"I see what you mean. You think he went to that place to get the acid."
Sam puffed away at his cigar.
"It has been a mystery to everyone where that acid came from," I continued; "a mystery which has evidently baffled the police. If a druggist in the whole range of this great city had lately sold a phial of this poison to anyone answering the description given of these brothers, we would have heard from him before now. Equally so if a doctor had prescribed it."
"A second Daniel come to judgment," quoth Sam, sententiously.
"And now we, through chance or special providence, perhaps, have stumbled upon a clue as to how this deadly drug may have entered the Gillespie family."
"I regret to agree with you, but that is the way it looks. But, Outhwaite, you must remember—and as a lawyer you will—that a long and tangled road lies between mere supposition and the establishment of a fact like this. This phial, so carefully transferred from a pocket where a seemingly more valuable article lay hid, has not been identified as holding poison, only as holding a liquid. Much less has it been proven to be the bottle found under the clock in the Gillespie dining-room."
"All very true."
"Yet this fellow's story of—well, let us say, Louis Gracieux' appearance and conduct in this more than doubtful place, warrants us in thinking the worst of his errand."
I felt the force of this suggestion.
"Quite true." I assented. Then, in some agitation, for my thoughts were divided between the relief which a knowledge of this night's occurrences might bring to Hope and the terrible results to the man himself, I went on to say: