Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/207

Rh on Bottiger as did the smell of that anæsthetic. He talked of nothing else, ransacking creation to tell us what it smelt like and what it did not smell like. He was positively morbid on the subject, and turned a dinner which should have been the cheerful celebration of a splendid piece of work into a funeral monologue.

The next morning I awoke at the postman's knock, and found a letter from Angel in the letter-box. What was my disgust to read that Chelubai and Bottiger had failed! Mrs. Jubb had recovered, and staggered back to the Manor-house with a tale of how two masked men had tried to asphyxiate her, and rendered her unconscious; how she had recovered slowly, and at last been able to totter back to the house. The doctor had been sent for, then the local police, then the chief of the Winchester police. The country was being scoured in search of her assailants. I made haste to dress, and in the middle of my dressing the paper came. I stopped dressing to search its columns, and soon found the following paragraph:

A strange affair is reported by our Winchester correspondent. Yesterday Mrs. Jubb, of the Manor-house, Hardstone, the widow of Mr. Henry Jubb, of Ne Plus Ultra Pickle fame, was taking