“Yes, yes,” he chattered on; “I will help you, Mrs. Embury. Now, Dr. Harper, this is your case, I understand? Dr. Marsden--yours, too? Yes, yes--mysterious, you say? Maybe so--maybe so. Let us proceed at once.” The little man stood, nervously teetering up and down on his toes, almost like a schoolboy preparing to speak a piece. “Now--if you please--now--” he looked eagerly toward the other doctors. They all went into Embury’s room and closed the door. Then Eunice’s temporary calm forsook her. “It’s awful!” she cried. “I don’t want them to bother poor Sanford. Why can’t they let him alone? I don’t care what killed him! He’s dead, and no doctors can help that! Oh, Alvord, can’t you make them let San alone?” “No, Eunice; it has to be. Keep quiet, dear. It can do no good for you to get all wrought up, and if you’d go and lie down--” “For heaven’s sake, stop telling me to go and lie down! If one more person says that to me I shall just perfectly fly!” “Now, Eunice,” began Aunt Abby, “it’s only for your own good, dear. You are all excited and nervous--” “Of course, I am! Who wouldn’t be? Mason,” she looked around at the concerned faces, “I believe you understand me best. You know I don’t want to go and lie down, don’t you?” “Stay where you are, child,” Elliott smiled kindly at her. “Of course, you’re nervous and upset--all you can do is to try to hold yourself together--and don’t try that too hard, either--for you may defeat your own ends thereby. Just wait, Eunice; sit still and wait.” They all waited, and after what seemed an interminable time the Examiner reappeared and the other two doctors with him. “Well, well,” Crowell began, his restless hands twisting themselves round each other. “Now, be quiet, Mrs. Embury--I declare, I don’t know how to say what I have to say, if you sit there like a chained tiger--” “Go on!” Eunice now seemed to usurp something of Crowell’s own dictatorship. “Go on, Dr. Crowell!” “Well, ma’am, I will. But there’s not much to tell. Our principal evidence is lack of evidence--” “What do you mean?” cried Eunice. “Talk English, please!” “I am doing so. There is positively no evidence that Mr. Embury was poisoned, yet owing to the absolute lack of any hint of any other means of death, we are forced to the conclusion that he was poisoned.” “By his own hand?” asked Hendricks, his face grave. “Probably not. You see, sir, with no knowledge of how the poison was administered--with no suspicion of any reason for its being administered--we are working in the dark--” “I should say so!” exclaimed Elliott; “black darkness, I call it. Are you within your rights in assuming poison?” “Entirely; it has to be the truth. No agent but a swift, subtle poison could have cut off the victim’s life like that.” Crowell was now walking up and down the room. He was a restless, nervous man, and under stress of anxiety he became almost hysterical.