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“that your certificate told the truth.”
    The doctor stared at him for an instant, then he slapped his bulging thigh. “Splendid!” he roared. “Splendid! a man after my own heart. Thorne, for all your desiccated exterior you have juicy potentialities.” He turned on Ellery, beaming. “You heard that, Mr. Queen? Your friend openly accuses me of murder. This is becoming quite exhilarating. So! Old Reinach’s a fratricide. What do you think of that, Nick? Your patron accused of cold-blooded murder. Dear, dear.”
    â€œThat’s ridiculous, Mr. Thorne,” growled Nick Keith. “You don’t believe it yourself.”
    The lawyer’s gaunt cheeks sucked in. “Whether I believe it or not is immaterial. The possibility exists. But I’m more concerned with Alice Mayhew’s interests at the moment than with a possible homicide. Sylvester Mayhew is dead, no matter by what agency—divine or human; but Alice Mayhew is very much alive.”
    â€œAnd so?” asked Reinach softly.
    â€œAnd so I say,” muttered Thorne, “it’s damnably queer her father should have died when he did. Damnably.”
    For a long moment there was silence. Keith put his elbows on his knees and stared into the flames, his shaggy boyish hair over his eyes. Dr. Reinach sipped a glass of brandy with enjoyment.
    Then he set his glass down and said with a sigh: “Life is too short, gentlemen, to waste in cautious skirmishings. Let us proceed without feinting movements to the major engagement. Nick Keith is in my confidence and we may speak freely before him.” The young man did not move. “Mr. Queen, you’re very much in the dark, aren’t you?” went on the fat man with a bland smile.
    Ellery did not move, either. “And how,” he murmured, “did you know that?”
    Reinach kept smiling. “Pshaw. Thorne hadn’t left the Black House since Sylvester’s funeral. Nor did he receive or send any mail during his self-imposed vigil last week. This morning he left me on the pier to telephone someone. You showed up shortly after. Since he was gone only a minute or two, it was obvious that he hadn’t had time to tell you much, if anything. Allow me to felicitate you, Mr. Queen, upon your conduct today. It’s been exemplary. An air of omniscience covering a profound and desperate ignorance.”
    Ellery removed his pince-nez and began to polish their lenses. “You’re a psychologist as well as a physician, I see.”
    Thorne said abruptly: “This is all beside the point.”
    â€œNo, no, it’s all very much to the point,” replied the fat man in a sad bass. “Now the canker annoying your friend, Mr. Queen—since it seems a shame to keep you on tenterhooks any longer—is roughly this: My half-brother Sylvester, God rest his troubled soul, was a miser. If he’d been able to take his gold with him to the grave—with any assurance that it would remain there—I’m sure he would have done it.”
    â€œGold?” asked Ellery, raising his brows.
    â€œYou may well titter, Mr. Queen. There was something medieval about Sylvester; you almost expected him to go about in a long black velvet gown muttering incantations in Latin. At any rate, unable to take his gold with him to the grave, he did the next best thing. He hid it.”
    â€œOh, lord,” said Ellery. “You’ll be pulling clanking ghosts out of your hat next.”
    â€œHid,” beamed Dr. Reinach, “the filthy lucre in the Black House.”
    â€œAnd Miss Alice Mayhew?”
    â€œPoor child, a victim of circumstances. Sylvester never thought of her until recently, when she wrote from London that her last maternal relative had died. Wrote to friend Thorne, he of the lean and hungry eye, who had been recommended by some friend as a trustworthy lawyer. As he is, as he is! You see, Alice didn’t even know if