Effingham had taken his tray and retired to the pantry. Doctor Marcy pulled at his cigar until it glowed redly; then he looked over at me. "You're Hildebrand of the 'Hundred,' I hear," he began abruptly. "Yes." "Consequently you ought to know of something that has been bothering me more than a little. Has it ever been intimated to you that there was anything peculiar about the death of your cousin?" "Francis Graeme! Why, no; nothing has been said to me." "Well, I don't think his death was a natural one." It startled me, the assured manner in which he spoke; in an instant, the atmosphere of this quiet country room seemed to have grown tense and heavy. "Go on," I said briefly. "As you know," continued Doctor Marcy, "Mr. Graeme died suddenly on Tuesday, June 21, presumably from heart failure or a cerebral hemorrhage. As a matter of record, my routine certificate gives the latter as the cause of death. The fact of a brain lesion was fully established, as I'll explain later, but I'm not at all satisfied as to the predisposing cause." "Yes." "You'll understand what I'm driving at when I tell you that I saw Francis Graeme professionally that very morning, and I know that he was in the best of health for a man of his age. He had been thinking of taking out additional life insurance, and as I am the county examiner for the company, he asked me to drop in Tuesday morning and go over him. Mind you, I had been his regular physician for a number of years, long before he came to the 'Hundred,' and I knew him inside and out. A straighter, cleaner man never lived, and he had always kept himself in top condition; I had never discovered the least sign of any degenerative process. "Well, I did come over, and I saw him in this very room where we are sitting. He was cheerful as usual, and even joked me on the possibility that I might at last uncover one of the insidious enemies to health that so often make their appearance in middle life. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing--heart, lungs, circulatory system--all in first-class shape. As a matter of form, there would have to be a laboratory analysis, but otherwise I was prepared to give him a clean bill of health, and I told him so. He took it quite as a matter of course, and, after arranging for a round of golf that same afternoon at the Lost River Country Club, we parted. That was around ten o'clock, and at half past two I had a telephone from the 'Hundred,' asking me to come over at once. When I arrived I was taken in here. Graeme lay on the floor, alongside the big library table. On his right temple there was a noticeable contusion, triangular in shape. He was stone dead." "Could you tell how long?" "Probably a couple of hours." "The wound, of course, was your first thought." "Naturally. And in itself it was quite enough to have caused death. Remember that it was on the temple, a vulnerable spot." "An assailant then?"