“Here they are. Will-forms taken from the major's pocket. If you don't understand their significance, Madame; but I see you do”—for Mrs. Erskine was staring with dilated eyes at them. “It would have taken some persuasion doubtless to make you sign away your fortune to any one of your three friends, but—as I think you know—they would have ways of persuading you, and whether the will would have been valid wouldn't have interested you, once you had followed Miss West to the bottom of the Mediterranean. It would have been so easy to connect the two ‘accidents.’ Miss West overbalanced, and you falling over in an effort to save her. True, your friends might have had a few awkward questions to answer; but, after all, the French courts will decide on the question of the attempted murder of Miss West, that's none of my business for the moment.” Pointer took a step forward—“This is my real reason for being here to-night. Janet Fraser, you are detained, pending an extradition order, for the murder of Robert Erskine, and for the embezzlement of the Erskine funds under false pretences for over seventeen years. It's my . . .”
There was a shriek from the woman to whom he was speaking. She sprang to her feet and looked around her as if demented, as indeed she was by the shock—for the moment.
“The devils! They've sold me! After all the money they've squeezed from me they've sold me in the end. Sold me!”
She screeched, arching her back and advancing in a horribly feline sidle.
“What else did you expect?” Pointer asked imperturbably. “But it's my duty to warn you that anything you say may be used against you.”
“My God, Mrs. Erskine!” Watts murmured, while Carter felt as though the solid floor had opened under his feet.
The woman sank back on the sofa, and struggled for self-possession. “I'm drugged—I don't know what I'm saying—I drank some morphia—we all did—just to taste it for once, you know . . .” she was mouthing and grinning horribly—“and it's quite taken my senses away.”
“Neither you nor Mrs. Clark got much of the stuff into your systems,” Pointer said in his hard official voice; “when you two heard me on deck you each jabbed a needleful into your arms, but half of it came out again. Your wrists were all wet to the touch.”
Yet as a matter of fact it was just this small amount of morphia, irritating instead of calming as a larger dose would have been, which had thrown and was throwing off its balance the cold, calculating brain of the woman whom Pointer knew was not Mrs. Erskine.
“I don't know what you're talking about.” She tried again to steady her flighty wits. “Ask Mr. Russell who I am.”