"And why are you, sir?"
"I heard a noise," I explained,
"So did I."
"And I thought I saw something."
"'Thought!'" he cried. "'Thought,' hell. I did."
"You did. Where?"
"You saw it, too?"
"Yes, in the corridor outside my room."
"You're lucky," said my uncle. "I saw it in my room."
He smiled a grim smile.
"I was so shocked that I could not move. After it left I got up and came down here. I thought it might have come this way."
"No," I said. "It came past my room and went into their room."
The next day the sick man was much improved. Joe was brighter. My uncle smiled in spite of his troubled mind. I said nothing.
That night we went to bed early. I was tired out and soon fell asleep. It was three o'clock again when I heard a noise. This time I rushed out and came face to face with the unearthly visitor. It gave me one mighty crack on the chin that sent me back into my room. I lay on the floor in a semi-dazed condition for full five minutes as well as I can estimate, Then I grabbed my dumbbell and went out again.
As on the previous night, I went to the door of Joe's room and opened it and switched on the lights.
On the floor lay Joe, blood at her mouth and nose. Across the foot of the bed lay her husband, looking more like his old self than I had seen him since the day of his wedding.
I told my story at the inquest. The police officials laughed at it. The reporters seized upon it as great stuff for the papers. The coroner's jury considered it gravely, and then gave it as their verdict, "that Josephine Blackton was murdered by her husband Richard Blackton, who afterward died by his own hand."
They are right and yet they are wrong. I have found new evidence. I shall make it known.
In the trunks of the honeymooners, which arrived tonight, was a collection of curios. Among them was a small bottle containing a strange insect, a green-and-gold-colored bug, and the bottle was labeled: "Shang-tang Jan. 15. The strange bug that stung Dick last night. We believe that someone threw it in the window."
I don't like the idea of a murder and a suicide in our family. I don't want that coroner's verdict to stand. I'm going to prove that an enraged old magician in the mountains near Shang-tang caused the green and gold bug to be thrown in the window where the Americans were staying and it poisoned Dick and slowly drove him mad; destroyed his human qualities, mind and body; and that the two who lay side by side in their coffins were both murdered and that the murderer sits among his incense burners seven thousand miles away. I'm going to prove it if I have to go to China!
