Page:The Death-Doctor.djvu/248

236 I think you said my train left Ashburton at half-past eleven?" I added.

She glanced at the clock, and ringing the bell, told the man to get my bag. I was anxious to get back to town again, and leave for Paris by the night mail. The five hundred pounds were now as good as in my hand.

As I drove away in the car she stood in the old stone porch, and waved her hand merrily in farewell. By Jove! She was a really remarkable woman. Her self-control was unequalled.

I went first to Geneva, and then south to Naples, on my way to Palermo.

At the hotel at Naples I received a hastily-scribbled note from her to say that Taylor had been stricken by some mysterious disease. She did not trust to the telegraph, in fear lest the message should be brought up against her.

I smiled as I read her hasty scrawl in pencil. There are few men who have not some slight abrasion of the skin upon their hands or do not shave so closely that the blood is drawn. Upon a broken skin the slightest use of that tablet of soap would produce an effect as deadly as a knife wound in the heart.