he rapidly continued; “but I mean as to the fatal drug introduced into that draught—who put it in?”
“My opinion is—but it is not a pleasant task to have to avow it, even to you—that it was so mixed, inadvertently, by Stephen Grey. It is impossible for me to come to any other conclusion. I cannot imagine how two opinions upon the point can have arisen.”
The inspector shook his head, as if he could not agree with Mr. Carlton; but he made no dissent in words. He did not believe the fault to lie with Stephen Grey.
“What I wished more particularly to ask you, sir, was about the man you saw on the stairs,” he presently resumed. "There’s the point that ought to have been followed up.”
“I saw no man on the stairs,” said Mr. Carlton. “I did fancy I saw a face there, it’s true; but I have come to the conclusion that it was only fancy, that my sight was deceived by the moonbeams.”
“Will you swear there was no man there?”
“Well, no; I should not like to do that. Nevertheless, my firm belief is that there was no man there, no face at all; I think my sight misled me.”
The inspector lifted his finger and shook it, by way of adding impressiveness to his words. “Rely upon it, sir, there was a man there, and that man is the one who did the mischief. I know—I know what you would say—that the draught smelt of the stuff when it arrived, as you testified; but I don’t care for that. It seems a difficult enough point to get over at first; but I have picked the case to pieces in all its bearings, and I have got over it. I don’t attach an atom of importance to it.”
“Do you think I should testify to what was not true?” asked Mr. Carlton.
“Not a bit of it,” returned the inspector, with calm equanimity. “You’d be as anxious, naturally, to state the facts correctly, and throw as much light upon them, as we should. But I know how deceiving noses are. You fancied you smelt the poison in the draught, but you didn’t really smell it, for it wasn’t there. The nurse—what’s her name? a fat woman—declares she could not smell anything of the sort; for I have had her before me here. She had been drinking a modicum of strong waters, I know; but they don’t take all smell away in that fashion. Depend upon it her nose was truer than yours.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Carlton. “I am a medical man, remember, accustomed to the smell of drugs, and not likely to be deceived.”
“That’s just it,” said the inspector, with persistent obstinacy. “Those accustomed to the smell of drugs, living amongst them, as may be said, in their surgeries, are more liable to fancy they smell them when they don’t, than other folks are. There was no smell of poison in the draught when it was taken to the house,” he doggedly continued.
“But I tell you there was,” persisted Mr. Carlton.
“And I tell you, sir, there wasn’t. There. I feel as sure of it as I am that we are now talking together. That man you saw on the stairs was the one to drop the poison into the draught after you had gone.”
Mr. Carlton said no more. The inspector was evidently confirmed in his opinion, and it was of no use to try to shake it. There may have come over Mr. Carlton’s memory also a recollection of the second view he had obtained of the face, on the night previous to his flight with Laura Chesney. That, surely, could not have been fancy; for Laura testified to seeing it—and hearing it—as well as he. How then reconcile that with his persistent denial that no one had been on the stairs? Mr. Carlton could not tell; but he was quite sincere in hoping, nay, in half believing, that that ill-looking face had existed wholly in his imagination.
“Is that all you have to ask me?” he inquired of the inspector. “My time is not my own this morning.”
“No, sir, not all. I want you to be so kind as just to relate the facts as they occurred under your notice. I have heard them from Mr. Stephen Grey, and from others; but I must hear them from you. It’s surprising how u word from one witness and a word from another helps us on to a correct view of a case. You saw her for the first time, I believe, on the Sunday night. It’s a pity but you had kept the note she wrote you!”
“Who was to think the note would ever be wanted?” rejoined Mr. Carlton. “But if I had kept it, it would have told nothing.”
“Every word, every scrap of paper is evidence to those who have learnt to use it,” was the answer. “Go on, sir.”
Mr. Carlton complied. He related the facts, so far as they had come under his cognisance, not with the minuteness he had found himself obliged to use before the coroner, but with a clearness of detail that was quite satisfactory. The inspector listened attentively, and once or twice took something down in writing.
“That’s all you know?” came the question when he had finished.
“That is all I know.”
The inspector gently rubbed his nose with the feather end of his pen. He was in deep thought.
“The case would resolve itself into a very