He says he sent no prescription. Indeed, he thought
it a scheme to extract advice without incurring the charge for an
office call and answered it only because he thought Vera had become
reconciled to Thurston again. I can't find that letter of Thurston's.
It is gone."
We looked at each other in amazement.
"Why, if Dixon contemplated anything against Miss Lytton, should he
preserve this letter from her?" mused Kennedy. "Why didn't he
destroy it?"
"That's what puzzles me," remarked Leland. "Do you suppose some
one has broken in and substituted this Lytton letter for the
Thurston letter?
Kennedy was scrutinising the letter, saying nothing. "I may keep
it?" he asked at length. Leland was quite willing and even undertook
to obtain some specimens of the writing of Vera Lytton. With these
and the letter Kennedy was working far into the night and long after
I had passed into a land troubled with many wild dreams of deadly
poisons and secret intrigues of artists.
The next morning a message from our old friend First Deputy O'Connor
in New York told briefly of locating the rooms of an artist named
Thurston in one of the co-operative studio apartments. Thurston
himself had not been there for several days and was reported to have
gone to Maine to sketch.
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