"Not a hope of it," replied Narkom. "A doctor was sent for immediately; fortunately one of the most famous surgeons in England happened to be in the neighbourhood at the time--called down from town to perform an operation. He is willing, so young Mr. Drake tells me, to stake his professional reputation that the man's heart was as sound as a guinea; that he had not imbibed one drop of anything poisonous; that he had not been asphyxiated, as, of course, he couldn't have been, for the bowman's slits in the wall gave free ventilation to the place, if nothing more; that he had not been shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned, but, nevertheless, he had died by violence, and that violence was not, and could not be, attributed to suicide, for there was everything to prove to the contrary. In short, that whatever had attacked him had done so unexpectedly and while he was busy at his work-table, for there was the chair lying on its back before it, just as it had fallen over when he jumped up from his seat, and there on the 'working plan' he was drawing up was the pen lying on a blob of India ink, just as it had dropped from his hand when he was stricken. Some murderous force had entered that room, and passed out of it again, leaving the door barred, bolted, and locked upon the inside. Some weapon had been used, and yet no weapon was there and no trace upon the body to indicate what its character might be. Indeed, everything in the room was precisely as it had been when Lord Fallowfield walked out last night and left him, beyond the fact of the overturned chair and a little puddle of clear water lying about a yard or so from the work-table and, owing to the waxing and polishing, not yet absorbed by the wood of the floor. As no one could account for the presence of that, and as it was the only thing there which might offer a possible clue to the mystery, the doctor took a small sample of that water and analyzed it. It was simply plain, everyday, common, or garden pure water, and nothing more, without the slightest trace of any foreign matter or of any poisonous substance in it whatsoever. There, old chap, that's the 'case'--that's the little riddle you're asked to come down and solve. What do you make of it, eh?" "Tell you better when I've seen Mr. James Drake and Lord Fallowfield and--the doctor," said Cleek, and would say no more than that for the present. CHAPTER XXVIII