Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/445

 9, 1864.] retired to rest, or rather to bed, for rest he did not get. That shadowy face haunted him in the strangest manner; he could get no sleep for it, but lay tossing and turning until morning light; and then, when he did get to sleep, he saw it in his dreams.

But we must go back to the Messrs. Grey. On leaving Mrs. Gould’s house they parted with Mr. Lycett at the door, for their road lay in the opposite direction to his, and Mr. John Grey passed his arm through his brother’s as they went up the street, young Frederick walking by their side.

“This is a most unfortunate event,” began Mr. John.

“It is to the full as mysterious as it is unfortunate,” was the reply of his brother. “Prussia acid get into my composing draught! The thing is an impossibility.”

“I wonder whether prussic acid had been mixed with the draught, or whether the draught had been poured out and prussic acid substituted?” cried Frederick.

“Don’t talk in that senseless way, Frederick,” rebuked Mr. Stephen. “Who would pour medicine out of a bottle and substitute prussic acid?”

“Well, papa, it is pretty sure that she took prussic acid; so it must have been given to her in some way.”

“From the drain left in the phial, it is apparent that some drops were mixed with the draught, just sufficient to destroy life, and no more,” observed Mr. John. “Stephen,” he added, lowering his voice, and speaking with hesitation, “are you sure-pardon the question, but are you sure you did not, in some unaccountable fit of absence, mix it with it yourself?”

In good truth the affair to Mr. John Grey, a man of sound practical sense, did appear most unaccountable. He had turned it over in his mind in all its bearings as he stood by the bed at Mrs. Gould’s, and the only possible solution he could come to was, that the poison must have been inadvertently mixed with the draught when it was made up. And yet this appeared most unlikely, for he knew how correct his brother was.

“I have not mixed medicines for twenty years, John, to make a fatal mistake at last,” was the reply of Stephen Grey. “No; the draught was carefully and properly mixed.”

“I stood by and watched papa do it, Uncle John, and I am sure it was carefully mixed,” said Frederick, rather resenting his uncle’s doubt. “Do you think he could have taken down the jar of prussic acid from its corner in a fit of absence?—why, he couldn’t reach it, you know, without the steps; and they have not been brought into the surgery today. Mr. Fisher saw him mix it, too.”

“Mr. Fisher did?”

“Fisher’s seeing me happened in this way,” interposed Mr. Stephen, “In leaving Mrs. Crane, soon after seven this evening, I saw Fisher at his door, and he made me go in. It was Mrs. Fisher’s birthday, and he had a bottle of champagne on the table, about to tap it. I helped them drink it, and then Fisher came out with me for a stroll, first of all turning into the surgery with me, and waiting while I mixed the draught for Mrs. Crane.”

“And was the bottle given immediately to Dick?”

“Not immediately,” spoke Frederick; “it waited a short while on the counter while Dick finished his supper. But it never was lost sight of for one moment while it was there, as Mr. Whittaker can testify,” he added, as if in anticipation of what might be his uncle’s next question. “Whittaker came in before papa had quite finished the mixture—that is, he was putting the paper round the bottle—and we neither of us, I or Whittaker, quitted the room until Dick had gone out with it.”

“Well, it appears most incomprehensible,” exclaimed Mr. John Grey.

The first thing they did on entering was to question Dick. He slept at the top of Mr. John’s house, and they proceeded to his room, rousing Mr. Dick from his slumbers: a shock-headed gentleman of fourteen, who struggled up in bed, his eyes wild with surprise.

“Wake up, Dick,” said his master.

“I am awake, sir,” responded Dick. “Be I wanted? is there any physic to take out?”

“No, nothing of that,” continued Mr. John. “I only want to ask you a question. Did you carry any medicine to Mrs. Gould’s tonight?”

“I took some there, sir. A small bottle.”

“Who gave it to you?”

“It were Master Frederick as give it to me, sir. I took it down and give it to that there fat Pepperfly, for it were she that come to the door.”

“Did you go straight there? or did you loiter on your way and put your basket down?”

“I went straight there,” replied the boy, earnestly. “I never loitered once not let go of the basket. Do that Pepperfly say as I didn’t take it, sir?—or that I took it broke?” he added, believing this unusual cross-questioning must bode some accusation against himself. “She’s a big story-teller if she do.”

“She has not said anything about you,” returned his master; “I only want to know whether that little bottle of medicine was