The girl's lips and tongue were dry, and she spoke with some difficulty.
"Yes. Mother had asked me to bring her a copy of a magazine, and I had just gone down-stairs to look for it when the nurse called."
"You saw the nurse when you came up-stairs?"
"Yes; she was just going toward the servants' stairway."
"There was no one in your room here when you entered?"
She shook her head. "Who could have been here?"
"That's what we're trying to find out, Miss Greene," replied Markham gravely. "Some one certainly put the drug in your bouillon."
She shuddered, but made no reply.
"Did any one come in to see you later?" Markham continued.
"Not a soul."
Heath impatiently projected himself into the interrogation.
"And say; did you drink your soup right away?"
"No—not right away. I felt a little chilly, and I went across the hall to Julia's room to get an old Spanish shawl to put round me."
Heath made a disgusted face, and sighed noisily.
"Every time we get going on this case," he complained, "something comes along and sinks us.—If Miss Ada left the soup in here, Mr. Markham, while she went to get a shawl, then almost anybody coulda sneaked in and poisoned the stuff."
"I'm so sorry," Ada apologized, almost as though
