Tragedy Trail | Page 4

save you annoyance. Please leave everything in the room exactly as it is.
Get the other young ladies into your back parlor and keep all of them
there for the present. Perhaps I can let the police in and get them
upstairs without the other boarders knowing."
"Thank you, doctor," Mrs. Burke said.

She went down the stairs to collect the other frightened boarders, and
the doctor closed the door of the room and followed her. He telephoned
the coroner, and to police headquarters, and then waited outside on the
steps to the house.
The police detective who answered the call was a man of wide
metropolitan experience. His name was Darter. He was acquainted with
the doctor, who told him all that he knew in a few words.
"Sorry if it bothers Mrs. Burke, but we've got to get to the bottom of
this," the detective said.
The coroner's assistant arrived and made his superficial examination,
and the body was removed. Then the detective and the doctor went to
the back parlor, where Mrs. Burke was speaking in low tones to her
boarders, girls with horror written in their faces. They could not believe
that Alice Patton, the favorite of the house, who had been eating dinner
with them so short a time before, was dead.
The detective whispered to the landlady, and she, in turn, took Mabel
Higgins into another room, the detective and the doctor going along.
"Miss Higgins," the detective said, "I want you to tell me, please, just
what happened. Try to be as calm as possible, and tell me everything.
Do not omit a thing, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you."
Mabel Higgins strove to be calm, but her recital was interrupted by
frequent fits of sobbing. Alice had come into her room to work on the
piece of embroidery, she said. The girl had appeared as cheerful as
usual. She insisted on getting the water, when Mabel wanted a drink,
saying that she wanted one herself.
"Did she take it?" the detective asked.
"I think she did," Mabel replied. "It sounded like it. I couldn't see her,
of course. And then she drew a glass of water for me and came back
into the room. She began to say something, and then seemed to choke. I
turned over to look at her. She dropped the glass and clutched at her

breast--and dropped on the floor."
Mabel Higgins began sobbing again, and the detective waited until Mrs.
Burke comforted her and she was calm once more.
"Please come up to the room with us, Miss Higgins," he said then.
The girl went, with Mrs. Burke's arm around her waist. She stood near
the door, white, shaking, looking at the place on the floor where her
dead chum's body had been.
"Is this the water glass?" the detective asked, picking it up from the
floor.
"Yes, sir."
He went into the bathroom with the doctor, and they looked at the toilet
preparations and investigated the tiny medicine chest. There was no
poison of any description, no empty vial.
"How would that stuff have to be carried?" the detective asked the
physician.
"It could be carried in almost any way. It might be in liquid form, or
merely a bit of paste, or a powder."
"And how soon does it cause death?"
"That depends upon conditions, of course. The poison is virulent. I
should say that, taken into the stomach, or introduced directly into the
blood, it would cause death in from two to ten minutes, depending upon
the constitution and general condition of the victim."
"Then the girl could have swallowed it in here when she took a drink
and have reached the other room before she dropped dead?"
"Yes. But it would have had to have been in a bit of paper or a small
bottle. However, if it was in paste form, a piece one-quarter the size of
a pea would have done the work, and it could have been carried in a

corner of a handkerchief. A speck of the stuff would cause death in
some cases."
"Possibly, then, she committed suicide."
"But this poison cannot be obtained readily, even by chemists or
members of the medical profession," the doctor protested. "And that
girl was not the sort to commit suicide."
"You never can tell."
"That's true, of course," replied the doctor.
They went back into the room.
"Miss Higgins," the detective asked, "do you think it impossible that
Miss Patton killed herself?"
"Oh, she wouldn't have done such a thing!" Mabel Higgins cried. "She
was happy--glad to be alive--healthy--had no sorrows or trouble at all.
She was joking with me just before----"
"Sure she didn't have any trouble?"
"I would have known it if she had been in trouble. We have