She was lying rather than sitting in the low basket chair in front of the little table on which the chemicals were ranged, with her back towards him, and her face buried in the padding of the chair. Endicott stretched his arm over her and set down the lamp upon the table. Then he spoke to her again chidingly and shaking her arm.
"Elsie, wake up! Don't be ridiculous!"
He slipped an arm under her waist, and lifting her, turned her towards him. The girl's head rolled upon her shoulders, and there was a look of such deadly horror upon her face that no pen could begin to describe it. Endicott caught her to his breast.
"Oh, my God," he cried hoarsely. "My poor girl! My poor girl!"
Mrs. Tyson had come up behind him.
"It was he," she whispered, "the man who was here. He killed her!" And as Endicott turned his head towards the woman, some little thing slipped from the chair on to the floor with a tiny rattle. Endicott laid her down and picked up a small, yellow, round tablet.
"No, he didn't," he said with a queer eagerness in his voice. The tablet came from a small bottle on the table at the end of his row of chemicals. It was labelled, "Intensifier" and "Poison," and the cork was out of the bottle. The bottle had been full that afternoon. There was more than one tablet missing now.
"No, she killed herself. Those tablets are cyanide of potassium. He never touched her. Look!"
Upon the boards of the floor the wet and muddy feet of the Asiatic had written the history of his movements beyond the possibility of mistake. Here he had stood in front of her--not a step nearer. Mrs. Tyson heard him whisper in her daughter's ear. "Oh, my dear, I thank God!" He sank upon his knees beside her. Mrs. Tyson went out, and, closing the door gently, left him with his dead.
She sat and waited in the kitchen, and after a while she heard him moving. He opened the door into the hall and came out and went slowly and heavily up the stairs into Elsie's room. In a little while he came down again and pushed open the kitchen door. He had aged by twenty years, but his face and his voice were calm.