On quitting the premises they took the high road to Bournemouth, and finally entered a house in the Holdenhurst Road. Making a mental note of the number of the house, I retraced my steps homeward, and early the next morning I sent the following telegram to Vane, who often accompanies me on my expeditions, and to whose quick wits I owe much: "Have an important case on hand. Meet me this evening entrance to Bournemouth pier 7 p.m." After dispatching this telegram I returned to the Beeches, and asked Sir Eldred to show me the rooms in which the three deaths had taken place. I then examined these rooms most minutely, but I could discover nothing in them that could in any way help me to form a theory or even get a suggestion. "When were the deaths first discovered?" I asked. "Not until the morning," Sir Eldred replied, "when the servants, getting no reply to their knocks, became alarmed, and eventually the doors were forced open." "And in each case death had taken place in bed?" "Yes." "Did you have the same doctor to all three of your relatives after their deaths had been discovered?" I asked Sir Eldred. "Yes," he said. "Dr. Bowles. He has attended us for years." "What age is he?" I inquired. Sir Eldred thought a moment. "About sixty-four or five," he replied. "He attended my father long before he was married." "Then he would be a little old-fashioned," I said. "He might not, for instance, have much knowledge of the newest poisons. New poisons, you know, both in the form of liquid and gases, are constantly being discovered. Many are imported from Germany and the East. Might I see Dr. Bowles?" "Certainly," Sir Eldred replied; "but I fear he cannot help you much, as all he knew he made public at the inquests." Sir Eldred was right practically. In my interview with Dr. Bowles, I found that he could tell me little beyond what I already knew. "Can you," I asked him, "describe the appearance of the bodies and the effect on them of the gas which you say, in all probability, caused the asphyxiation? Was there anything specially remarkable in the facial contractions or colour of the skin?" "Yes," he said, "there was an infinite horror, such horror as I have never seen in human faces before," and he shuddered as he spoke. Then he gave me a minute description of the bodies, which I took down in my notebook and posted to a specialist in Oriental poisons whom I knew in London. "Was there nothing else in the three cases that struck you as unusual?" I asked Dr. Bowles. "No peculiarity in common?" He thought for a moment, and then said, "Nothing beyond the fact that all three died precisely at the same time--ten minutes past two in the morning." "The time when human vitality is at the lowest, and superphysical phenomena the most common. Were the victims in a normal state of health? Was there any family or hereditary disease?" "Yes, valvular weakness of the heart." "Which would render them more susceptible to the influence of poison?"