XXX

In my haste to be through with the record of a testimony which so unmistakably gave

the impression that I was the man who had tampered with the medicine which
prematurely ended my uncle’s fast failing life, I omitted to state Wealthy’s eager
admission that notwithstanding the doctor’s surprise at the sudden passing of his
patient and her own knowledge that the room contained a previously used medicine
which had been pronounced dangerous to him at this stage of his illness, she did not
connect these two facts in her mind even then as cause and effect. Not till the dreadful
night in which she heard the word poison uttered over Mr. Bartholomew’s casket, did
she realize what the peculiar sound which had roused her from her nap beside the
sick-bed really was. It was the setting down of the glass on the shelf from which it had
been previously lifted.
This was where the proceedings had ended; and it was at this point they were taken up
the next day.
I say nothing of the night between; I have tried to forget it. God grant the day will
come when I may. Nor shall I enter into any description of the people who filled the
room on this occasion or of the change in Orpha’s appearance or in that of such
persons towards whom my eyes, hot with the lack of sleep, wandered during the first
half hour. I am eager to go on; eager to tell the worst and have done with this part of
my story.
To return then to Wealthy’s testimony as continued from the day before. The casket in
which Mr. Bartholomew’s body had been laid on the morning of the second day
had[Pg 179] been taken in the early evening down into the court. She had not
accompanied it. When asked why, she said that Mr. Edgar had asked her to remain in
the room, and on no account to leave it without locking both doors. So she had stayed
until she heard a scream ringing up through the house, and convinced from its
hysterical sound that it came from one of the maids, she hastened to lock the one door
which had been left unfastened, and go below. As in company with Mr. Quenton and
Clarke she reached the balcony on the second floor, she could see that there were
several persons in the court, so she stopped where she was, and simply looked down
at what was going on. It was then she got the shock of her life. The girl who had
uttered the scream was pointing at her dead master’s face and shouting the
word poison. One can imagine what passed through her mind as the clouds cleared
away from it and she realized to what in her ignorance she had been made a party to.
She certainly made the jury feel it, though she was less garrulous and simpler in her
manners than on the previous day; and hardly knowing what to expect from her
peculiar sense of duty, I was in dread anticipation of hearing her relate the few words
which had passed between us as Orpha fell into my arms,—words in which she
accused me of being the cause of all this trouble.
But she spared me that, either because she did not know how to obtrude it without
help from the Coroner, or because she had enough right feeling not to emphasize the
suspicion already roused against me by her previous testimony.
Grateful for this much grace, I restrained my own anxieties and listened intently for
what else she had to say, in the old hope that some word would yet fall from her lips
or some glance escape from her eye which would give [Pg 180] me the clew to the hand
which had really lifted that glass and set it down a little further along the shelf.
I thought I was on its track when she came to the visit she had paid to the room above
in the company of Edgar and Orpha. But I heard little new. The facts elicited were
well-known ones. They had approached the cabinet together, looked into it together,
and, pushing the bottles about, brought out the one for which they were seeking from
the very place in the rear of the shelf where she had put it herself when told that it
would not be required any longer.
“Yes, that is the bottle,” she declared, as the Coroner lifted a small phial from the
table before him and held it up in her sight and in that of the jury. As he did this, I
could scarcely hide the sickening thrill which for a moment caused everything to turn
black around me. For the label was written large and the word Poison had a ghastly
look to one who had loved Edgar Quenton Bartholomew. When I could see and hear
again, Wealthy was saying:
“A few drops wouldn’t be missed. My memory isn’t good enough for me to be sure of
a fact like that.”
Evidently she had been asked if on taking the phial from the shelf she had noticed any
diminution of its contents since she had last handled it.
“You say that you pushed the bottles aside in order to get at this one. Was that
necessary? Could you not have reached in over them and lifted it out?”
“I never thought of doing that; none of us did. We were all anxious to satisfy
ourselves as to whether or not the bottle was there and just took the quickest way we
knew of finding out.”
“But you could have got hold of it in the way I suggested? Reached in, I mean, and
pulled it out without disarranging the other bottles?”
[Pg 181]
She stopped to think; contracting her brows and stealing what I felt sure was a look at
Edgar.
“It would have been difficult,” she finally conceded: “but a person with long fingers
might have got hold of it all right. The bottles in front and around it were not very
large. Much of the same size as the one you just showed us.”
“Then in your opinion this could have been done?”
(I heard afterwards that it had been done by one of the police operatives.)
“It could have been done.”
Almost doggedly she said it.
“Without making much noise?”
“Without making any if the person doing it knew exactly where the phial was to be
found.”
Not doggedly now, but incisively.
“And how many of the household, to your definite knowledge, did?”
“Three, besides myself. Miss Orpha, Mr. Edgar and Mr. Quenton, all of whom shared
my nursing.”
The warmth with which she uttered the first two names, the coldness with which she
uttered mine! Was it intentional, or just the natural expression of her feelings?
Whatever prompted this distinction in tone, the effect was to signal me out as
definitely as though a brand had left its scorching mark upon my forehead.
And I innocent!
Why I did not leap to my feet I do not know. I thought I did, shouting a wild
disclaimer. If men stared and women shrieked that was nothing to me. All that I cared
for was Orpha sitting there listening to this hellish accusation. So maddened was I, so
dead to all human conditions that I doubt if I should have been surprised had the
ghostly figure of my uncle evolved itself from air and taken its [Pg 182] place on the
witness-stand in revolt against this horror. Anything was possible, but to let the world
—by which I meant Orpha—believe this thing for a moment.
All this tumult in brain and heart, and my body quiet, fixed, with not a muscle so
much as quivering. By what force was I thus withheld? Possibly by some hypnotic
influence exerted by Mr. Jackson, for when I looked in his direction I found him
gazing very earnestly in mine. I smiled. It must have been a very dreary smile and
ironic in the extreme; for my heart was filled with bitterness and could express itself
in no other way.
The decided shake of the head which he gave me in return had its effect, however, and
digging my nails into my palm, I listened to what followed with all the stoicism the
situation called for.
I was still in a state of rigid self-control when I heard my name spoken loudly and
with command and woke to the fact that Wealthy had been dismissed from the stand
and that I was to be the next witness.
Was I ready for it? I must be; and to test my strength, I cast one straight look at
Orpha. She had lifted her veil and met my gaze fairly. Had there been guilt in my
heart—
But I could pass her without shame; and sustained by this fact, I took my place on the
stand with a calmness I had hardly expected to show in the face of this prejudiced
throng.