"But what became of the dying man—of the mother and son—the little stenographer?"
"Oh, yes, to be sure," said the detective; "you wish to know the sequel. Well, I went up there that day with two or three men and found everything as she'd described it. The mother and son had simply been evidently stupefied by drugs purposely introduced into the false formula, and soon recovered their senses, but the uncle had breathed his last. Mrs. Westinghouse had been smart enough to get a physician, who was there when we arrived, and who, honestly enough, I suppose, ascribed his death to natural causes. We could do nothing from lack of evidence."
"But the secret,—the mysterious formula?"
"Ah, that is the saddest part of the whole affair. Half crazed by her horrible experience in this house, and recalling her vow to make no use of any information gained while there, Miss Wood had no sooner escaped than she tore the true formula into pieces and threw it away. Had she kept it, it would undoubtedly have brought her an enormous fortune, for an expert metallurgist who examined the strange dagger given to her by the dying man pronounced it to be an example of a priceless art,—that of tempering copper to the consistency of steel,—a process understood by the ancients, but lost now these thousands of years."
Her Hoodoo.
BY HAROLD KINSABBY.
IT was because the doctor insisted that my system needed ozone that I went to Colorado on a hunting trip. It was there that I met her, and it was there, by the way, that I became convinced that when a man with a lame lung undertakes to hunt ozone in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains he ought to provide himself with a guide. I went alone, and that's why I got lost.