"What conclusions have you reached with reference to these murders, Professor?" Professor Brierly looked at his questioner curiously. He looked about at the other men. The strain was increasingly telling on them. Old men, all of them, the difference that the last three days had made in their appearance was startling. A furtive, harrowing fear was apparent in most of their countenances. Professor Brierly answered gently: "I do not believe I have reached any general conclusion, Judge. The facts, as I found them, that may be helpful to the police I have given the police. Understand, please, I am not a policeman nor a detective. I am a simple scientist and it is as problems in science that I approach these subjects." "Perhaps I have not made myself clear, Professor. We, or rather most of us, are in a very unhappy state of mind. Thus, what might three days ago have been a very simple thing, takes on for all of us perhaps a grossly exaggerated importance. Mr. Flynn there," glancing toward one of the men who was looking with dull unseeing eyes at the table, "has an important errand at his home. His home is in Pleasantville, N.Y. That is not far from New York City. We are really perplexed as to whether we ought to let him go." Justice Higginbotham nervously clenched his fist until the knuckles showed white. "This is ghastly, Professor. Let me put it bluntly. Here we are, eleven old comrades, and we are--shall I say it--suspicious of one another. There, you have it, but it is the simple truth. Perhaps all of us do not share this unworthy feeling." He smiled grimly and continued: "We are old men. In this state of mind, if it continues and grows as it must, unless this damnable mess is cleared up, we will all die shortly without the aid of murder." McGuire stood up abruptly and took several paces back and forth. He growled: "Yes, it's hellish. We don't like the idea of Flynn going off by himself and at the same time we are all afraid to stay here. That damn Tontine policy. If not for that we would not--" His sentence was left unfinished. Several of the old heads nodded in agreement. Flynn looked up. With an air of obviously false bravado he exclaimed: "What the hell is there to be afraid of? And suppose I do follow the others? I told you when I came three days ago that I could not spend the week. I just have to attend to this matter." He shook his head stubbornly. "If we take this attitude--we are men, aren't we. Can't we protect ourselves, now that we know definitely of the danger. Or aren't we exaggerating the danger?" Mr. Marshall said gently. "But it is not altogether our fear for your safety, Bill, that is in our minds. It is--let us put it frankly--" McGuire interrupted. "Oh, go on, say it, Hank, say it! It is fear of one another as well as fear for one another. Is that it?" Marshall nodded. Jimmy tingled at this scene. There was an electric tension that might result in--almost anything. McGuire continued: