“That is one view. Another possible view is that the person who stole the case-book wanted to obtain evidence for his own purposes. He may have wanted to put pressure on some patient—or patients.”
“Oh, no!” The protest escaped from me almost unawares. A slight lifting of Tarleton’s brows caused me to qualify it the next moment. “I mean that wasn’t my theory.” I pulled myself together as I went on. “Putting together everything we learnt from Madame Bonnell and from the waiter and from Miss Neobard, I suspect that Weathered had become a thorough scoundrel. My view is that he was taking advantage of the confessions made to him as a medical man to blackmail his patients, and that one of them was driven to desperation. She thought she could deliver herself by obtaining access to his safe, and destroying the documents. But she never dreamed that she was giving him a fatal dose.”
“I needn’t tell you that would be no defence in the eye of the law if it actually was fatal,” the specialist put in grimly. “So you think it was the work of a woman, do you?”
“The evidence, Gerard’s evidence, is to that effect, surely? He described three women in connection with the masked Inquisitor—not one man.”
“He described one woman as being rather like a man. He suspected Zenobia of being His Royal Highness.”
I hardly knew what to say. If there were any chance of the waiter’s theory being adopted by my chief, the relief to me would be as great as to Madame Bonnell herself. But dare I hope anything of the kind? The situation was so critical that I feared to commit myself one way or the other. I fell back on the other point in doubt.
“Do you consider it possible, sir, that an otherwise harmless dose of morphia might prove fatal if the person to whom it was given had already saturated his system with opium?”
Again the specialist’s voice had a note of surprise.
“I should have thought your own knowledge was amply sufficient to answer that question, Cassilis. In ordinary circumstances, no; quite the contrary, the dose would fail even to produce the effect intended; it would hardly render the victim insensible. But suppose that he had just taken his maximum dose, and the extra quantity was administered immediately after, then the effect might be very serious, indeed.”
Somehow I felt that I was being fenced with. Tarleton must have perceived a lack of candour on my part in discussing the problem, and decided to withhold his confidence for the time being. I had to remind myself of the admissions I had been driven to make in the course of the morning. My chief knew that I had been a visitor to the Domino Club on one occasion. He knew that I had heard something of Dr. Weathered, and heard it in confidence, as he supposed, or affected to believe, from a patient of my own. He must have put two and two together by this time. Some inkling of the truth must be in his mind. It did not call for very much acuteness on his part to see in me the confidential adviser of one of Weathered’s patients—perhaps one of his victims—possibly of the very one who had administered the fatal dose, and carried off the incriminating book.