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Dr. Robert Ordway is vacationing in the Blue Ridge Mountains district of West Virginia when a typhoid epidemic breaks out. Three deaths occur with the first two being typhoid-caused but the death of the third person, Ward Beachey, is a case of poisoning.
Ordway learns that Beachey was the town Romeo with many enemies and that most of those had access to the poison. Doc Millerson, who has a suspicion who the guilty party is, receives a note in a woman's handwriting requesting a meeting at the river bank. He goes there and is killed in an ambush by a rifle shot. Following the note as a clue, Ordway visits the house of Ezra Minnich and traps Minnich's young daughter into confessing that her father made her write the note. Minnich confesses he had killed Beachey for trying to break up his home and Doc Millerson because he suspected him.[2]