going to bed at night in perfect health, was found in the morning stone-dead!  Of course, as no doctor could give a death certificate when none had been in attendance upon her, the Law stepped in, the coroner held an inquest, an autopsy was decided upon, and the result of it was a deeper and more amazing mystery than ever.  She had died—­but from what?  Every organ was found to be in a thoroughly healthy condition.  The heart was sound, the lungs betrayed no sign of an anesthetic, the blood and kidneys not the faintest trace of poison—­everything about her was perfectly normal.  She had not died through drugs, she had not died through strangulation, suffocation, electrical shock, or failure of the heart.  She had not been stabbed, she had not been shot, she had not succumbed to any mortal disease—­yet there she was, stone-dead, slain by something which no one could trace and for which Science could find no name.”

Narkom opened his lips to speak, but Cleek signalled him to silence, and stood studying the Captain from under down-drawn brows, looking and listening and thoughtfully rubbing his thumb and forefinger up and down his chin.

CHAPTER XXXII

“Of course the family was horribly shocked and upset by this sudden and mysterious interruption to the dream of peace,” went on the Captain; “but nothing was left but to accept the verdict of ’Death from unknown causes,’ and to believe it the will of God.  The body was buried a few days later, and, comforting each other as best they could, the sorrowing uncle and heart-broken nieces and nephews settled down to living their lives without the one who had been the sunshine of the home, and whose loss seemed the greatest blow that could have been dealt them.  A month passed and they were just beginning to forget details of the tragedy when a second and equally mysterious and horrifying one occurred, and the eldest son of the dead woman—­Philip—­was stricken down precisely as his mother had been, and, as his horrified brother, sisters, and uncle now recalled, like her, on the tenth day of the month!”

“Hum-m-m!” said Cleek, reflectively.  “Rather significant, that.  It was, I assume, that circumstance which first suggested the idea of something more than mere chance being at the back of these sudden and mysterious deaths?”

“That and one other circumstance.  The condition of the bedclothing, Mr. Cleek, showed that in Philip’s case there had been something in the nature of a struggle before he had succumbed to the Power which had assailed him.  In other words, he had not been, as doubtless the poor mother had, so infinitely inferior in point of strength to the murderer as to be absolutely powerless in the wretch’s grip from the very first instant of the attack.  He had fought for his life, poor fellow, but it must have been a brief fight and death itself almost instantaneous; for although the bedclothing was tangled round his feet in a manner which could only have occurred in a struggle, he did not live long enough to get off the bed itself or slide so much as one foot to the floor.  He died as his mother had died, and the verdict of the doctors and of the coroner’s jury was the same:  ’Death from unknown causes’!”