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“Oh, yes. I saw one this morning, sir,” replied the groom.

“Indeed?” said Kennedy. “Do you suppose you could catch a couple for me?”

“Guess I could, sir–alive, you mean?”

“Oh, yes, alive–I don’t want you to violate the game laws. This is the closed season, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, but then it’s all right, sir, here on the estate.”

“Bring them to me this afternoon, or–no, keep them here in the stable in a cage and let me know when you have them. If anybody asks you about them, say they belong to Mr. Tom.”

Craig handed a small treasury note to the groom, who took it with a grin and touched his hat.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll let you know when I have the bunnies.”

As we walked slowly back from the stables we caught sight of Tom down at the boat-house just putting off in the motor-boat with his uncle and cousin. Craig waved to him, and he walked up to meet us.

“While you’re in Saranac,” said Craig, “buy me a dozen or so test-tubes. Only, don’t let anyone here at the house know you are buying them. They might ask questions.”

While they were gone Kennedy stole into James Langley’s room and after a few minutes returned to our room with the hunting-jacket. He carefully examined it with his pocket lens. Then he filled a drinking-glass with warm boiled water and added a few pinches of table salt. With a piece of sterilised gauze from Doctor Putnam’s medicine-chest, he carefully washed off a few portions of the coat and set the glass and the gauze soaking in it aside. Then he returned the coat to the closet where he had found it. Next, as silently, he stole into Junior’s room and repeated the process with his hunting-jacket, using another glass and piece of gauze.

“While I am out of the room, Walter,” he said, “I want you to take these two glasses, cover them, and number them and on a slip of paper which you must retain, place the names of the owners of the respective coats. I don’t like this part of it–I hate to play spy and would much rather come out in the open, but there is nothing else to do, and it is much better for all concerned that I should play the game secretly just now. There may be no cause for suspicion at all. In that case I’d never forgive myself for starting a family row. And then again but we shall see.”

After I had numbered and recorded the glasses Kennedy returned, and we went down-stairs again.

“Curious about the will, isn’t it?” I remarked as we stood on the wide verandah a moment.

“Yes,” he replied. “It may be necessary to go back to New York to delve into that part of it before we get through, but I hope not. We’ll wait.”

At this point the groom interrupted us to say that he had caught the rabbits. Kennedy at once hurried to the stable. There he rolled up his sleeves, pricked a vein in his arm, and injected a small quantity of his own blood into one of the rabbits. The other he did not touch.

It was late in the afternoon when Tom returned from town with his uncle and cousin. He seemed even more agitated than usual. Without a word he hurried up from the landing and sought us out.

“What do you think of that?” he cried, opening a copy of the Record, and laying it flat on the library table.

There on the front page was Lewis Langley’s picture with a huge scare-head:

MYSTERIOUS CASE OF SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION

“It’s all out,” groaned Tom, as we bent over to read the account. “And such a story!”

Under the date of the day previous, a Saranac despatch ran:

Lewis Langley, well known as sporting man and club member in New York, and eldest son of the late Lewis Langley, the banker, was discovered dead under the most mysterious circumstances this morning at Camp Hangout, twelve miles from this town.