he was bending quietly over the typewriter in the corner, running off a series of characters on a sheet of paper. A sound of a closing door upstairs, and he quickly jammed the paper into his pocket, retraced his steps, and was sitting quietly opposite me again.

      Mrs. Maitland was a tall, perfectly formed woman of baffling age, but with the impression of both youth and maturity which was very fascinating. She was calmer now, and although she seemed to be of anything but a hysterical nature, it was quite evident that her nervousness was due to much more than the shock of the recent tragic event, great as that must have been. It may have been that I recalled the words of the note, "Dr. Ross has told me the nature of your illness," but I fancied that she had been suffering from some nervous trouble.

      "There is no use prolonging our introduction, Mrs. Maitland," began Kennedy. "We have called because the authorities are not yet fully convinced that Mr. Maitland committed suicide."

      It was evident that she had seen the note, at least. "Not a suicide?" she repeated, looking from one to the other of us.

      "Mr. Masterson on the wire, ma'am," whispered a maid. "Do you wish to speak to him? He begged to say that he did not wish to intrude, but he felt that if there—"

      "Ye, I will talk to him—in my room," she interrupted.

      I thought that there was just a trace of well-concealed confusion, as she excused herself.

      We rose. Kennedy did not resume his seat immediately. Without a word or look he completed his work at the typewriter by abstracting several blank sheets of paper from the desk.

      A few moments later Mrs. Maitland returned, calmer.

      "In his note," resumed Kennedy, "he spoke of Dr. Ross and—"

      "Oh," she cried, "can't you see Dr. Ross about it? Really I—I oughtn't to be—questioned in this way—not now, so soon after what I've had to go through."

      It seemed that her nerves were getting unstrung again. Kennedy rose to go.

      "Later, come to see me," she pleaded. "But now—you must realise—it is too much. I cannot talk—I cannot"

      "Mr. Maitland had no enemies that you know of?" asked Kennedy, determined to learn something now, at least.

      "No, no. None that would—do that."

      "You had had no quarrel?" he added.

      "No—we never quarrelled. Oh, Price—why did you? How could you?"

      Her feelings were apparently rapidly getting the better of her. Kennedy bowed, and we withdrew silently. He had learned one thing. She believed or wanted others to believe in the note.

      At a public telephone, a few minutes later, Kennedy was running over the names in the telephone book. "Let me see—here's an Arnold Masterson," he considered. Then turning the pages he went on, "Now we must find this Dr. Ross. There—Dr. Sheldon Ross—specialist in nerve diseases—that must be the one. He lives only a few blocks further uptown."

      Handsome, well built, tall, dignified, in fact distinguished, Dr. Ross proved to be a man whose very face and manner were magnetic, as should be those of one who had chosen his branch of the profession.

      "You have heard, I suppose, of the strange death of Price Maitland?" began Kennedy when we were seated in the doctor's office.

      "Yes, about an hour ago." It was evident that he was studying us.

      "Mrs. Maitland, I believe, is a patient of yours?"

      "Yes, Mrs. Maitland is one of my patients," he admitted interrogatively. Then, as if considering that Kennedy's manner was not to be mollified by anything short of a show of confidence, he added: "She came to me several months ago. I have had her under treatment for nervous trouble since then, without a marked improvement."

      "And Mr. Maitland," asked Kennedy, "was he a patient, too?"

      "Mr. Maitland," admitted the doctor with some reticence, "had called on me this morning, but no, he was not a patient."

      "Did you notice anything unusual?"

      "He seemed to be much worried," Dr. Ross replied guardedly.

      Kennedy took the suicide note from his pocket and handed it to him.

      "I suppose you have heard of this?" asked Craig.

      The doctor read it hastily, then looked up, as if measuring from Kennedy's manner just how much he knew. "As nearly as I could make out," he said slowly, his reticence to outward appearance gone, "Maitland seemed to have something on his mind. He came inquiring as to the real cause of his wife's nervousness. Before I had talked to him long I gathered that he had a haunting fear that she did not love him any more, if ever. I fancied that he even doubted her fidelity."

      I wondered why the doctor was talking so freely, now, in contrast with his former secretiveness.

      "Do you think he was right?" shot out Kennedy quickly, eying Dr. Ross keenly.

      "No, emphatically, no; he was not right," replied the doctor, meeting Craig's scrutiny without flinching. "Mrs. Maitland," he went on more slowly as if carefully weighing every word, "belongs to a large and growing class of women in whom, to speak frankly, sex seems to be suppressed. She is a very handsome and attractive woman—you have seen her? Yes? You must have noticed, though, that she is really frigid, cold, intellectual."

      The doctor was so sharp and positive about his first statement and so careful in phrasing the second that I, at least, jumped to the conclusion that Maitland might have been right, after all. I imagined that Kennedy, too, had his suspicions of the doctor.

      "Have you ever heard of or used cobra venom in any of your medical work?" he asked casually.

      Dr. Ross wheeled in his chair, surprised.

      "Why, yes," he replied quickly. "You know that it is a test for blood diseases, one of the most recently discovered and used parallel to the old tests. It is known as the Weil cobra-venom test."

      "Do you use it often?"

      "N-no," he replied. "My practice ordinarily does not lie in that direction. I used it not long ago, once, though. I have a patient under my care, a well-known club-man. He came to me originally—"

      "Arnold Masterson?" asked Craig.

      "Yes—how did you know his name?"

      "Guessed it," replied Craig laconically, as if he knew much more than he cared to tell. "He was a friend of Mrs. Maitland's, was he not?"

      "I should say not," replied Dr. Ross, without hesitation. He was quite ready to talk without being urged. "Ordinarily," he explained confidentially, "professional ethics seals my lips, but in this instance, since you seem to know so much, I may as well tell more."

      I hardly knew whether to take him at his face value or not. Still he went on: "Mrs. Maitland is, as I have hinted at, what we specialists would call a consciously frigid but unconsciously passionate woman. As an intellectual woman she suppresses nature. But nature does and will assert herself, we believe. Often you will find an intellectual woman attracted unreasonably to a purely physical man—I mean, speaking generally, not in particular cases. You have read Ellen Key, I presume? Well, she expresses it well in some of the things she has written about affinities. Now, don't misunderstand me," he cautioned. "I am speaking generally, not of this individual case."

      I was following Dr. Ross closely. When he talked so, he was a most fascinating man.

      "Mrs.

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