"
At this point the groom interrupted us to say that he had caught
the rabbits. Kennedy at once hurried to the stable. There he
rolled up his sleeves, pricked a vein in his arm, and injected a
small quantity of his own blood into one of the rabbits. The
other he did not touch.
It was late in the afternoon when Tom returned from town with his
uncle and cousin. He seemed even more agitated than usual.
Without a word he hurried up from the landing and sought us out.
"What do you think of that?" he cried, opening a copy of the
Record, and laying it flat on the library table.
There on the front page was Lewis Langley's picture with a huge
scare-head:
MYSTERIOUS CASE OF SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION
"It's all out," groaned Tom, as we bent over to read the account.
"And such a story!"
Under the date of the day previous, a Saranac despatch ran:
Lewis Langley, well known as sporting man and club member in New
York, and eldest son of the late Lewis Langley, the banker, was
discovered dead under the most mysterious circumstances this
morning at Camp Hangout, twelve miles from this town.
The Death of "Old Krook" in Dickens's "Bleak House" or of the
victim in one of Marryat's most thrilling tales was not more
gruesome than this actual fact. It is without doubt a case of
spontaneous human combustion, such as is recorded beyond dispute
in medical and medico-legal text-books of the past two centuries.
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