“No, sir, he didn’t like a man fussing about. I attended him, sir, and a footman helped me out now and then; and Mrs. Fenn, she’s cook and housekeeper, sir, she looked after his clothes, saving what I did myself.” “Have you any reason to think your master would take his own life?” “Oh, Lord, no, sir. Begging your pardon, but he was very fond of life, was Mr. Tracy. I thought he died of a fit, sir.” “Probably he did. A fit or stroke of apoplexy. I begin to think, Inspector, we have no murder mystery on our hands after all.” “No,” said Farrell, shaking his head, “apparently not.” “Apparently yes,” said Keeley Moore, quietly. He had been looking at the dead man, and though he had not moved, but had stood for a long time, with his hands in his pockets, staring down at the still figure on the bed, I knew, somehow, that he had made a discovery. “Stand over here, please, Inspector,” he said, in his calm, matter-of-fact way. Farrell went and stood beside him, and Moore pointed to a very small circular object that shone like silver, though nearly hidden by the thick and rather long hair of Sampson Tracy. It was the head of a nail that had been driven into the man’s skull. CHAPTER IV THE NAIL “My God!” Farrell exclaimed, stepping closer and pushing aside the gray hair, thus clearly revealing the awful truth. A flat-headed nail, the head rather more than a quarter of an inch in diameter, had been driven into the skull with such force that it showed merely as a metal disk. Having been hidden by the dead man’s hair, it had remained unnoticed until Moore’s quick eyes espied it. Farrell picked at it a little, but it was far too firmly fastened to be moved by his fingers. “What shall we do?” the Inspector asked, helplessly. “Shall we try to get Doctor Rogers back?” “No,” returned the Coroner, “he’s just starting on a long trip. Let him go. He could do nothing and it would be a pity to spoil his journey. His diagnosis of apoplexy was most natural in the circumstances, for the symptoms are the same. I, too, thought death was the result of an apoplectic stroke. But now we know it is black murder, the case comes directly within my jurisdiction, and there’s no occasion to recall Doctor Rogers.” “You’re right,” Ames assented, “but who could have done this fearful thing? I can hardly believe a human being capable of such a horror! Mr. Moore, you simply must take up this case. It ought to be a problem after your own heart.” Every word the man uttered made me dislike him more. To refer to this terrible tragedy as a problem after Moore’s own heart seemed to me to indicate a mind callous and almost ghoulish in its type. I knew Kee well enough to feel sure that he would investigate the murder, but not at the behest of Harper Ames. He only acknowledged Ames’s speech by a noncommittal nod and turned to Detective March.