Stella stood with him in the big drawing-room that looked dusty and neglected in the dim lamplight, trying to gather what had happened, what was likely to happen. From across the hall came a monotonous sound, a loud, delirious voice repeating some sentence over and over again. On her arrival, soon after midnight, she had scarcely been able to realise that it was indeed Robert who lay on his bed, so strangely altered, talking incoherently, paying no heed to her presence. Mrs. Antonio was there as well as the doctor; apparently the good couple had not left the house for the past twenty-four hours.
"Is it typhoid, do you think?" Stella asked helplessly.
"No, not typhoid, some kind of poison."
"Something he had eaten?"
"How can I say? One day quite well, playing tennis, then feeling ill, sending for me; and all at once very high fever, delirious. As yet not yielding to treatment. Typhoid, smallpox, cholera, malaria," he ticked off the diseases on his fingers, "none of them. I have grave suspicion, Mrs. Crayfield!"
"You mean you think someone has tried to poison my husband?"
"Yes, that is what I think."
"But who could it be? The servants have all been with him for years——"
"That is so. But where is that bearer, that Sher Singh?"