Presently annoyance got the better of gratification and he awoke. But even though his beautiful dream had departed the multiple bell-ringing kept noisily on. And with a groan he realized the racket emanated from the telephone at his bedside. “Well,” he snarled, vicious with dead sleepiness, as he lifted the receiver, “what the devil do you want?” He listened for a second, then said in a far different voice: “Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Gregg. I didn’t guess it was you. Nothing the matter, I hope?” he added, as though elderly spinsters were in the habit of calling him up at three in the morning when nothing was the matter. Again, this time much longer, he listened. Then he ejaculated: “Good Lord! Oh, good _Lord_!” The genuine horror in his voice waked wide his slumbrous wife. By dint of thirty years as a country doctor’s spouse Mrs. Lawton had schooled herself to doze peacefully through the nocturnal telephone ringing and three A. M. smalltalk which fringed her busy husband’s career. Mrs. Lawton sat bolt upright in bed. Her husband was listening once more. Through the dark his wife could hear the scratchedly buzzy tones of Miss Gregg, desiccated and attenuated by reason of the faulty connection. But, try as she would, she could catch no word. At last Lawton spoke again, the hint of horror still in his voice: “I’ll start over as soon as I can get dressed, Miss Gregg. You’ve notified the police, of course? Huh? Well, do, at once. I’ll be right there.” He hung up the receiver and floundered out of bed. “What’s the matter?” cried his wife. “What’s happened? What’s she want you for? What’s that about the police? What’s wrong? Why is she--?” “Young Willis Chase has been murdered,” replied the doctor, wriggling into his scarce-cooled clothes. “Found dead in bed, with a knifeblade sticking into his right carotid.” “_Oh! OH!_” babbled Mrs. Lawton. “Oh, it isn’t _possible_, Ezra! Who--who did it?” “The murderer neglected to leave his card,” snapped the doctor. “At least Miss Gregg didn’t mention it.... Where in hell’s hot hinges is my other shoe?” “But what was he doing at Miss Gregg’s? How did it happen? Who--” “It wasn’t at Miss Gregg’s. It was at Vailholme. Houseparty, I gather. Thax Vail’s dog woke them all up by howling and then ran to Chase’s room. They broke the door in. Chase was lying there stone dead with a knife in his throat. And--it was that big German army knife Thax showed us one day. Remember it? About a million blades. One of them a sort of three-cornered punch. That was the blade, she says. Stuck full length in the throat. They’re all upside down there. It seems she had presence of mind enough to send for me but not enough to send for the police.” “Oh, the poor, _poor_ boy! I--I never liked him.” “Maybe he killed himself on that account,” grumbled her husband, lacing his second shoe and rising puffingly from the task. “He--” “Oh, it was suicide then? The--”