The first glass showed no reaction.  Someone had been vindicated.

The second was neutral likewise—­another person in the room had been proved innocent.

The third—­no change.  Science had released a third.

The fourth—­

Almost it seemed as if the record in my pocket burned—­ spontaneously—­so intense was my feeling.  There in the glass was that fatal, telltale white precipitate.

“My God, it’s the milk ring!” whispered Tom close to my ear.

Hastily Kennedy dropped the serum into the fifth.  It remained as clear as crystal.

My hand trembled as it touched the envelope containing my record of the names.

“The person who wore the coat with that blood-stain on it,” declared Kennedy solemnly, “was the person who struck Lewis Langley down, who choked him and then dragged his scarcely dead body across the floor and obliterated the marks of violence in the blazing log fire.  Jameson, whose name is opposite the sign on this glass?”

I could scarcely tear the seal to look at the paper in the envelope.  At last I unfolded it, and my eye fell on the name opposite the fatal sign.  But my mouth was dry, and my tongue refused to move.  It was too much like reading a death-sentence.  With my finger on the name I faltered an instant.

Tom leaned over my shoulder and read it to himself.  “For Heaven’s sake, Jameson,” he cried, “let the ladies retire before you read the name.”

“It’s not necessary,” said a thick voice.  “We quarrelled over the estate.  My share’s mortgaged up to the limit, and Lewis refused to lend me more even until I could get Isabelle happily married.  Now Lewis’s goes to an outsider—­Harrington, boy, take care of Isabelle, fortune or no fortune.  Good—­”

Someone seized James Langley’s arm as he pressed an automatic revolver to his temple.  He reeled like a drunken man and dropped the gun on the floor with an oath.

“Beaten again,” he muttered.  “Forgot to move the ratchet from ‘safety’ to ‘fire.’”

Like a madman he wrenched himself loose from us, sprang through the door, and darted upstairs.  “I’ll show you some combustion!” he shouted back fiercely.

Kennedy was after him like a flash.  “The will!” he cried.

We literally tore the door off its hinges and burst into James Langley’s room.  He was bending eagerly over the fireplace.  Kennedy made a flying leap at him.  Just enough of the will was left unburned to be admitted to probate.

IX.  The Terror In The Air

“There’s something queer about these aeroplane accidents at Belmore Park,” mused Kennedy, one evening, as his eye caught a big headline in the last edition of the Star, which I had brought uptown with me.

“Queer?” I echoed.  “Unfortunate, terrible, but hardly queer.  Why, it is a common saying among the aeronauts that if they keep at it long enough they will all lose their lives.”