As soon as I thought he was sufficiently warmed and cheered to relax a little I ventured to put the question that had been trembling on my lips for hours. “Is it too soon to ask if you have formed any opinion as to the cause of death, Sir Frank?” He looked at me rather sharply, and his bushy eyebrows drew together. “I can form no opinion till I have made an autopsy. If you mean have I made any conjecture, I have made several, any one of which may be right or may be wrong. Up to a certain point I am inclined to agree with your theory.” “With my theory!” I was surprised into repeating. “Yes. If you recollect, you suggested that whoever administered opium to Weathered had no intention of causing death. The object seems to have been to send him off into a state of unconsciousness so as to obtain possession of his keys; and we know what the keys were wanted for.” “To suppress the evidence against some patient, you mean?” I faltered. “That is one view. Another possible view is that the person who stole the case-book wanted to obtain evidence for his own purposes. He may have wanted to put pressure on some patient--or patients.” “Oh, no!” The protest escaped from me almost unawares. A slight lifting of Tarleton’s brows caused me to qualify it the next moment. “I mean that wasn’t my theory.” I pulled myself together as I went on. “Putting together everything we learnt from Madame Bonnell and from the waiter and from Miss Neobard, I suspect that Weathered had become a thorough scoundrel. My view is that he was taking advantage of the confessions made to him as a medical man to blackmail his patients, and that one of them was driven to desperation. She thought she could deliver herself by obtaining access to his safe, and destroying the documents. But she never dreamed that she was giving him a fatal dose.” “I needn’t tell you that would be no defence in the eye of the law if it actually was fatal,” the specialist put in grimly. “So you think it was the work of a woman, do you?” “The evidence, Gerard’s evidence, is to that effect, surely? He described three women in connection with the masked Inquisitor--not one man.” “He described one woman as being rather like a man. He suspected Zenobia of being His Royal Highness.” I hardly knew what to say. If there were any chance of the waiter’s theory being adopted by my chief, the relief to me would be as great as to Madame Bonnell herself. But dare I hope anything of the kind? The situation was so critical that I feared to commit myself one way or the other. I fell back on the other point in doubt. “Do you consider it possible, sir, that an otherwise harmless dose of morphia might prove fatal if the person to whom it was given had already saturated his system with opium?” Again the specialist’s voice had a note of surprise.