"Maybe it was. But it's a poison just the same—ain't it?" he hastened. Then he added, aggressively, "I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to put a dictagraph in that place."

Kennedy smiled encouragingly. I knew what his thought was. This was the height to which Doyle's mind reached.

Yet, I reasoned, perhaps it was not without its value, after all.


IX
THE ASSOCIATION TEST

"I think I ought to visit Mrs. Wilford, after that," decided Kennedy, the moment Doyle had left. "This case is really resolving itself into a study of that woman, or rather of her hidden personality."

Accordingly he doffed his acid-stained smock which he wore about the laboratory, and we set out for the Wilford apartment.

When we arrived we were not surprised to find Honora in a highly nervous state, really bordering on hysteria, as we had been told by Doyle. McCabe had taken up a less conspicuous place in which to watch her, from a neighboring apartment in which he had got himself placed.

As we met her, it actually seemed as if Honora had turned from Doyle and McCabe to Kennedy.

"Were the dreams I wrote for you all right?" she asked, with a rather concealed anxiety.